Ph.D., Geography, September 2012. University of California, Davis.

M.S., Community Development, September 2007. University of California, Davis.

B.A., Liberal Studies and Political Science (cum laude and with distinction), May 2003. Sonoma State University.

Prior to beginning graduate school at the University of California, Davis, I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania from 2003-2005 as a Community-Based Natural Resource Manager. I then began my graduate study, first earning a Masters degree in Community Development, followed by a PhD in Geography. My time in “PhD school” within the Galt Lab was extremely fulfilling and has had a long-lasting and continuing influence on my own mentoring strategies as a faculty member at Texas State University. I served as an Assistant Professor in the Geography Department at Texas State from 2013-2019, and recently earned tenure at the same. I am a rural geographer and political ecologist with specialties in land and environmental management, (ex)urbanization, (rural) sustainability and tourism, wine, beer, and cider geographies (aka “fermented landscapes”), and agriculture (urban, peri-urban, and sustainable). My edited volume, which considers how processes of fermentation influence environmental and cultural landscape change, Fermented Landscapes: Lively Processes of Socio-environmental Transformation, was released in Spring 2020. I am currently mentoring nine student researchers (two PhD, six Masters, and one undergraduate), with ten others, at various levels, who have already completed their degree programs. My research, teaching, and service keeps me pretty busy, but, when I can, I update my website at https://fermentedlandscapes.wp.txstate.edu. Mostly, I spend as much time as I can with my husband (a Philosophy professor) and my three children; we enjoy going outside (to walk, run, ride bikes…), reading books aloud to each other, and making each other laugh.