Teaching is central to the mission of the GeoSyntheSES Lab. A wide range of undergraduate-level teaching is the principal emphasis, with teaching of graduate courses and seminars as an important additional dimension. Karl and Lab members teach courses on the environment-society and interdisciplinary geographic analysis of environmental resource use, justice issues, sustainability and conservation, and global-change drivers and transformations of climate change, urbanization, and food-system transformations. Perspectives in this teaching integrate political ecology, social-ecology systems, and allied conceptual, theoretical, and methodological approaches.

During the Fall semester of 2021, Karl is teaching the College’s First Year Seminar on the topic of Food, Environment, and Society that is a course taken by newly entering students across various departments. Enrolling 17 students, current innovations in this teaching include field trips and small-group student projects. In addition, Karl is teaching the department’s graduate course on Geographical Inquiry that covers an introduction to theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues, as well as case studies of research across the fields of human geography, physical geography, spatial data science GIScience/cartography, and environment-and-society geography. Karl teaches this course as a seminar that meets twice weekly. Karl’s teaching during the current semester also involves independent studies, thesis research, directed research, and thesis supervision, as well as involvement in thesis committees for graduate students at the master’s and Ph.D levels and, also, for the thesis projects of undergraduate students.

In Spring 2022, Zach, who is undertaking Ph.D research on solar energy development and food justice in the eastern United States, will be teaching the undergraduate course on Human Use of the Environment (Geog 430), which is a capstone course in the department. Zach’s emphasis in the course will include issues of food and agriculture, energy transitions, and justice. Karl will teach the recently developed introductory undergraduate course on the Future of Food (Geog 3). It is designed as the gateway course in the environment-and-society curriculum and as an important opportunity to recruit students into Geography since the field is often a “discovery major.” Lilly Ziegler will be the Teaching Assistant for this course. Lilly, a lab affiliate, will be undertaking research with Karen indigenous groups in northern Thailand on swidden systems in struggles for land and food rights. Gabriel will be the Teaching Assistant for the department’s course on Maps and the Geospatial Revolution (Geog 6N).