My specialty, ecological design, is premised in the integration of art and science. I aim to create a built environment that is ecologically functional, contextually meaningful and personally engaging. I am a licensed professional landscape architect and have worked as a research ecologist. I presently do translational research that allows me to bring scientific discovery into design applications. Teaching includes ecological planting design studio, sustainable site design, urban agriculture, and civil engineering for designers. Research focuses on how to design urban areas to promote well-being and health of humans and the natural systems in which we are embedded.

As an ecological designer I place aesthetics—the visceral and psychological appeal of designed spaces, on equal footing with ecosystem considerations because there is no better way to engage personal stewardship than to elicit a protection response.

Professor Hardin teaches courses in both SNRE and the Department of Anthropology. Her areas of interest and scientific study include human/wildlife interactions, and social and environmental change related to tourism, logging, conservation and hunting in the forests of Central Africa. Recent projects focus on the increasingly intertwined practices of health and environmental management in southern and eastern Africa. She also studies historical and ethnographic aspects of concessionary politics involving corporations, NGOs, and local communities, particularly in Africa.

Andy Hoffman is the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise; a position that holds joint appointments at the School of Natural Resources & Environment and the Ross School of Business. He also serves as Director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise.  His research focuses on corporate strategies that address environmental and social issues.  His disciplinary background lies in the areas of organizational behavior, institutional change, negotiations and change management.  He has published more than 90 articles nine books, two of which have been translated into five different languages. Prior to academics, he worked for the US Environmental Protection Agency, Metcalf & Eddy, the Amoco Corporation, and T&T Construction and Design, Inc. In 2004, he was a Senior Fellow with the Meridian Institute.

Teaching interests include competitive environmental strategy, strategies for sustainable development, organizational behavior, negotiations, green construction, and organizational change

Bill studies the linkages among carbon, nutrient, and water cycling and energy flows and transformations in terrestrial ecosystems and human-environment systems.  He is interested in using our current understanding of ecosystems to explore creative, new understanding of the two-way interactions in human-environment systems.  He works at scales from field plots to landscapes, collaborating with other researchers and students to integrate understanding and build models for synthesis.  The goal of this research is to contribute to the developing field of sustainability science using an approach that grows out of ecosystem science.