I came to the Geography Program of Northern Kentucky University in 1990 after completing my PhD and MS degrees at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and teaching fulltime for a year at the UW’s Whitewater campus. I have always enjoyed discovering new ways of thinking about myself and the world I inhabit. Often these have been transformations of conception and understanding, pattern shifts in how I perceive and understand the world. Realizing that there are profoundly different ways of understanding our world has always tickled my sense of irony and awe.

Curiosity and a desire for adventure led me into the Peace Corps after I completed my BA degree. I went to Iran, spent the first of my two year tour learning language, culture, and how to do my job as an agricultural extension agent. My second year was busy and fun as I used what I had learned during the first difficult year, so I stayed for an additional year and a quarter to cash-in on my earlier learning.

This time in Iran offered many opportunities to see the world from different perspectives. One of the lessons I learned was that to understand a culture you must live it. Aspects of the culture that I originally disliked, because I viewed them with my US cultural biases, I came to appreciate as I performed the social rituals that effective communication demanded. I grew to love the close connection to nature that peasant life entailed. I grew to rely on Persian friends for social support. I got good enough at language and culture to make jokes and to elicit surprise and praise.

Readjusting to US culture was as hard as learning Iranian culture had been. There are so many layers of manufactured materials and gadgets between American consumers and the natural systems on which they unconsciously rely. There is so much waste - the society seemed to be based on waste.

I worked with emotionally disturbed children in therapeutic camps and then with low income kids in outdoor education. I realized that I needed to know more environmental science, so I began taking chemistry, biology, and geology classes. Then I heard about Geography, which integrates physical, biological, and social influences on human environmental interactions, and I knew I had found my niche.