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The Sustainable Living program has five full-time faculty, two full-time teaching assistants, and excellent support staff. Additionally we have several adjunct faculty from within the university. An important feature of our department is visiting faculty — nationally renowned figures in the Sustainable Living movement who come to teach a one-block (4-week) course. We have also had many prominent guest speakers. Guest faculty and speakers have included Dr Elaine Ingham -a world renowned soil biologist, Professor John Ikerd – a national figure in the field of sustainable economics, Mike Nicklas – AIA fellow and national leader in green building developments, and Scott Pittman – one of the founding fathers of Permaculture in the USA. Typically we offer about 4 courses during each block, with both a core course and electives in every block, so there is always a good level of choice.
Chair, Department of Sustainable LivingEmail:dfisher@mum.edu
Office Phone 641.472.7000 ext.2139
David Fisher is primarily a botanist. He received a B.S. in Biology from North Carolina State University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Wisconsin. He then served as a research scientist at the USDA Forest Experiment Station in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, and was a Humboldt fellow at the University of Göttingen, Germany. Prior to joining the faculty of Maharishi International University (now Maharishi University of Management), he was a professor and researcher in leaf structure-function relationships for six years at the University of Hawaii. His research at MUM on breeding potatoes for resistance to the Colorado potato beetle has been supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Leopold Institute for Sustainable Agriculture. He is the founder and Director of the Sustainable Living program at MUM and has been the primary advocate for the design and construction of the new Sustainable Living Center. Otherwise, his pursuits are reading, playing basketball, vegetable gardening, tree climbing, and bicycling around the Fairfield Loop Trail.
Associate Chair, Department of Sustainable LivingEmail:jcollins@mum.edu
Office Phone 641.472.7000 ext.1109
John Collins’ career began in the Hong Kong government, writing policy in the fields of marine, agriculture, fisheries, and United Nations. He then founded/directed a development and construction company that built houses, apartments, and community and office buildings which included many eco features — such as high-spec insulation, passive solar, and rammed earth. John was also engaged in politics and national campaigning on GMOs and waste management issues and served as an elected local councilor in the U.K.
John joined MUM’s Sustainable Living faculty in 2008 and has developed a range of courses related to state, national, and international policy and governance to address sustainability issues. He has a joint honors degree from Bristol University, England, in Philosophy and Economics.
Assistant Professor of Sustainable LivingEmail:tcox@mum.edu
Office Phone 641.472.7000 ext.3306
Travis Cox’s research is about the intersection of social movements, education, metaphysics, environmental philosophy, and agriculture. Travis is excited to teach and explore these disparate, esoteric themes at MUM — where consciousness, the environment, and their relationship are taken seriously.
He earned a Master’s in Philosophy and Religion — with an emphasis in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness — from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He has a Bachelor’s in Philosophy from Central College in Pella, Iowa.
Assistant Professor of Sustainable LivingEmail:lonniegamble@yahoo.com
Office Phone 641.472.7000 ext.2291.
Lonnie Gamble is a founding faculty member in MUM’s Sustainable Living department. His expertise includes renewable energy, food and agriculture, sustainable economics and local alternatives to the global economy, permaculture design, and green building. He regularly presents and writes on these issues.
Lonnie has founded many for-profit and non-profit sustainability ventures, including Abundance Ecovillage, the Sustainable Living coalition, Big Green Summer, Abundant Planet Radio collective, and five companies in the area of renewal energy and telecommunications. He has been teaching, developing sustainability curriculum, and mentoring students since 1996. He has a degree in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University.
Lonnie and his wife live in a straw bale home, where they harvest rain for water supply, get their electricity from solar and wind power, and eat something fresh every day from their extensive gardens. They haven’t paid an electric bill in 15 years.
Assistant Professor of Sustainable LivingEmail:smaurer@mum.edu
Office Phone 641.472.7000 ext.3314.
Stacy Maurer’s interests include all aspects of sustainable living, permaculture, and organic farming. She has her own farm which she is developing into an edible food forest and also gardens for annual vegetables and grains. Stacy is an Iowa native who grew up on a corn and soybean farm in NW Iowa. She obtained her M.S. and Ph.D. in Natural Resources. She did research at Erciyes University in Kayseri, Turkey and then worked for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources in Iowa City before joining the faculty at MUM.
Assistant Professor of Biology and AgricultureEmail:smclaske@mum.edu
Office Phone 641.472.7000 ext.3307.
Steve McLaskey leads the University’s undergraduate program in sustainable agriculture. He manages the organic vegetable garden and permaculture fruit orchard that are used as outdoor laboratories. His efforts are largely responsible for bringing organic food to the campus dining halls and making the University’s food service a model for such large universities as Yale and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Instructor of Sustainable LivingEmail: dkrystofiak@mum.edu
Office Phone 641.472.7000 ext.2293.
Diana Krystofiak’s career in sustainability began when she organized the first solar powered Satellite Bioneers Conference in Fairfield. She also served as Chairman of the local Sierra Club and was a founding member of the Sustainable Living Coalition . Diana worked with K-12 teachers and students at Maharishi School to integrate sustainability into the school’s curriculum and taught upper school students a course in Sustainable Living. She inspired the school to walk its talk by installing a rainwater catchment system and solar powered drip-line system throughout their greenhouse — teaching students about energy and water conservation.
Diana joined MUM faculty as Visiting Faculty Coordinator in 2009, to attract top notch adjunct faculty from around the world to teach courses in the Sustainable Living department. She worked to develop the current SL tracks in Agriculture, Fundamentals of Sustainability, Energy, and Policy, and introduced the newest track in Living Systems in 2011. Currently Diana is teaching Career Strategies and working to develop internship and career opportunities in the Sustainable Living department.
Adjunct Professor of Sustainable LivingJesse is an Earth Scientist and photographer, who sees sustainability through the lens of interacting human and natural systems. He started his career with mining exploration companies, spent five years living and working in South Africa, conducted post-doctoral research at MIT, and has taught Earth science, oceanography, environmental geology, and writing courses with themes of sustainability and climate change at Wellesley College and Boston University. His favorite courses have field trips that engage students in doing science, appreciating natural design, and developing their observational and 4-D visualization skills. Recently, he served as an educational consultant for an eco-tourism and conservation company in southern Africa and toured Iceland and Nicaragua for geothermal plants and wind farms embedded in active volcanic landscapes.
Adjunct Professor of Sustainable LivingDr. Ingham is President and Director of Research at Soil Foodweb Inc., a small business that grew out of her Oregon State University research program. Her research focuses on beneficial and harmful organisms in the soil and foliage of plants, and how they can be managed to grow plants with the fewest inputs into the system while maintaining soil fertility.
Elaine’s Ph.D. is in Microbiology, with an emphasis on soil. In 1986, she joined the faculty at Oregon State University in both Forest Science and Botany & Plant Pathology. Over time, Elaine turned her attention toward grower-related issues, focusing on the expense and damage of intensive chemical usage on soil organisms.
Elaine’s current projects range from citrus groves in Florida, to cotton and avocado in Australia, turf and golf courses, roadside restoration in California, and just about every other plant system in between.
Adjunct Instructor of Sustainable Living
Trained as both a permaculture designer and fish/wildlife manager, Doug Crouch has extensive knowledge of landscape planning and creating aquaculture systems for all needs. He has worked in temperate, drylands, and tropical climates, extending from North and Central America to Asia, Europe, and Australia. This work includes managing land and water for tourism ventures, facilitating and co-creating educational programs, tropical aquaculture and wetlands restoration, permaculture design and implementation, and market gardening. Incorporating this knowledge and experience into educational programs has now become Doug’s main focus as he continues his design and development in various ecosystems.
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robert
Hello,
Thank you for taking the time to share this important feedback. Our original test with IE at the beginning of the school year didn’t show any problems.
What version of IE are you running and what time of problems are you having?
This is a blind spot for us because we usually us Chrome or Firefox for to edit the site. We will look into it.
All the Best,
Robbie