Sustainable Development Faculty at Appalachian State University

Harvard G. Ayers (Professor, Anthropology; Ph.D., Catholic University of America)
His interests and areas of study include archaeology, physical anthropology, forensic anthropology, human ecology of the southern Appalachians, North American Indians, and the Southwestern US. Dr. Ayers will begin half-time retirement after this spring semester. He plans to continue teaching several courses including the Southwest Trip, as long as he can hike out of Canyon del Muerto. He will devote his "extra" time to his family including his two gorgeous grandchildren and his environmental work with Appalachian Voices.

Patricia D. Beaver (Director, Center for Appalachian Studies and Professor, Anthropology; Ph.D., Duke)
Her interests and areas of study include cultural anthropology, social organization, gender; Appalachia, and China. She teaches a summer study abroad course in Wales, focused on what happens to traditionally coal dominated communities in south Wales in the aftermath of the closing of the coal mines. For the past three years she has also taught an Anthropology course which participated in a collaborative teaching project funded by the Appalachian Regional Commission. Students from 13 colleges and universities in the region focused a course on a particular community and addressed questions of sustainability. Students in ANT 5120 met with other students from the region for organizing and exchange of information, then presented their findings in an ARC sponsored conference in Washington. For the third year, the course was focused on the North Fork of the New River, in Watauga and Ashe Counties, involving interviews and visits with local residents, Hispanic farm workers, small business owners, churches, and community groups. It is likely that this course will again be supported by the ARC in this collaborative project in the fall, with visions of a book manuscript emerging from three to four years of student projects.

Jefferson C. Boyer (Professor, Anthropology; Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
His interests and areas of study include social anthropology, peasant and regional studies, rural development; Honduras and Central America, and Appalachia. Recently, Boyer gave two papers in Washington; the first at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) meeting entitled "Is Agrarianism Possible Without Agrarian Reform? The Case From Honduras," and the second at the American Anthropology Association (AAA) meeting entitled "Toward Sustainability and Liberation: Forty Years of Struggle in Southern Honduras." After 11 years of directing and nurturing the Sustainable Development Program, Boyer is stepping down to finish writing a book on peasant movements and agrarian struggles in Honduras.

Jana Carp (Adjunct Assistant Professor, Geography and Planning; Ph.D., Public Policy Analysis, University of Illinois at Chicago)
Dr. Carp teaches Introduction to Planning, Planning for Sustainable Communities, Project Management, and Rural Community Development and particularly enjoys working asset-based community development (ABCD) methods into her classes; so far students have produced a Watauga County "food system asset map" and a map and report of the historic buildings and sites in downtown Boone. Her professional research and writing centers on the changes that sustainability requires of the field of planning (one being interdisciplinary practice), and on the relationship between planning practices and the "social space" of planning contexts.

Richard Carp (Professor and Chair, Interdisciplinary Studies; Ph.D., Graduate Theological Union)
Dr. Carp's academic background rests firmly within the Humanities and Social Sciences. He received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and his graduate degrees from the Pacific School of Religion and the Graduate Theological Union. His professional career began at the California College of Arts & Crafts and led him to the Art Institute of Southern California and the Kansas City Art Institute. In addition to teaching a wide variety of interdisciplinary classes, Dr. Carp has a consistent record of publications and presentations in an interdisciplinary area that draws on religion, visual art, anthropology, cognitive science and performance. He has also worked in administrative positions and university governance, and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Terry Carroll (Associate Professor, Biology; Ed.D., University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
Dr. Carroll is interested in science pedagogy and science content (environmental studies/sustainable development).  In the area of science pedagogy his research interests focus on the effective use of learning cycles in teaching science content, process skills, and correcting students' science misconceptions. His work also explores the feasibility of using uninsulated, south facing brick walls as passive solar heat sources. His second passive solar research interest is in the design of a functional, low-cost energy efficient, year round, food-producing greenhouse for use in most cool/cold climatic regions of the world.

Christoff den Biggelaar (Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies; Ph.D., Michigan State University).
Dr. den Biggelaar came to the US in the Fall of 1987 to start a Master's program in extension education at Michigan State University after having spent 6 years in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), the (then) People's Republic of  the Congo and the Central African Republic as an agricultural teacher and extension agronomist. He joined the Interdisciplinary Studies faculty at Appalachian State University in August 2000; he will be teaching courses in agroecology (lecture and lab) and sustainable development. His areas of expertise include endogenous knowledge systems, farmer experimental practices and knowledge generation processes in agroforestry systems, participatory (RRA/PRA) and survey research methods, and qualitative and quantitative data analysis.

Susan E. Keefe (Professor, Anthropology; Ph.D., University of California at Santa Barbara)
Her interests and areas of study include Applied Anthropology and Appalachian Studies. She presented a paper entitled "Measuring Modernity Among Mountaineers" at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in December, 2001. This paper analyzes the survey data from her joint research project with Dr. Elvin Hatch (UCSB) studying political, economic, and social change
in a rural county in western North Carolina. As President of the Association of North Carolina Anthropologists, Keefe organized one of their meetings in Boone on the topic "What Can You Do With Anthropology?" Students and alumni gave panel presentations regarding their internship and work experiences.

Loren Raymond (Professor, Geology; Ph.D., University of California at Davis)
Dr. Raymond first joined the faculty of Appalachian State University in 1972, and teaches Introduction to Sustainable Development,
Earth Materials, Petrology, Structural Geology, Summer Field Geology, and Advanced Environmental and Engineering Geology. His research has carried him to California, Oregon, Italy, Guatamala, and Peru, but he also studies the geology of the Southern Appalachian Mountain System. Dr. Raymond's specialty is petrotectonics, the use of rocks to decipher the history of mountain belts. He is a licensed geologist in North Carolina and has written and graded N.C. State Licensing examinations. Dr. Raymond edited a Geological Society of America volume on melanges and authored the texts Petrology: The Study of Igneous, Sedimentary and Metamorphic Rocks and Petrography Laboratory Manual. Dr. Raymond was a Charter member of the Appalachian College of Arts and Sciences Academy of Outstanding Teachers and was the 1989 Teacher of the Year. Dr. Raymond was a co-founder of the Sustainable Development Program and also serves on the Board of Directors and is President of the Ecumenical Project for International Co-operation, an organization that supports sustainable development projects, including the founding of Appalachian's SD Program.

Gregory Reck (Professor and Chair, Anthropology; Ph.D., Catholic University of America)
Dr. Reck teaches ethnological theory, social change, magic and religion, narrative ethnography focusing on Mexico, Mesoamerica, Latin America, and Appalachia. His research and field school in India have been put on hold temporarily due to the aftermath of September 11. Last October he also initiated the formation of a community-based organization, High Country Citizens for Peace and Justice. The organization is working to elevate community awareness about alternative foreign policy strategies to the current U.S. "war on terrorism" which will not only provide more viable short-term solutions but also address long-term issues of peace and justice in the world.

Kathy Schroeder (Associate Professor, Geography; Ph.D., University of Minnesota)
Dr. Schroeder's research interests include global economic restructuring and women's work in Latin American cities. Dr. Schroeder was recently awarded a research grant designed to identify locations of extreme rural poverty and help development planners to better target initiatives aimed at alleviating the increasing feminization of poverty in rural settings.

Charles L. Smith (Director of Sustainable Development, Interdisciplinary Studies; ABD, Virginia Tech, Science and Technology Studies).
Chuck Smith received both his Masters and Bachelor of Science degrees from Appalachian State University. His MA is in Industrial Technology with concentrations in Appropriate Technology and History, and his BS is in History. His interests are varied and interdisciplinary including environmental history, philosophy of history and nature, the sociology of modern environmentalism, and the interrelationships of science, technology and society. He has taught courses in Society and Technology, Philosophy of Science, Western and American Intellectual and Social History, and various special topics.

Timothy H. Silver (Professor, History; Ph.D., College of William and Mary)
Dr. Silver's current research interests include the environmental history of North America with an emphasis on the South and Southern Appalachia, the history of America's National and State Parks, and the ethnohistory of Early America. His recent publications include: Mount Mitchell and the Black Mountains: An Environmental History of the Highest Peaks in Eastern America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); A New Face on the Countryside: Indians, Colonists and Slaves in South Atlantic Forests, 1500-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 1990); "A Useful Arcadia: European Colonists as a Biotic Factor in Chesapeake Forests," in Philip D. Curtin, Grace Brush, and George Fischer, eds., The Chesapeake: The History of a Watershed (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); "Big Tom Wilson," Wildlife in North Carolina, November, 1997; "New Faces in an Old World," in Peter Nabakov, ed., Through Indian Eyes: The Untold Story of Native American People (New York: Reader's Digest General Books, 1996).

Gary Walker (Professor and Graduate Program Director, Biology; Ph.D., University of Tennessee at Knoxville)
Dr Walker's research interests are in two areas of plant ecology. Most of his laboratory-based research has been in the area of plant population genetics. The population genetics of rare, restricted and disjunct plant species in the southern Appalachians has been a field of investigation that has interested Dr. Walker for many years.His field-based research has been in the area of plant ecology including a series of four grants from the National Park Service for the Blue Ridge Parkway. Most of these grants have had management implications including vegetational surveys of backcountry areas susceptible to Gypsy Moth invasion, the construction of a high elevations wetlands atlas using GIS techniques, a genetic survey of endemic brook trout, and comparisons of various treatments for achieving arrested succession in viewshed clearcuts. Most recently, Dr. Walker's original studies with cliff-face plant populations have led to graduate projects concerning the cliff-face ecology of plant communities. Dr. Walker's current work involves a collaboration with a cliff-face ecology research group at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. They recently published papers in Nature and Journal of Biogeography on the ancient trees, including northern white cedars, on cliff-faces.

Cynthia A. Wood (Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies; Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin)
Dr. Wood is an economist whose area of research is Latin America, development, and women's studies. Her recent writings focus on the World Bank and its lack of attention to research on the effects of economic policy on women in the third-world -- research which challenges standard development models implicit in the Bank's approach to policy.