Fall 2017 Lecture Series

During his 44 year career at the University of California Dr. McBride taught courses in ecological analysis, forest ecology, urban forestry, and California Landscapes.  For the last 10 years of his teaching career, he concurrently taught urban ecology and hydrology at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain while teaching at Berkeley.  His current research focuses on the impact of climate change on street trees in California.  McBride’s earlier research was concerned with the effects of trees on air pollution in urban areas, transition of wildland forest to urban forests, the influence of biome characteristics on urban forests, and the reconstruction of urban forest destroyed during warfare.  McBride received a B.S. in Forestry from the University of Montana and M.S. (Forestry) and Ph.D. (Botany) degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.  He is a Fellow of the Society of American Foresters, recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award (University of California), Carl Alwin Schenck Award for Distinguished Teaching (Society of American Foresters), Seal of the College of Natural Resources (University of Tehran), Outstanding Educator Award (Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, Member of the Chinese Academy of Forestry, and California Licensed Professional Forester.  McBride authored 319 articles and reports based on his research and 3 books.

Lara Roman is a Research Ecologist with the US Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Philadelphia Field Station. She studies the temporal dynamics of urban forests, including tree mortality and growth, canopy cover change, historical development of urban forests, species composition change, and citizen science monitoring. Her studies take a participatory research approach, collaborating with practitioners for study design and implementation. She has been funded by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, the TREE Fund, the Garden Club of America, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, and the Schwabacher and Berkeley Fellowships. She received a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelors in Biology and Masters of Environmental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Roman is currently the chair of the Urban Tree Growth & Longevity (UTGL) Working Group, an affiliate of the International Society of Arboriculture, and she serves on the Citizen Science Core Team of the Forest Service. Through the UTGL, she is also leading the development of standard protocols for urban tree monitoring.

Ganlin Huang is an Associate Professor in the School of Natural Resources, Beijing Normal University. She teaches “Environment and health” and “Ecosystem services and human well-being” to undergraduates. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Vermont in 2008 and worked as a Postdoc researcher in Plant Science and as a Mapping Lab Coordinator at the Center for Regional Change, UC Davis (2008-2011). She studies urban ecosystem services and human well-being focusing on urban heat islands, urban parks, green spaces and air quality. She looks at how urban parks and green spaces serve residents, including their spatial distribution and potential impact factors. Her research emphasizes an environmental justice dimension, examining how people from different socioeconomic groups may benefit differently from their surrounding environments.

Steven Handel studies the potential to restore native plant communities, adding sustainable ecological services, biodiversity, and amenities to the landscape. He has explored pollination, seed dispersal, population growth, ecological genetics, and most recently, problems of urban and heavily degraded lands. Working with both biologists and landscape designers, he is improving our understanding of restoration protocols and applying this knowledge to public projects and to environmental initiatives.

He is currently Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolution at Rutgers University, and Visiting Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Deisgn. Previously, he was a biology professor and director of the Marsh Botanic Garden at Yale University. He is also Director of the Center for Urban Restoration Ecology, an initiative of Rutgers, dedicated to teaching graduate students and professionals, and conducting research on rebuilding and improving urban native habitats. In 2006, he also was awarded an appointment as Adjunct Professor of Ecology at the Univ. of California, Irvine. He was Visiting Professor of Ecology at Stockholm Univ., Sweden, in 2009.

Dr. Handel is an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow and a Certified Senior Ecologist of the Ecological Society of America, and is the Editor of the professional journal Ecological Restoration. For his scientific achievements, he has been named as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), of the Australian Institute of Biology, and of The Explorers Club. In 2000, he was awarded the Board of Directors Service Award by the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER). In 2007, he was elected an Honorary Member of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) for “national or international significant achievements… to the profession.” He then received the SER’s highest international research honor, the Theodore M. Sperry Award in 2011 “…for pioneering work in the restoration of urban areas.” He has led national workshops for the U.S. EPA to train environmental specialists in ecology. He was on the State of New Jersey Invasive Species Council, recommending new public policies to halt habitat degradation.

He has been a lead member of landscape design teams doing ecological restoration in urban areas, including the Fresh Kills landfill and Brooklyn Bridge Park in NYC, the Duke Farms Foundation 2,700 acre holdings and the Great Falls National Historical Park in NJ, the landscape for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Summer Games, the new 1,450 acre Orange County Great Park in California, and the forestlands of the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta. Recognition for this work includes 2008 and 2009 ASLA National Awards of Honor for Analysis & Planning, 2009 and 2015 ASLA National Honor Awards for Research, 2009 American Institute of Architects (AIA) National Honor Award in Regional & Urban Design, and the 2009 American Planning Association National Planning Excellence Award for Innovation in Regional Planning, and the 2015 ASLA National Honor Award for Communication. The U. S. National Science Foundation, EPA, National Park Service, and private foundations have supported his research. Handel has been an invited lecturer at over 200 universities and meetings throughout the world, teaching his concepts for ecologically improving urban land.

EDUCATION
B.A. Major in Biological Sciences, Columbia University.
M.S. and Ph.D. Field of Ecology and Evolution, Cornell University.

Shi-Chul LEE, Professor of Kyungpook National Univ. (KNU), S. Korea, now Fulbright Visiting Fellow at Yale FES, was Dean of Academic Affairs; Dean of Strategy & Finance; and Dean of Graduate School of Public Administration at KNU for the past five years. He also served as Editor-in-chief of Journal of Local Government Studies (2012-14) and taught undergraduate courses at the Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst for three semesters (2009-10). He had served both national and major local government for 15 years before entering academia in 2003; his last government job was Director-General of Transportation Bureau in Daejeon Metropolitan City, Korea’s fifth largest city. He acquired a Ph.D. at the Univ. of Washington in 2000 (Dissertation: “Measuring acceptance of regulatory growth management policy”). With research interests being local government, green urbanism, and health impact of urban policies, he has recently authored: Recent decentralization challenges in Korea (2007); Implications of green urbanism for Korea's urban management (2013); A Tale of Two Greens: European green urbanism and Korea’s Green Growth policies (2015); Health impact of spatial planning: An inquiry comparing Sweden and Korea (2016), etc.