Class Year
Current Hometown:
Denver, Colorado
It’s a very COA type thing - I’m in the city but I’m raising chickens in my yard and have a garden.
Job and Employer
Work:
I’m an adjunct instructor in geography at two different colleges in Denver - the Community
College of Denver and Metropolitan State University of Denver. They both share a campus and
are 10 minutes from my house, so it’s the perfect setup, I just take the bus and I am right there.
I have young kids so it’s great to be working part time without having the pressure of publishing.
Considerations for prospective students:
I was really intrigued by COA and the idea of interdisciplinary education, especially focused around the environment. It really seemed like the right place for me, I didn’t want to go anywhere else.
I did my masters thesis on environmental politics in China and was looking at NGOs working in China. I had been in the Peace Corps doing environmental education in China for two years before coming to COA. During my last year at COA I was applying to various PhD programs. It was a little difficult to go from such a small school and such an interdisciplinary program to looking at PhD programs at all these large universities in such set disciplines. Through conversations with professors I found geography - just like human ecology, it’s interdisciplinary. My undergrad was in environmental studies and political science and I was always trying to find a way to combine environmental “stuff” with more political & social movement “stuff.” Geography seemed to fit the bill.