CV
Education
Ph.D. in History, Indiana University, 2002
M.A. in History, Villanova University, 1994
B.A. with Honors in English, Truman State University, 1990
Primary Teaching and Research Interests
U.S. Environmental History 20th Century U.S. History
Global Environmental History Service-Learning
Citizenship Education History Pedagogy
Professional Experience
Professor, Ithaca College, Departments of History/Environmental Studies, 2018-present
Associate Professor, Ithaca College, Departments of History/Environmental Studies, 2011-18
Visiting Professor, University of Costa Rica, Postgraduate Program in History, May 2013
Assistant Professor, Ithaca College, Department of History, 2001-2011
Instructor, Indiana University, Collins Living and Learning Center, 1998-99
Instructor, Indiana University, Summer Groups Program 1998, 1999
Teaching Assistant, Indiana University, Department of History, 1996-99
Instructor, Southeast Community College, Lincoln, NE, Fall 1995
Instructor, Jefferson Community College, Louisville, KY, Fall 1994
Major Grants & Awards
Fulbright Research Award (Core Scholar Program), Nicaragua, Fall 2017
Distinguished Alumni Award, Villanova University College of Arts and Sciences, 2015
National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant, 2011-4
Carnegie Scholar, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 2005-6
Publications
Edited Books
Citizenship Across the Curriculum (with Rebecca Nowacek and Jeff Bernstein)
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010).
Refereed Articles and Book Chapters
“‘That future age of which we can only dream’”: Exploring the origins of the climate crisis in the Story of Progress. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences forthcoming Fall 2021.
“When History Is Now: History and Sustainability in Rural Nicaragua,” in “A Sustainable Future for Latin America?” A contracorriente 17 (Winter 2020): 69-88.
"Paths to Empowerment: A Case Study of Local Sustainability from Rural Nicaragua" with Susan Kinne and Grupo Fénix in Global Champions in Sustainable Development, Patricia M. Flynn, Milenko Gudić, and Tay Keong Tan, eds. (London: Routledge Press, 2019): 142-54.
“Chronicles of Discontent, Tribunes for Change: The Underground Press and Columbia in the Vietnam Era,” with Seth A. Smith, Missouri Historical Review 112 (April 2018): 207-223.
“Rehabilitating Citizenship: Lessons from Across the Curriculum,” Jeffrey Bernstein, Michael Smith, Rebecca Nowacek, Journal of Humanities in Rehabilitation, Fall 2017,
"The Citizenship Imperative and the Role of Faculty Development," with Rebecca Nowacek and Jeff Bernstein in Judith E. Miller and James E. Groccia, eds., To Improve the Academy: Resources for Faculty, Instructional, and Organizational Development, Vol. 30 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011): 54-70.
“Local Environmental History and the Journey to Ecological Citizenship,” in Michael Smith, Rebecca Nowacek, Jeff Bernstein, eds., Citizenship Across the Curriculum (op. cit.), 165-84.
“Ending the Solitude of Citizenship Education,” with Rebecca Nowacek and Jeff Bernstein in Citizenship Across the Curriculum (op. cit.), 1-12.
“What History’s Good For: Service Learning and Studying the Past,” Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences 2 (Winter 2009): 31-49.
“‘Silence, Miss Carson!’: Science, Gender, and the Reception of Silent Spring,” in Lisa Sederis, ed., On Nature’s Terms: The Legacy and Challenge of Rachel Carson (SUNY Press, 2008): 168-89.
“The ‘Ego Ideal’ of the Summer Camper and the Nature of Summer Camp” Environmental History 11 (January 2006): 70-101.
“‘Silence, Miss Carson!’: Science, Gender, and the Reception of Silent Spring,” Feminist Studies, 27 (Fall 2001): 733-52.
“The Short Life of a Dark Prophesy: The Rise and Fall of the Population Bomb Crisis, 1965-1975,” in Nancy Schultz, ed., Fear Itself: Enemies Real and Imagined in American Culture (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1999): 331-54.
“The Value of a Tree: Public Debates of John Muir and Gifford Pinchot,” The Historian 60 (Summer 1998): 277-298.
Reviews, Entries, Non-refereed Articles
“When History Is Now: Some Challenges and Rewards of Local Environmental History in Nicaragua,” ASEH News, Vol. 28 (Winter 2017).
“This Land Is Our Land: The Bitter Debate over America’s Public Spaces,” The Growler (March 2017): https://growlermag.com/this-land-is-our-land-the-bitter-debate-over-ame…
“Don’t Retreat. Teach Citizenship,” with Rebecca Nowacek and Jeff Bernstein, Chronicle of Higher Education (January 27, 2017): A24-25.
Review of Pamela Riney Kehrberg, The Nature of Childhood: An Environmental History of Growing Up in America since 1865 in Environmental History 20 (April 2015): 330-2.
“Resilience and Sustainability in Nicaragua,” CNY Latino, September 2014, p. 2, 24
“Local Environmental History and the Journey to Ecological Citizenship,” Taproot 23 (Summer 2014): 12-20.
“Varieties of Historical Experience,” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Virtual Special Issue, Spring 2013
“History with a Beer Chaser,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 11, 2012
Review of Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, Teaching Children Science: Hands-On Nature Study in North America, 1890-1930 in Environmental History 16 (October 2011): 725-27.
Review of Sharon Wall, The Nurture of Nature: Childhood, Antimodernism, and Ontario Summer Camps, 1920-55 in Environmental History 16 (January 2011): 158-60.
“Getting There from Here: Changing the Ecological and Social Footprint of Our Professional Conferences,” Against the Grain 22 (December 2010/January 2011)
“If Henry Could See Us Now,” Inside Higher Ed. November 2, 2010 http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/11/02/smith
“Collaborative Inquiry and the Big Questions in SoTL” with Jeffrey Bernstein and Rebecca Nowacek, The International Commons: Newsletter of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 5 (October 2010): 10-12.
Review of Neil M. Maher, Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) in The Historian 72 (Spring 2010): 180-1.
“ASEH and Sustainability: Toward an Agenda,” ASEH News Vol. 21 (Spring 2010).
Review of Leslie Paris, Children’s Nature: The Rise of the American Summer Camp (New York: New York University Press, 2008) in Environmental History 14 (January 2009): 178-80.
Review of Abigail Van Slyck, A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006) in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History 38 (Spring 2008): 633-4.
“Facing Some Inconvenient Truths Ourselves,” ASEH News 18 (Winter 2007).
Review of Andrew Jamison, The Making of Green Knowledge: Environmental Politics and Cultural Transformation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001) in Environmental History 8 (April 2003): 335-36.
“Taking Seriously the Environmental in Environmental History: Reflections on Relevance and the 2001 ASEH Conference,” ASEH News Vol. 12 (Spring 2001).
“John Muir,” in Robert T. Grimm, ed., Notable American Philanthropists: A Biographical Encyclopedia (Oryx Press, 2002).
Review of Hugh Prince, Wetlands of the American Midwest: A Historical Geography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997) in Society and Natural Resources 13 (June 2000): 389-91
Presentations and Workshops
Organized Panels and Sessions (since 2000)
“Learning in Networks of Knowledge (LINK): Toward a New Digital Tool for Cultivating Historical Thinking,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, New York City, NY January 2015
“Gateways to Civically Engaged Learning: SoTL and Citizenship Education” Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD) Annual Conference, St. Louis, MO November 3-7, 2010
“Learning History in a Digital Age: Some Experiments with "Digital Natives" panel organized for the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Bloomington, IN, October 2009
“Local Environmental History and the Journey Toward Ecological Citizenship” panel organized for the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education annual conference, Raleigh, NC, November 2008
“Exposed Landscapes: Visual Culture and American Environmental History,” panel organized for the American Society for Environmental History Conference, St. Paul, MN, March 2006.
“Surveying the Landscape of Learning: Toward a Scholarship of Teaching in Environmental History,” roundtable organized for the American Society for Environmental History Conference, St. Paul, MN, March 2006
“And they say we’ll have some fun when it stops raining: Summer Camp in American History,”session organized for the American Society for Environmental History Conference, Durham, NC, March 2001.
Academic Presentations (since 2000)
“Paths to Resilience: A Community Environmental History Project in Nicaragua” Fulbright Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, October 2019
“‘To Sever the Vast Continent of America’: A History of Canal Schemes in Nicaragua” Poster Presentation, American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL March-April 2017
“Linking Oceans, Disrupting Landscapes: Toward an Ecological and Social History of Transoceanic Canal Schemes in Nicaragua,” Middle Atlantic Council on Latin American Studies Annual Meeting, Ithaca, NY, April 2015
“A Humanistic Adaptation of the Maryland Physics Expectations Survey (MPEX)” with
Ali Erkan (Ithaca College), International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Hamilton, Ontario, October 2012
“Disciplinary Thinking in Intermediate Spaces: Digital Tools and Inquiries into the
Structure of Student Thought,” with Randy Bass (Georgetown University) and David Pace (Indiana University), International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Milwaukee, WI, October 2011
“Transnationality and Environmental History,” Commentary on Teresa Cribelli, “These
Industrial Forests: The Search for Agro-Industrial Commodities in Imperial Brazil” New
York Latin American History Workshop, April 2010, Ithaca, NY
“Feeling the Winds of Change: Columbia and the Alternative Press, 1965-1975”, with Seth Smith, State Historical Society of Missouri, Missouri Conference on History, April 2010
“Greening American Campuses” Roundtable Chair, American Society for Environmental History Conference, Portland, OR, March 2010
“Laboratories for Life: The Countermodern Impulse Goes to Summer Camp”, American Society for Environmental History Conference, Portland, OR, March 2010
“Wikis and the U.S. History Survey: The Opportunities and Hazards of Creating Historical Narrative in Non-linear Ways” with Ali Erkan (Ithaca College), International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Bloomington, IN, October 2009
“Developing a Sense of Place: Museum-College Partnerships and Local Environmental History,” National Council on Public History Annual Meeting, April 2009.
“Multiple Exposures: Some Thoughts on Photographic Chemicals and History,” American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, St. Paul, MN, March 2006
“Engaging the Past, Serving the Present, Building the Future,” International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Vancouver, BC, Oct. 2005
“What History Is Good For: Service Learning and Studying the Past,” International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference, Bloomington, IN, Oct. 2004
“Remembering Camp: Nature, Childhood, and the History of Summer Camp.” American Society for Environmental History Conference, Durham, NC, March 2001
“Camping as the American Way: The Contested Terrain of Summer Camp during World War II,” American Historical Association annual convention, Chicago, IL, Jan. 2000.
Invited Presentations, Workshops, and Roundtables (National or International Audience)
“Guiding Students Beyond Linear Thinking: The Learning in Networks of Knowledge Project (LINK)”, Indiana University Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Program, Bloomington, IN, April 2015
“The Enduring Significance of Rachel Carson,” Post-Graduate Program in History, University of Costa Rica, May 2013
“The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Discovering the Research Opportunities in Your Teaching,” (Annual Faculty Development workshop with Rebecca Nowacek, Marquette University), St. Norbert College, January 2009
“Fit for Public Consumption: Strategies for Sharing Your Studies of Learning” (workshop and one-day consultation with Trish Ferrett, a chemist and Carnegie Scholar at Carleton College), Gustavus Adolphus College, November 2007
Invited Presentations and Workshops (Local Audience)
“What Is Our Next Taughannock Giant?: Historical and Cultural Context” The History Center in Tompkins County, March 2019
“Sustainability Series: Water Quality” Panel Participant, The History Center/Paleontological Research Institute Roundtable Series, January 2012
“The Arrogance of Humanism?” Panel Participant/Organizer, Cornell University Roundtable on Environmental Studies (CREST), February 2011.
“Reclaiming My Voice as a Scholar” with Ali Erkan and Susanne Morgan, Center for Faculty Excellence Summer Institute, May 2010
“My Return on My Investment in Assessment: Transforming Assessment into Scholarship” Center for Faculty Excellence, April 2009
“Wikis and Student Engagement,” Ed-Tech Day, with Ali Erkan, Department of Computer Science, March 2009
“What Is the Scholarship of Learning?” Summer Faculty Development Institute (half-day workshop), May 2008
“The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and Interdisciplinary Research on Aging,” Gerontology Institute “Research on Aging” Workshop, June 2006
“The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning,” Ithaca College Summer Faculty Development Institute, May 2006
Public Lectures and Brown Bags
“Thinking Historically, Acting Locally: The Power of Local Environmental History” Sustainability Perspectives Series, Wells College, October 2018
“When History Is Now: The Quest for Sustainability in Rural Nicaragua,” Ithaca College & Committee on U.S. Latin American Relations (CUSLAR), Cornell University, March 2018
“Building Community Through ‘Edutourism’ in Nicaragua,” Sustainability Café, Ithaca College, September 2013
“The End of the Conservative Ascendancy? The 2012 Election in Historical Context,”
Cornell Prison Program, Auburn Correctional Facility, Auburn, NY, November 2012
“The Cold War Era in Books and Memory” Longview Senior Residential Center,
Ithaca, NY, March 2012
“The Environmental Crisis, the Sustainability Movement, and History,” Cornell Prison
Program, Auburn Correctional Facility, Auburn, NY, June 2010
“Wikis of Concept Maps,” Faculty Colloquium Series, with Ali Erkan, Ithaca College, February 2010
“Learning Portfolios and Course Transformation,” Ithaca College Faculty Colloquium Series, Apr. 2006
“’Natural’ Disasters and Human History,” The History Center in Tompkins County, Oct. 2005
“History and Hurricane Katrina,” Ithaca College Faculty Colloquium Series, Sept. 2005
“Cornucopianism and Sustainability,” Ithaca College Sustainability Café, Feb. 2004
“Past Imperfect: The Challenge of Doing History” Longview Senior Residential Center,
Ithaca, NY, Jan. 2004
“Food, Hunger, and History,” Ithaca College Hunger Awareness Banquet, Nov. 2002
“Service Learning: Connecting Campus and Community,” Ithaca College Faculty Colloquium, Feb. 2002
“Summer Camp and American History,” Annual Phi Alpha Theta Lecture and oral history brown bag workshop, Villanova University, Villanova, PA., April 2001.
Institutional/Local Honors, Awards, & Grants
Dean’s Special Merit, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018
Distinguished Educator Award, The History Center in Tompkins County, 2015
Departmental Special Merit (History), 2015
Center for Faculty Excellence Research and Development Grant, 2010-11, 2015-16
ICC Collaborative Mini-Grant (with Nancy Menning), 2015
Fred L. Emerson Humanities Collaboration Award (with Nicholas Tryka), Spring 2015
Ithaca College Instructional Development Fund: Direct Course Enhancement Grant, 2013
Ithaca College Faculty Excellence Award, 2010
Ithaca College H & S Experiential Learning Grant, Summer 2008
Departmental Special Merit, 2008
Ithaca College H & S Educational Development Grant, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
Ithaca College Community Service Development Grant, 2006
Ithaca College Center for Faculty Research and Development Grant, 2005
National Science Foundation “Applying Science to Sustainability Grant”, Summer 2005