Fleming College

Facilitator, mentor, faculty member in the Ecosystem Management program at Fleming College, for the past 22 years I have been working closely with student teams and government and non-government organizations in applied student learning. With over 500 projects completed and over 60 partner organizations engaged, I am passionate about the rich learning experiences that real-world applied project work creates for my students and the valuable products that my students create for partner organizations. I see great value for our students and for our local communities and our communities of practice in finding opportunities for students to engage in meaningful work that results in tangible positive environmental impacts. In addition to my work in the Ecosystem Management program, I also served as the program coordinator for Fleming’s Sustainable Agriculture Coop program for six years from 2012 to 2018. Again one of the key roles that I played here involved supporting and strengthening the intersection of classroom teaching with practical hands-on experience in the field through the 5 month on-farm coop, field camp, and numerous work-based field trips that provided students with significant opportunities to put their classroom learning into practice. Outside of Fleming I have worked in the Ontario Land Trust movement for a number of years now and currently sit as a Governor on the board of the Ontario Land Trust Alliance.

My academic background is varied and includes a B.A. from McGill in Social Cultural Anthropology, an M.A. in Adult Education from Central Michigan University, and a diploma in Integrated Resource Management from Fleming College. In my education and training and in my personal life I have consistently been drawn to exploring and understanding how original and new societies around the world interact with their local environments and how these interactions change over time and scale.