Bio — Lissy Goralnik

about

I am an environmental studies scholar with a commitment to understanding the relationship between people and place.

Currently, I hold the position of Assistant Professor in Environmental Studies and Community Engagement in the department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University. I am also affiliated with their Center for Gender in a Global Context (GenCen) and the Environmental Science and Public Policy (ESPP) program. The problems I work on range from sustainable agriculture to wilderness, urban food systems, and classroom based learning. The methods I employ are grounded in qualitative social science—interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, participatory methods, ethnography, text analysis—exploring relationships, learning, and engagement with self, communities, and place. Prior to returning to MSU I was a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Forest, Ecosystems, and Society at Oregon State University, where I primarily worked in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest on projects related to arts, humanities, and environmental science interactions.

The common thread in all my projects is a deep attention to relationships, learning, values, and context.

My expertise is in environmental, experiential, informal, and place-based education with a primary focus on affective, or emotional, learning outcomes; applied environmental ethics, with a focus on relationships, care, and empathy; community engagement practice and research; qualitative methods; narrative storytelling; and the dynamics and outcomes of deep interdisciplinary collaborations, for example environmental science, arts, and humanities (or STEAM) activities. My scholarship lies primarily at the intersection of ethics, learning, and change agency. I’m interested in how and what we value as it relates to the natural world, personal identity, and community interactions; how values support individual wellbeing; how learning can facilitate a recognition and alignment of these values with action, decision making, and meaningful relationships; and how values integration, relationships, and purpose (or identity) can motivate wise action on behalf of community and ecological wellbeing. For my dissertation I developed, taught, and evaluated a wilderness ethics field course in Isle Royale National Park, exploring the ways care for place and community develop or shift as a result of a community-focused environmental ethics and place-based ecology curriculum. This, and my other work on experiential learning, reflects many years of training and practice spent working as a field educator for wilderness leadership schools.

education

2011 Ph.D. Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University—Dissertation: “Field Philosophy: Experience, Relationships, and Environmental Ethics in Higher Education” (Michael Paul Nelson, chair)
2006 M.F.A. Creative Writing, University of Idaho—Thesis: “The Edge of Wilderness” (Daniel Orozco, chair)
1999 B.A. English, Creative Writing emphasis, Stanford University
1998 Field Study, Conservation and Land Management, Wildlands Studies, New Zealand