Global Affairs

César E. Abadía-Barrero, DMSc. - Cesar.Abadia@uconn.edu
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Human Rights, UConn

César E. Abadía-Barrero is a Medical Anthropologist whose research integrates different critical perspectives in the study of how for-profit interests transform access, continuity, and quality of health care. He has conducted activist-oriented research in Brazil and Colombia, focusing on health care policies and programs, human rights judicialization and advocacy, and social movements in health. He is the author of I Have AIDS but I am Happy: Children’s Subjectivities, AIDS, and Social Responses in Brazil (2011, English and Portuguese editions) and Health in Ruins: The Capitalist Destruction of Medical Care (2022, English and Spanish editions). His current collaborative research follows decolonial proposals in health and wellbeing after Colombia’s 2016 peace accord. 

Iyad Abumoghli, Ph.D. - Iyad.Abumogli@un.org
Founder and Director, Faith for Earth, UN Environment Programme

Iyad Abumoghli has more than 38 years of experience with international organizations, the private sector, and scientific institutions. Abumoghli’s expertise is in strategic planning, sustainable development, interfaith collaboration, knowledge and innovation. Currently, Abumoghli is the Lead Principal Advisor on Engaging with Faith-Based Organizations at UNEP. Previously Abumoghli held several leading positions including as the Regional Director and Representative of UNEP in West Asia 2012-2017, Director of Knowledge and Innovation at UNDP’s Regional Office in Cairo 2009-2012, Senior Environment Advisor at UNDP’s Sub-Regional Resource Facility in Beirut 2006-2009, Global Practice Manager for the Energy and Environment Group in New York 2003-2006, Assistant Resident Representative of UNDP in Jordan 1997-2003.

Abumoghli adopts a holistic multi-sectoral approach to development ensuring cross-thematic integration with internal and external partners.

Abumoghli holds a Ph.D. in Bio-Chemical Engineering from the University of Bath, UK, an outstanding graduate of the Virtual Development Academy – Johns University and a BA in Chemical Engineering from University of Jordan.

Zahra Ali – Zahra.Ali@uconn.edu
Ph.D. Student, Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, UConn

Zahra Ali joined the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture Ph.D. program in Fall 2022. Her research focus is on the impacts of outdoor learning environments and nature/place-based curricula on learning outcomes, health, wellness, and long-term relationships with the environment—with a focus on equitable access to nature in urban communities both locally and globally.  Ali is a research assistant in Dr. Sohyun Park's Sustainable Urban Planning & Ecology Research Lab, as well as for Vice President for Global Affairs Daniel Weiner's Mindfulness for Earth initiative. She also continues to serve on the Abrahamic Story of the Tree working group for the Office of Global Affairs.

Prior to starting her doctoral studies, Ali was the Director of the Global Partnerships & Outreach, in UConn’s Office of Global Affairs. She worked in collaboration with faculty, university leadership and partners around the world to advance UConn’s global initiatives and foster engagement with global networks.

She holds an M.S. in Global Affairs, with specialization in energy and environmental policy from New York University, and a B.S. in International Business from the University of Rhode Island.

Kumanga Andrahennadi, Ph.D. – kumiwater@gmail.com
Co-Founder of Mindfulness for Earth
Founder of CALM: Centre for the Advanced Learning of Mindfulness

Kumanga Andrahennadi is a co-organizer of the ‘Mindfulness for Earth’ workshop, and has been critical in efforts to pull this workshop together. She is a mindfulness researcher, educator and a consultant with over 20 years of experience in delivering mindfulness-based programmes in the West for children, young people and adults. As the Founder of CALM: Centre for Advanced Learning of Mindfulness, Andrahennadi pioneers delivering the eco-contemplative framework under the ‘Advanced Mindfulness-Based Practices (AMBP)’ Programmes, within the public, private and government sectors including to Mental Health, Education, Police Organizations and Private Corporations in the U.K. and internationally.  The AMBP Programmes consists of the onsite and online ‘Mindfulness for Earth’ and ‘Mindfulness–Based Cognitive Therapy’ 4/8-week courses, the ‘AMBP Teacher Training Programme’ as well as ‘Mindfulness in Nature’ retreats.

Through CALM, Andrahennadi co-organized the first-ever dialogue between His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and a Western Police Force (the Metropolitan Police, U.K.), which took place as a live online dialogue on July 8, 2020 (watch the full dialogue here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EDL8ITjJ-w). Andrahennadi is also the Co-Founder of ‘Mindfulness for Earth’, an international initiative established in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Faith for Earth. 

Erik Assadourian – gaianspring@gmail.com
Director, Gaian Way

Erik Assadourian, a sustainability researcher, writer, and consultant, is the founder and director of the Gaian Way, a new ecophilosophy and religious community (gaianism.org). For 17 years Assadourian served as senior fellow and researcher with the Worldwatch Institute. There he directed two editions of Vital Signs, and five editions of State of the World, including the 2017 edition (EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet); the 2013 edition (Is Sustainability Still Possible?); and the 2010 edition (Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability). He also designed Catan: Oil Springs, an eco-educational scenario for the popular board game The Settlers of Catan. Recognizing that a sustainable future requires radical cultural change, Erik founded a new philosophy and religious community of practice in 2019.  

Audrey Girard – Audrey.Girard.7@umontreal.ca
Ph.D. Candidate, Applied Humanities, University of Montreal
MsC Management, HEC Montréal

Audrey Girard is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Montreal studying contemplative practices in organisational contexts. She is interested in understanding how practices such as meditation and yoga can benefit people and the environment. As well as a researcher, Audrey is a practitioner and educator of contemplative practices. She is an assistant teacher of the Advanced Mindfulness-Based Practices (AMBP) course for CALM (Centre for the Advanced Learning of Mindfulness) and a Yoga Alliance certified yoga teacher. She is passionate about human and planetary health, knowing the mind, and cultivating wisdom.  

Nashaw Jafari – NJafari@bidmic.harvard.edu
Project Administrator, Sadhguru Center for a Conscious Planet, Department of Anesthesia,
Critical Care & Pain Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School

Nashaw Jafari graduated from Soka University of America with a BA in Liberal Arts and a concentration in Social and Behavioral Sciences. She continued to Alliant International University where she received her MA in Clinical Psychology. She also completed a Master of Acupuncture (M.Ac.) with a Chinese Herbal Medicine specialization at Emperor’s College. Jafari’s research interest is in exploring the impact of mind-body interventions on emotional and mental well-being.

Samuel King – S.King@yale.edu
Research Associate, Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology

Sam King is an environmental educator, writer, and activist. He serves as Project Manager for the Emmy Award-winning Journey of the Universe film and multimedia project, hosting the Journey of the Universe: 10 Years Later podcast and curating the monthly newsletter. He is also lead mentor for the Yale/Coursera Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in Religions and Ecology. 

King received a Master of Arts in Religion and Ecology and a certificate in Educational Leadership and Ministry from Yale Divinity School. He also served as a Teaching Fellow at the Yale School of the Environment. A former Philosophy and Religion teacher at The Hotchkiss School, Sam was a Fulbright Scholar in Sri Lanka, where he taught at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura and researched agrarian Buddhism. King is passionate about the power of story in building a just and sustainable future.

Maria D. LaRusso, Ph.D. – Maria.LaRusso@uconn.edu
Assistant Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, UConn

Maria LaRusso is a developmental psychologist and interdisciplinary scholar with research that integrates perspectives from human development, psychology, health, education, and anthropology. After completing a doctorate in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard University, she continued her training at the University of Pennsylvania and New York University with a Postdoctoral Education Research Training (PERT) Fellowship.  Her research has focused on child and adolescent emotional and social development, well-being and mental health, and the impact of prevention and intervention programs.  In her current studies she investigates factors contributing to declines in well-being over the past decade, including research with families, schools, and pediatric physicians. She is also working on new interventions that aim to reduce stress and improve well-being and mental health among adolescents, with an emphasis on children’s rights to healthy development.  In particular, she has two new studies to evaluate a pilot of a program for adolescents that bridges mindfulness-based stress reduction practices with self-care activities and social activism to advocate for societal and environmental changes to support both individual and collective well-being. The program is being piloted in Connecticut and Bogota, Colombia, where her research has been supported by two Fulbright awards.

Eleanor Ouimet, Ph.D. – Eleanor.Ouimet@uconn.edu
Assistant Professor, Department Anthropology, UConn

Eleanor Ouimet is an environmental anthropologist and assistant professor of environment and human interactions in the Department of Anthropology at UConn. Her research and teaching are focused on human-environment interactions, including environmental justice, disaster preparedness, community response to natural hazards, green energy, and the effects of climate change. Ouimet’s recent journal publications have addressed pedagogical approaches to teaching climate change, the health effects of climate change, anthropological approaches to the study of environmental repair, the influence of anthropocentrism in the social sciences, and facilitating cooperative efforts between social scientists, natural scientists, engineers, and local communities. She is the PI of the DISASTER (Designing Interdisciplinary Science And Strategies To Enhance Resilience) Research team at UConn. In addition to teaching and researching issues pertaining to the environment, she is also involved in research initiatives focused on increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University level, and lead the Microaggression Research Team at UConn. Her publications include, Culture and Conservation: Beyond Anthropocentrism, as well as four volumes, including: The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Anthropology, Sustainability: Key Issues; Environmental Anthropology: Future Directions; and Environmental Anthropology Today. Here at UConn, Ouimet teaches ‘Climate Change and Global Society’, ‘Peoples and Cultures of the World,’ and ‘Culture and Conservation’ in the Anthropology Department.

Crystal Park, Ph.D.* – crystal.park@uconn.edu
Professor, Psychological Sciences, UConn

Dr. Park’s research focuses on multiple aspects of coping with stressful events, including the roles of religious beliefs and religious coping, the phenomenon of stress-related growth, and the making of meaning in the context of traumatic events and life-threatening illnesses, particularly with cancer survivors, congestive heart failure patients, and military veterans. In recent years, Dr. Park has also been investigating mind-body relationships, particularly the science of yoga.

Daniel Weiner, Ph.D.* – Daniel.Weiner@uconn.edu
Vice President for Global Affairs and
Professor, Department of Geography, UConn

Daniel Weiner, Ph.D., joined the University of Connecticut (UConn) in 2012 as Vice Provost for Global Affairs and Professor of Geography. In February 2016, he was promoted to Vice President. Prior to joining UConn, Weiner spent four years as Executive Director of the Center for International Studies at Ohio University and eleven years as Director of the Office of International Programs at West Virginia University. He earned a B.A. in 1979, an M.A. in 1981 and a Ph.D. in 1986, all in Geography at Clark University.

In his role as Vice President, Weiner serves as the University’s Senior International Officer (SIO) and leads the UConn Office of Global Affairs. With more than two decades leading as a public research university SIO, he is one of the longest serving SIO’s in the country. Weiner serves as Chair of the Global Business Council of the Metro-Hartford Alliance, as well as on the Board of Directors of the World Affairs Council of Connecticut, for which he is a former President.

Weiner is a development geographer with area studies expertise in Eastern/Southern Africa, Appalachia, and the Middle East/North Africa. He is a specialist in the theory and practice of participatory geographic information systems (GIS). His research areas include agricultural geography, climate and society, energy, GIS and society, land reform and political ecology. He has received 15 externally funded grants totaling over $2.5 million, published three books, 30 journal articles and 29 book chapters. Weiner lived in Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe for almost three years during the 1980s.

Dimitris Xygalatas, Ph.D. – Xygalatas@uconn.edu
Associate Professor, Department Anthropology, UConn

Dimitris Xygalatas interests include ritual, sports, cooperation, the interaction between cognition and culture, and the impact of cultural practices on psychophysiological wellbeing. His research combines laboratory and field methods to study human interaction in real-life settings. He has conducted several years of fieldwork in Southern Europe and Mauritius. Before coming to UConn, he held positions at the universities of Princeton, Aarhus, and Masaryk, where he served as Director of the Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion (LEVYNA). At UConn, he directs the Experimental Anthropology Lab, which develops methods and technologies for quantifying behavior in real-life settings. He is affiliated with the Cognitive Science Program, the Connecticut Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences, the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy.

*Co-Chair

Robert Fahey - robert.fahey@uconn.edu
Associate Professor, Natural Resources and the Environment, UConn

Phoebe Godfrey, Ph.D. – Phoebe.Godfrey@uconn.edu
Professor in Residence of Sociology, UConn

“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.” - Gandhi

Phoebe Godfrey has come to recognize the truth of Gandhi’s wisdom and so her interests are focused on how to put her personal commitments to equality, justice and ecological/social sustainability into practice through her research, teaching, activism and art, all of which she sees as inseparable. To this end she teaches courses on Society and Climate Change, Sustainable Societies, Sociology of Food, as well as Social Theory and is currently developing a new course Human Societies and the Living Earth.  In all these courses she focuses on student engagement and empowerment through creative critical thinking, as well as embodied health and healing.  She sees her teaching as activism and seeks to invite students to collectively find ways to put social justice ideas into practice. In addition, she seeks to help students develop their own academic and professional skills in multiple ways including publishing with them, working with honors students, supporting student research, activism, grants and other areas of interest.

This commitment to highlighting practice and not just ‘preaching’ is showcased in her first book Understanding just sustainabilities from within: A case study of a shared-use commercial kitchen in Connecticut, published summer 2021 by Routledge. She is also the co-editor of another book focused on ‘just sustianablities’ Global [Im]-Possibilities: Exploring the Paradoxes of Just Sustainabilities, also being published summer of 2021 published by Zed Books / Bloomsbury Press. Her other two co-edited volumes Systemic crises of global climate change: Intersections of race, class and gender (2016) and Emergent possibilities for global sustainability: Intersections of race, class and gender (2016) are also both published by Routledge and are the ones she uses in her classes Society and Climate Change and Sustainable Societies. She uses her most recent book in her Sociology of Food course.

Cynthia Jones, Ph.D.* – Cynthia.S.Jones@uconn.edu
Professor Emerita and Research Scientist,
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UConn

Cynthia Jones is Professor Emerita and Research Scientist in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut.  She first became captivated by plants as an undergraduate in the University of California system and has had the great fortune to spend her career researching, teaching, and promoting her passion for plant form and function.  She has served as the President of the Botanical Society of America and is currently the Director of the UConn Plant Biodiversity Conservatory and Research Core (otherwise known as the EEB Greenhouses).  In 2019, she received a University Award and an AAUP Award for Teaching Innovation for her development of a studio-type model for traditional lecture-lab courses that resulted in deeper, more inquiry-driven engagement of students with the material.  In both teaching and research, she has taken to heart the words of her Ph.D. advisor at UC Berkely, “Ask the organism.”

Growing up in a small mining town in the California desert allowed hours upon hours of time outside, as did family vacations that always involved camping.  She has always known intuitively what scientists are now demonstrating in a myriad of ways—she is happier when in contact with nature.  In the fall of 2019, she discovered the national campus program called NatureRx and initiated a version at UConn as a way to encourage a deeper connection with nature among UConn students and facilitate research in this area among scholars.

Patrick McKee – Patrick.McKee@uconn.edu
Senior Sustainability Program Manager, Office of Sustainability, UConn

Patrick McKee was hired by the OS in 2018 to serve as UConn’s Sustainability Program Manager.  Reporting to the Director, Patrick works to develop, plan, and administer programs, initiatives and events related to sustainability at UConn. He also supervises the OS’s high-achieving student intern staff.

Patrick’s prior experience in the sustainability field spans both the private and public sectors including time at a Fortune 250 company, a multinational manufacturer, and a large public university. Most recently, his three year stint as the first Sustainability Manager at Eastern Kentucky University resulted in the establishment of a dock-less bike share program, improvements to both recycling and energy management, the integration of sustainability thinking into university decision making, as well as the University’s first AASHE STARS rating.  During this time he also advised up to six student employees per semester, and instructed ENV200: The Global Sustainable Future as an adjunct faculty member.

Prior to working at Eastern Kentucky University, Patrick served as a Sustainability Analyst with Legrand, North America at its West Hartford headquarters. While at Legrand, he helped spearhead operations and social sustainability initiatives including a highly successful energy savings competition known as the “Legrand Energy Marathon” and the ”Better Communities” corporate volunteer program.

He received a bachelor of science degree in biology from Mount Aloysius College in Cresson, PA, in 2011 and received his master of science degree in environmental science and management from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA in 2013.

Emily Pagano – emily.pagano@uconn.edu
Health Promotion Manager, Student Health and Wellness, UConn

Sohyun Park, Ph.D. – Sohyun.Park@uconn.edu
Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, UConn

Sohyun Park is assistant professor of landscape architecture in the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture at University of Connecticut. She serves as Chair of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) Resilience and Climate Action Track (2020-2022) after four-years of service as co-chair for the Sustainability Track (2016-2020). She is also a Chair of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Ecology and Restoration Professional Practice Network (2019-2022). She is an affiliate faculty member of the Sustainable Global Cities Initiative at UConn Hartford campus, and co-chairs a national multistate research group called NE 1962.  Park is a certified SITES AP (#0000001945) and is devoted to the promotion of ecosystem services in cities and landscapes through her scholarship, education, and professional engagement.

Park’s research interest includes the pattern, function, and services of urban green spaces and their relevance to environmental sustainability and community resilience. Target sites of interest include various spatial scales ranging from a larger urban region and metropolitan area to a neighborhood and urban block. With her research topics on urbanism, landscape, and ecology, she seeks to understand a unifying theme of “landscape” as a holistic socioecological system. Her work has been supported by the U. S. Department of the Interior National Park Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, United Nations Development Programme, Korea Ministry of Environment, and other national, regional, and local organizations. She has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, book reviews, and translated books. She has given 50 presentations at national and international conferences, including keynote speech at the 2022 International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) World Congress in Korea. Her expertise has been sought out for 37 invited lectures by various individuals and organizations across the U.S. and beyond. Park is the recipient of the 2021 CELA’s Faculty Award on Service Learning and the UConn Provost’s Emerging Faculty Award for Excellence in Community Engaged Scholarship.

Sean Vasington, PLA, ASLA – Sean.Vasington@uconn.edu
Director and University Landscape Architect,
University Planning, Design, & Construction, UConn

Sean Vasington is the University Landscape Architect and Director of Site Planning in the Office of University Planning, Design and Construction at UConn. Sean is a steward of the environment and is primarily responsible for the immediate and long-range planning, design, and construction of exterior initiatives and improvements related to the University’s capital program.    

Sean is a proud alum of UConn and grew up in southeastern Connecticut. He completed his landscape architectural studies at UConn in 1999 and received his Bachelor of Science degree in 2000. He holds professional landscape architectural registration in Connecticut and is certified by the Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards (CLARB). Prior to returning to UConn in 2014, Sean was a Principal with CRJA-IBI Group - a renowned landscape architectural and site planning practice founded by Carol R. Johnson, a pioneer in the profession. 

*Chair

Rana Al Qaimari – Rana@ecopeaceme.org
Program Manager, EcoPeace Middle East

Rana Al Qaimari is the Program Manager at EcoPeace Middle East, Palestine Office. Originally from Ramallah, Palestine, Qaimari holds an MA from Birzeit University in Water Science and Technology. Qaimari has fifteen years of professional experience in education directly related to water and environmental education. Additionally, she has three years of experience working as a Program Officer for the EU Erasmus+ Office in Palestine. Qaimari has been an Environmental Coordinator for youth environmental awareness programmes for the Palestinian Academy for Science & Technology, the Royal Society for Protection of Nature, Latin Patriarchate Schools and the Hellen Medien Projekte/ Peter Maffy foundation. Qaimari worked as deputy principal for Al- Ahliyyah College School, Catholic High school in Ramallah from 1998-2014.

Kumanga Andrahennadi, Ph.D. – kumiwater@gmail.com
Co-Founder of Mindfulness for Earth
Founder of CALM: Centre for the Advanced Learning of Mindfulness

Kumanga Andrahennadi is a co-organizer of the ‘Mindfulness for Earth’ workshop, and has been critical in efforts to pull this workshop together. She is a mindfulness researcher, educator and a consultant with over 20 years of experience in delivering mindfulness-based programmes in the West for children, young people and adults. As the Founder of CALM: Centre for Advanced Learning of Mindfulness, Andrahennadi pioneers delivering the eco-contemplative framework under the ‘Advanced Mindfulness-Based Practices (AMBP)’ Programmes, within the public, private and government sectors including to Mental Health, Education, Police Organizations and Private Corporations in the U.K. and internationally.  The AMBP Programmes consists of the onsite and online ‘Mindfulness for Earth’ and ‘Mindfulness–Based Cognitive Therapy’ 4/8-week courses, the ‘AMBP Teacher Training Programme’ as well as ‘Mindfulness in Nature’ retreats.

Through CALM, Andrahennadi co-organized the first-ever dialogue between His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and a Western Police Force (the Metropolitan Police, U.K.), which took place as a live online dialogue on July 8, 2020 (watch the full dialogue here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EDL8ITjJ-w). Andrahennadi is also the Co-Founder of ‘Mindfulness for Earth’, an international initiative established in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Faith for Earth.

Carol Atkinson-Palombo Ph.D. – Carol.Atkinson-Palombo@uconn.edu
Professor, Department of Geography, UConn

Carol Atkinson-Palombo is a Professor in the University of Connecticut’s Department of Geography, and served as the Director of UConn’s Environmental Studies Program from 2017-2022.

Having trained for five years as a National Science Foundation IGERT scholar in Urban Ecology, she has been trained to collaborate with interdisciplinary teams to pursue use-inspired policy-relevant research. She uses geographical techniques such as GIS-based spatial analysis, statistical modeling, and qualitative methods to assess the impact of policies intended to promote sustainable cities. Much of her work to date has focused on transportation sustainability, which shapes a wide array of societal concerns such as air pollution, land use, global climate change, and social and environmental equity.

An emerging area of interest is the ongoing transition to a low carbon economy in the United States, and the debates about what role technology will play in this transition. She is also interested in understanding what factors shape the social acceptance of technology, particularly renewable energy technologies.

She engages in a wide range of service activities for the University, as well as national and international bodies, and has a deep and abiding commitment to equity and diversity.

Jeanne Ciravolo – Jeanne.Ciravolo@uconn.edu
Director, Alexey von Schlippe Gallery of Art, Avery Point Campus
Assistant Professor in Residence, Department of Art & Art History, UConn

Jeanne Ciravolo is a visual artist whose work amplifies female narratives in painting and experimental drawing practices on found domestic textiles. She earned an MFA from the University of Connecticut, a BFA from the University of Miami, and currently teaches studio art and is the Director of the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery at the University of Connecticut Avery Point campus.

Ciravolo has exhibited her work nationally in museums and galleries including the Yellowstone Museum, Coral Springs Museum, and the New Britain Museum of American Art. Publications of her work include Manifest Gallery’s International Painting Annual 10 and International Drawing Annual 15. She has been awarded the Walter Feldman Fellowship from the Boston Arts and Business Council and artist residencies at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Science, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. 

Ciravolo is also a commissioned portrait painter whose works are in the public collections of the Connecticut Appellate Court, the New Haven District Superior Court and the Hartford Juvenile Court.

Phoebe Godfrey, Ph.D.* – Phoebe.Godfrey@uconn.edu
Professor in Residence of Sociology, UConn

“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.” - Gandhi

Phoebe Godfrey has come to recognize the truth of Gandhi’s wisdom and so her interests are focused on how to put her personal commitments to equality, justice and ecological/social sustainability into practice through her research, teaching, activism and art, all of which she sees as inseparable. To this end she teaches courses on Society and Climate Change, Sustainable Societies, Sociology of Food, as well as Social Theory and is currently developing a new course Human Societies and the Living Earth.  In all these courses she focuses on student engagement and empowerment through creative critical thinking, as well as embodied health and healing.  She sees her teaching as activism and seeks to invite students to collectively find ways to put social justice ideas into practice. In addition, she seeks to help students develop their own academic and professional skills in multiple ways including publishing with them, working with honors students, supporting student research, activism, grants and other areas of interest.

This commitment to highlighting practice and not just ‘preaching’ is showcased in her first book Understanding just sustainabilities from within: A case study of a shared-use commercial kitchen in Connecticut, published summer 2021 by Routledge. She is also the co-editor of another book focused on ‘just sustianablities’ Global [Im]-Possibilities: Exploring the Paradoxes of Just Sustainabilities, also being published summer of 2021 published by Zed Books / Bloomsbury Press. Her other two co-edited volumes Systemic crises of global climate change: Intersections of race, class and gender (2016) and Emergent possibilities for global sustainability: Intersections of race, class and gender (2016) are also both published by Routledge and are the ones she uses in her classes Society and Climate Change and Sustainable Societies. She uses her most recent book in her Sociology of Food course.

Tina Huey – tina.huey@uconn.edu 
Associate Director of Faculty Development, Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), UConn
Adjunct Faculty, Department of English
In workshops and one-on-one consultations with faculty, graduate students, and staff, Tina facilitates reflective practice to support continuous development of teaching methods and course design. She is particularly interested in designing activities to enhance student engagement, meta-cognition, and classroom community. Tina has taught at UConn for more than a decade. She has extensive experience in community theatre in Eastern Connecticut, as an actor and director. She enjoys growing food and is learning about permaculture and sustainable foraging.

Karen McComb* – Karen.McComb@uconn.edu
Director of Health Promotion and Community Impact, UConn Student Health and Wellness

Karen McComb joined UConn in August 2019 as the Director of Health Promotion and Community Impact in the Student Health and Wellness department. In her role, she leads a team of health promotion professionals focused on mobilizing the UConn community to cultivate conditions that foster student wellbeing, empower students, and dismantle systems of oppression which impact health. Current initiatives include activating and facilitating UConn’s Wellness Coalition, a group of students, staff, and faculty from over 20 UConn departments, schools, and colleges focused on collaborative strategies to create healthy academic spaces and support student behavioral health; and the Innovate Wellness Design Lab, a space where students work through the design-thinking process to innovate solutions to address health and wellness concerns they see on campus.  Prior to UConn, McComb served for fifteen years at the University of California Riverside in various student development roles, most recently as the Senior Director of Student Wellness.  McComb received her MS in Counseling from San Francisco State University and is currently pursuing her Ed.D. in Higher Education Management at the University of Pennsylvania.

David Ouimette – david.ouimette@uconn.edu
Executive Director, First Year Programs, Learning Communities, Academic Achievement Center, Innovation Zone
Institute for Student Success, UConn

Anji Seth, Ph.D. Anji.Seth@uconn.edu
Professor & Interim Head, Department of Geography, UConn

Anji Seth earned a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Michigan with an Advanced Study Fellowship at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Her research centers on understanding regional processes within the context of global climate: from the role of vegetation, to precipitation extremes during El Nino events, to understanding how monsoon systems change in warmer climates. Much of this research employs numerical climate models to examine past, present and future climates. Seth has recently led an assessment of climate change for the state of Connecticut, and we’re currently examining extreme heat events in past and future climates. She is the Chair of the UConn Atmospheric Sciences Group, and co-founder of UConn@COP.

Antonio Willis-Berry – antonio.willis-berry@uconn.edu
Director of Educational & Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiatives,
Department of Residential Life, UConn

Juan Pablo Yepes – Juan_Pablo.Yepes@uconn.edu
Undergraduate Student, Department of Sociology, UConn

JP Yepes Tobon is a Sociology Undergraduate from UConn and a student of Professor Phoebe Godfrey. He is involved in the Arctic Refuge Defense Campaign, and is studying to pursue cultural/mental health activism and intersectional environmentalism.

*Co-Chair