Instructors Bios
Jack Alexander is the plant propagator of the Arnold Arboretum, a position he has held since 1976. He was named a Fellow of the Eastern Region of the International Plant Propagators’ Society and in 2004 received their Award of Merit.
Mary Coyne, PhD, embarked on a retirement career as a landscape designer after many years teaching in Wellesley College’s Department of Biological Sciences. She received her Design Certificate from the Landscape Institute in 2010. She designed and maintains the Harriet B. Creighton Educational Garden across the driveway from the Wellesley College Botanic Gardens Visitor Center.
Elizabeth Crone, PhD, is interested in population ecology, life history, and conservation of plants and insects; pollination biology; and ecological modeling and decision analysis. She is currently conducting research at the Harvard Forest in Petersham, MA.
John DelRosso, head arborist at the Arnold Arboretum, is a graduate of the Consulting Academy of the American Society of Consulting Arborists. He is certified with the International Society of Arboriculture and the Massachusetts Arborists Association.
Pamela Diggle, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado and a visiting professor at Harvard University in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. She studies the evolution and development of floral morphology.
Christie Dustman, principal of her firm, Christie Dustman & Company Inc., is a certified landscape designer practicing in the Boston area.
Elizabeth Farnsworth is senior research ecologist with the New England Wild Flower Society, and a biologist, educator, and scientific illustrator. She is also editor-in-chief of the botanical journal, Rhodora. She is currently principal investigator on a National Science Foundation-funded project to develop an online guide to the regional flora for teaching botany, as well as a member of the graduate faculties of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the University of Rhode Island, and a master teacher at the Conway School of Landscape Design. She obtained her PhD in biology from Harvard University, MSc from the University of Vermont, and a BA with honors in environmental studies from Brown University.
Noah Fierer, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department and a fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado. The Fierer Lab Group studies the ecology of bacteria, fungi, and archaea in natural systems, examining those factors that influence the spatial and temporal variability in microbial communities and the role of microbes in the environment. His current work focuses on those microbes inhabiting soil, leaf surfaces, the human body, and the atmosphere.
Eric “T” Fleisher is the director of horticulture at Battery Park City Parks Conservancy in lower Manhattan. Through his efforts, this 37-acre oasis of parkland on the Hudson River is the only completely organically-maintained public garden space in New York City. His methods are based on the development of balanced soil ecology, with an emphasis on composting, water conservation, and the use of nontoxic means of pest and disease control. A national leader and frequent lecturer on sustainable practices, Fleisher also serves as a consultant to Harvard University, the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy in Boston, Bowdoin College, Swarthmore College, and Mount Auburn Cemetery among other organizations. He was a 2008 Loeb Fellow at Harvard University.
William (Ned) Friedman, PhD, is director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and Arnold Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. His research program focuses on the organismic interfaces between developmental, phylogenetic, and evolutionary biology. Armed with hypotheses of relationships among organisms, he explores how patterns of morphology, anatomy, and cell biology have evolved through the modification of developmental processes. His work is primarily focused on the origin and subsequent diversification of flowering plants, Darwin’s “abominable mystery.”
Kanchi Gandhi, PhD, earned his doctorate from Texas A&M University. He is the editor of the International Plant Name Index for the Harvard University Herbaria; nomenclature editor of the Flora of North America; and an associate editor for several other journals.
Erik Gehring is a professional and fine art photography who lives in Roslindale. His favorite destination is the Arnold Arboretum, and for the last three years he has published a calendar of images taken in the Arboretum landscape entitled Trees of Boston. Erik has shown his work at galleries and art festivals throughout New Hampshire and eastern Massachusetts. He teaches digital photography and lectures about nature photography.
Wade Graham is a Los Angeles-based garden designer, historian, and writer whose work on the environment, landscape, urbanism, and the arts has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Outside, and other publications. He received a BA degree in comparative literature from Columbia University and an MA and a PhD in US history from the University of California at Los Angeles. He teaches urbanism and environmental policy at the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. American Eden—From Monticello to Central Park to Our Backyards: What Our Gardens Tell Us about Who We Are was published in April by HarperCollins.
Jules Janick, PhD, is the James Troop Distinguished Professor in Horticulture in the Departments of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Purdue University. He has taught a variety of subjects ranging from the history and literature of horticulture to genetics, plant breeding, and tropical horticulture. An expert is in plant genetics and breeding, he has patented more than a dozen cultivars of apples.
James Jiler is currently director of GreenWorks, an environmental re-entry program in Florida, which offers vocational training in “Greencollar” jobs, both inside and outside prison walls. He is former director of the GreenHouse Project, a horticultural job-training program for inmates at New York City’s Rikers Island Prison and also former director of community services for The Horticultural Society of New York. Jiler has been a consultant and community forester for the Ahmedabad Green Partnership Project run by USAID in Ahmedabad, India, and also for the City of New Haven, Connecticut.
Kirk Johnson, PhD, is vice president of research and collections and chief curator with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. He studies fossil leaves to refine geologic time, reconstruct ancient landscapes, track climate change, and document the evolution and extinction of species and ecosystems.
Jen Kettell, horticultural technologist at the Arnold Arboretum, is an International Society of Arboriculture-certified arborist, and serves on the board of the New England Chapter of the ISA. She began work at the Arboretum as an intern in 2003.
Kate Kennen, principal of Kennen Landscape Architecture and Offshoots, Inc. is a registered Landscape Architect based in downtown Boston. Having spent her childhood at her family’s garden center in central Massachusetts, Kate is well versed in the plants and ecological systems of the Northeast. She earned her undergraduate degree from Cornell University and master’s degree in landscape architecture with distinction from Harvard University. In 2004, she founded Kennen Landscape Architecture as a practice focused on productive planting design and ecological planning. Kate currently teaches a research seminar on phytotechnologies with Niall Kirkwood at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Brian Morgan develops geographic information systems (GIS) technology as a management and decision-making tool for public gardens. He has created a suite of open source tools and templates for implementing GIS projects at public gardens called the ArcGIS Public Garden Data Model. He also directs of a consortium of living collection managers and GIS professionals, the Alliance for Public Gardens GIS, which is committed to making GIS technology more accessible and easier to use at public gardens. He was a 2011 Putnam Research Fellow at the Arnold Arboretum, where he collaborated with staff on the development of the Arboretum’s Collection Researcher online tool.
Kyle Port has a bachelor’s degree in environmental horticulture from Washington State University. He started working at the Arnold Arboretum as an intern in 1996 and is now manager of plant records.
Nancy Rose is the editor of Arnoldia and was formerly a research horticulturist and extension educator with the University of Minnesota.
Fulbright Scholar Laura J. Snyder is Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. John’s University in New York City. She received her BA from Brandeis University and her MA and PhD, as well as a Certificate in History and Philosophy of Science, from The Johns Hopkins University. Snyder is a Life Member of Clare Hall College, Cambridge, and served as President of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS) in 2009 and 2010. Her most recent book, The Philosophical Breakfast Club: Four Remarkable Friends who Transformed Science and Changed the World (Broadway Books, 2011; paperback 2012), was a Scientific American Notable Book, an Official Selection of the TED Book Club, and winner of the 2011 Royal Institution of Australia Poll for Favorite Science Book. It appeared in Italian as Il Club dei Filosofi che Volevano Cambiare il Mondo (Newton Compton, 2011). Snyder is also the author of Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society (University of Chicago Press, 2006). She is currently writing a book about the relation between science, especially optics, and art in the seventeenth century.
(Credit: http://www.stjohns.edu/academics/undergraduate/liberalarts/departments/philosophy/faculty/profiles/snyder)
Kyle Stephens, a Massachusetts and International Society of Arboriculture certified arborist, has worked as an arborist at the Arnold Arboretum since 2005. Previously he worked in New York at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Wave Hill, and with the Central Park Conservancy.
Amy Stewart is the author of five books on the perils and pleasures of the natural world, including three New York Times bestsellers, Wicked Bugs, Wicked Plants, and Flower Confidential. Stewart is a popular and spirited public speaker. She has appeared on hundreds of national and regional radio and television programs, including CBS’ Sunday Morning, NPR’s Morning Edition and Fresh Air, and ABC’s Good Morning America. She has written for the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and national garden magazines including Fine Gardening, where she is a contributing editor. Amy is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the American Horticulture Society’s Book Award, and a California Horticultural Society Writer’s Award.
Charles Waldheim teaches design studios and courses in the histories, theories, and contemporary practices of landscape architecture and urbanism at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he also chairs the Landscape Architecture Department. Having coined the term landscape urbanism, he has written extensively on the topic and edited The Landscape Urbanism Reader (Princeton Architectural Press, 2006). In 2006, he was the recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship in Landscape Architecture at the American Academy in Rome.
Andrea Wulf was born in India and moved to Germany as a child. She lives in Britain where she trained as a design historian at the Royal College of Art. She is the author of The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire, and the Birth of an Obsession (longlisted for the 2008 Samuel Johnson Prize and winner of the 2010 American Horticultural Society Book Award) as well as Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation, and the co-author of This Other Eden: Seven Great Gardens and 300 Years of English History. She has written for the New York Times, the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times, the Guardian, and many other publications. She is a three-time fellow of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello.