ESPP Faculty

Jennifer Carrera
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Phone: (517) 353-8124
E-mail: jcarrera@msu.edu

Biosketch: Jennifer S. Carrera uses an environmental justice perspective to focus on differential access to environmental resources and its impact on the well-being of individuals in marginalized communities. She uses water as a lens through which to examine mechanisms of exclusion. Low-income populations face reduced water access, impaired water quality, and poor sanitation conditions that contribute to compromised environmental health, exacerbate chronic health conditions, provide entry for opportunistic infections, and increase the burden on the well-being of marginalized communities. Her work aims to 1) articulate the everyday practices that produce and reproduce environmental injustices and 2) provide communities with resources to make inequities visible. Her research builds on literature on the boundaries of citizenship to examine the emergence of politicized bodies within distinct socio-environmental contexts.

Biosketch: Thomas Dietz is a professor of Sociology and Environmental Science and Policy (ESPP) and assistant vice president for environmental research at Michigan State University. He holds a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of California, Davis, and a bachelor of general studies from Kent State University. At MSU he was founding director of the Environmental Science and Policy Program and associate dean in the Colleges of Social Science, Agriculture and Natural Resources and Natural Science. Dietz is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has been awarded the Sustainability Science Award of the Ecological Society of America, the Distinguished Contribution Award of the American Sociological Association Section on Environment, Technology and Society, and the Outstanding Publication Award, also from the American Sociological Association Section onTom Dietz 2014 Environment, Technology and Society and the Gerald R. Young Book Award from the Society for Human Ecology. At the National Research Council he has served as chair of the U.S. National Research Council Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change and the Panel on Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making, and currently is vice chair of the Panel on Advancing the Science of Climate Change of the America’s Climate Choices study.

Erin Dreelin
Associate Professor of Fisheries and Wildlife
Phone: (517) 353-7746
E-mail: dreelin@msu.edu

Biosketch: Erin Dreelin is the Associate Director for the Center for Water Sciences, coordinator of the Water Science Network and Associate Professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. She received her PhD in Ecology from the University of Georgia in 2004 where she began her work on the development and implementation of innovative stormwater management practices and policies to protect aquatic ecosystems. My work places a strong emphasis on ourtreach and engagement. I work with diverse stakeholder groups to implement strategies that protect aquatic ecosystems and maintain valuable ecosystem services. As Associate Director of the Center for Water Sciences, Dr. Dreelin facilitates collaborations among MSU faculty working on water. I also assist with the organization of the MSU Global Water Initiative. MSU established the Global Water Initiative to advance innovative science that addresses the most important water problems facing society around the globe.

Joe Hamm
Associate Professor of Criminal Justice
Phone: (517) 355-6603
E-mail: jhamm@msu.edu

Biosketch: Joe Hamm is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Environmental Studies at Michigan State University and part of the university’s Global Water Initiative. A psychologist by training, his work lies at the nexus of institutions and the public where he investigates what trust is, how best to appropriately measure it, and its connection to "outcomes" like cooperation and compliance. Although he continues to work with institutions like the courts and local government, much of his work focuses on natural resource institutions where he is especially interested in the role that trust plays in encouraging voluntary conservation-related behavior.

Arika Ligmann-Zielinska
Associate Professor of Geography, Environment and Spatial Sciences
Phone: (517) 432-4749
E-mail: arika@msu.edu

Biosketch: Arika Ligmann-Zielinska got her doctoral degree from a Joint Doctoral Program in Geography at San Diego State University and University of California Santa Barbara in 2008.Prior to that, she studied environmental geography in her home country Poland. She obtained her undergraduate and graduate MS degree (summa cum laude) from the Department of Geography and Geology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland.Her areas of research include applying agent-based modeling to study coupled human-natural systems, contributing to modeling methodology, and teaching spatial thinking through models. Together with Drs. Schmitt-Olabisi and Marquart-Pyatt, Dr. Ligmann-Zielinska initiated a four-step modeling certificate as part of the interdisciplinary curriculum offered by ESPP."

Emilio Moran
John A. Hannah Professor of Global Change Science
Phone: (517) 884-1236
E-mail: moranef@msu.edu

Biosketch: Emilio Moran is a world-renowned social anthropologist who has studied and published in tropical agriculture, social science, ecology, economics, and, most recently, earth observations from satellites. Moran’s true discipline is asking the right questions and merging human and environmental sciences to get a holistic understanding of some of the world’s most crucial problems—climate change, land use—and a project he pioneered some 30 years ago: determining the potential of the humid tropics for intensive agriculture. Moran joined MSU’s Department of Geography in January 2013. He is theMoran receiving honorary degree university’s 11th member of the National Academy of Sciences. In addition to CSIS, Moran contributes to the new Center for Global Change Science as well as the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations.

Amber Pearson
Associate Professor of Geography, Environment and Spatial Sciences
Phone: (517) 432-7163
E-mail: apearson@msu.edu

Biosketch: Amber Pearson is a health geographer with a focus on social justice and understanding the unexpected tenacity, adaptability and resilience of the underpriviledged. She has diverse regional interests from poor to wealthy countries. Her work features sstrong geospatial and epidemiologic methods and critical development thinking. Specifically, her research relates to aspects of the built, physical and social environment that bolster health in the face of adversity. While she has worked on topics ranging from access to healthy foods, air pollutants, social isolation, and understanding social deprivation of neighborhoods, she also has an explicit focus on water research.

Laura Schmitt Olabisi
Associate Professor of Community Sustainability
Phone: (517) 432-4128
E-mail: schmi420@msu.edu

Biosketch:Laura Schmitt Olabisi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability and the Environmental Science and Policy Program at Michigan State University. She works directly with stakeholders, using participatory model-building techniques to foster adaptive learning about the dynamics of coupled human-natural systems, and to integrate stakeholder knowledge with academic knowledge. Currently, she is working in West Africa on climate change adaptation, food security, and development projects funded by NSF and USAID; and in Detroit and Flint, Michigan, on food security and urban agriculture systems. She is also involved in an NSF-funded workshop series at the Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center on participatory modeling. Laura holds a doctoral degree in Systems Ecology from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and a B.Sc. in Environmental Science from Brown University.  During a 2016-17 sabbatical at RAND Corporation as a visiting scholar, she investigated stakeholder engagement and decision-making under uncertainty in environmental contexts. 

Wei Zhang
Associate Professor of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences
Phone: (517) 353-0471
E-mail: weizhang@msu.edu

Biosketch: Wei Zhang is an associate professor in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. He is broadly interested in the quality and sustainability of soil and water resources, with emphasis on the movement of water, solutes (e.g., nutrients, agrochemicals, and environmental toxics), and fine particles such as microorganisms, abiotic colloids, and engineered nanomaterials in natural and engineered systems, particularly in unsaturated soils. The overarching goal of his research activities is to promote protection of soil and water resources and sustainable agricultural production through understanding of fundamental transport processes and scientifically-sound management practices. Prior to joining MSU, he held a prestigious National Research Council Research Associateship hosted by USEPA. Wei received his Ph.D. degree in Environmental Engineering from Cornell University in 2010, his MS degree in Biosystems Engineering from Oklahoma State University in 2006, and his bachelors degree in Environmental Chemistry from Nanjing University in 2000.

Adam Zwickle
Associate Professor of Criminal Justice
Phone: (517) 432-3609
E-mail: zwicklea@msu.edu

Biosketch: Adam Zwickle holds joint appointments with the Department of Community Sustainability, the Environmental Science and Policy Program, and the School of Criminal Justice. Dr. Zwickle conducts interdisciplinary social science research centered on communicating environmental risks and encouraging sustainable behaviors. Drawing from the fields of social psychology and risk communication, his work integrates theories of individual perception and message framing to aide communication practitioners. Specifically, his goal is to better communicate environmental risks in ways that reduce the amount that their long term impacts are discounted. He is also active in sustainability issues at the university level. He has worked with colleagues to develop a valid assessment of sustainability knowledge targeted at undergraduate students, partnered with university sustainability offices to increase conservation behaviors among students, and believes in using campuses as living laboratories to produce both theoretical and practical research as well as tangible local impacts.