About Me

The geography bug bit me at an early age mainly due my fascination with maps, though geography was not on my radar as a potential major or career until after college. A year after graduating from Wake Forest University in mathematical economics, I did a solo cross-country bicycle trip on the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail. This opened my eyes to the wonders of seeing people, places, and environments and realizing that geography includes maps but is much more than just maps. This inspired me to pursue a master’s degree followed by a PhD at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Things I have pursued in my professional career have been shaped by my own motivations and also influenced by the contexts of people and places I’ve encountered. My distinctive training in Geography under Dr. Stephen J. Walsh and with a fellowship at UNC’s Carolina Population Center formed my knowledge in geospatial approaches to population and environment (or “human-environment interactions”) involving the integration of social, natural, and spatial science domains. My time at Gettysburg College (2000-03) thrust me into teaching and research where I was exposed to coastal ecologies (though I’m not a natural science ecologist) and public lands in the US West via collaborations with Dr. John Commito and Dr. Randy Wilson. I dove deeper into coastal research influenced strongly by the robust group of inter-disciplinary researchers at East Carolina University (2003-14) where I worked closely with geographer Dr. Tom Allen and others. I also grew my expertise in geospatial public health applications while at ECU. I was appointed the Banpu Chair of Sustainability at Saint Louis University’s Center for Sustainability (2014-17) which helped shape my interests in vulnerability, resilience, and sustainability. I have been at Virginia Tech since July 2017 as the department chair where my main duties are administrative. I am not currently teaching classes but am heavily involved in a research project investigating the problem of coastal erosion in Bangladesh.