Over the course of my academic career, I have taught dozens of different classes in urban and environmental studies at Rutgers University, the TU Berlin, USC, and now at Soka University. For a list of my current course rotation, see the “Courses Taught at SUA” tab on my official faculty page.

In many of my undergraduate classes, I challenge my students to write engaging urban and environmental news blogs. Critical reading and proficient writing go hand-in-hand. They are encouraged to follow environmental news stories in major newspapers or research case studies in other reputable media outlets, often cross-referencing it with the academic materials we discussed in class. Feel free to check out some of the recent environmental news stories my students have written.

More recently, I have begun to use ArcGIS StoryMaps to encourage proficiency in more complex place-based multimedial storytelling. A great example of this is the GeoStorytelling Ballona StoryMap Collection created during a Winter 2025 Learning Cluster seminar for which I collaborated with the arts educator, planner and poet Amy Shimshon-Santo and the sound artist Daniel Rothman.

Another student-created site is the Moved by Nature Google Sites page that documents our Winter 2020 Learning cluster trip to Sweden and Denmark. We visited nature schools and studied the Scandinavian approach to outdoor education.