Climbing Mt. Etna in Sicily during the FEEM EAERE Belpasso International Summer School on the Economics of Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity Conservation in September 2010

I am an applied economist working at the intersection of land use, ecosystem services, and conservation using non-market valuation and mathematical programming methods.

I am currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at Portland State University and Ph.D. Candidate in Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Illinois. I successfully defended my dissertation in the Fall of 2011 and will be receiving my doctorate in December.

My research consists of three main areas

• Analyzing public preferences for ecosystem services using choice experiment surveys
• Studying dynamic aspects of conservation reserve design using site selection models
• Creating spatially explicit land allocation models (that I currently apply within military installations)

In addition I am also currently working on

• General equiblirium models of environmental taxation
• Dynamic models of economic systems using Stella

At Portland State University I will be teaching Microeconomics and Mathematical Economics to Masters students and Intermediate Microeconomics and Natural Resource Economics to undergraduate students. While at University of Illinois I taught Natural Resource Economics where I expanded the course to include online homeworks and in-class i-clicker questions. I have worked as the Head TA for Principles of Macroeoconomics for five years and managed a class with over 500 students and 5 TA's each year and was a TA for Environmental Economics for two semesters. I also served as the instructor for the Math Refresher Course for entering Masters and PhD students. In addition, I taught for the Upward Bound Program for four years and served as a Mentor for the Research Apprenticeship Program (RAP) at the University of Illinois.

I seek out opportunities to challenge and improve my pedagogical philosophy by both engaging in presentations and discussions, and learning from experienced educators. I have been involved with training new TA's for the Center for Teaching Excellence and I completed the Graduate Teacher Certificate offered by the Center for Teaching Excellence.

I believe that service and leadership are an integral part of being an academic. As the president and former vice-president of the ACE-Graduate Student Organization I initiated events to encourage students' professional development and increase student faculty interaction. I was a co-organizer for the Midwest Graduate Student Summit on Regional, Population, Health and Environmental Economics and I have assisted with the pERE program, Heartland Workshop and been a discussant and session chair for multiple conferences and workshops.