Faculty Research Team

Principal Investigator  Christopher M. Bacon Co-Principal Investigators William Sundstrom, Iris Stewart-Frey, and Edwin Maurer. Collaborators: Raul Diaz, at ASDENIC.

Christopher M. Bacon is an associate professor of environmental studies at Santa Clara University. He completed his BA in Economics and in Environmental Studies at UC Santa Barbara (1995). He received a PhD in Environmental Studies from UC Santa Cruz (2005), and completed postdoctoral studies in Geography at UC Berkeley, before joining ESS in 2010. Chris specializes in sustainable food systems, livelihood change, food security, agroecology, and social economy in Central America and environmental justice in California. He recently was awarded a National Science Foundation grant to study Coping with Food and Water Insecurity in Nicaragua, with several of his SCU colleagues including. Chris’s work often takes a community-based and participatory action research approach to generate knowledge with local institutions that informs both theory and social change.  He has mentored more than 20 undergraduate students, and several of them have won national awards and co-authored publications. Chris teaches courses in environmental policy, politics and planning, political ecology, and food justice.

 

William Sundstrom is a professor of economics at Santa Clara University. He received his BA in Economics from the University of Massachusetts and his PhD in Economics from Stanford University. His research interests include poverty and inequality, the economic history of labor markets, education, and related institutions, and the economics of race and gender. Recent projects include the causes and effects of public libraries in the United States, patterns of poverty in the Silicon Valley region, and food and water insecurity in Nicaragua. He has published articles in a number of peer-reviewed journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Economic History, Explorations in Economic History, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Information and Culture, Global Environmental Change, and World Development. He teaches courses in microeconomics; data analysis and econometrics; the economics of race, ethnicity, and gender; economic history; and economics of the environment.

Iris T. Stewart is an associate professor of environmental science at Santa Clara University. She received her B.S. in Geology and Geophysics from the University of Hawai’i, and her Ph.D. in Hydrogeology from Stanford University. Her research interests include impacts of climatic changes on water resources, water quality for human and ecosystem use, water security, and environmental justice. Recent projects include rising stream temperatures and changes in the probability of extreme climatic events under climatic changes across western North America, patterns on environmental benefits and burdens in the Silicon Valley region, and food and water insecurity in Central America. Iris has been a Clare Booth Luce professor and has been awarded research grants from the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation. She has published articles in a number of peer-reviewed journals such as Water Resources Research, the Journal of Climate, Climatic Change, the Journal of Hydroclimate, Hydrology Research, the Journal of Environmental Quality, and Applied Geography. Iris has mentored more than 25 undergraduate students, and several have become co-authors on conference presentations and peer-reviewed publications. She teaches courses in Water Resources, Earth Systems, and GIS.

Ed Maurer holds a BS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Rhode Island, a Masters in Civil Engineering from U.C. Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Washington. Following 18 years of various consulting and research work, he joined Santa Clara University’s Civil Engineering department in 2003, where he teaches courses in hydraulics, hydrology, water resources, GIS, and sustainability. His professional experience includes work in municipal water supply and wastewater engineering, climate change impacts, western tribal water rights, and rural community water supply projects in Latin America. His recent research contributions involve modeling large scale hydrologic dynamics, improving long- lead forecasting, and studying regional impacts of climate change, especially on water. He has published numerous reports and peer-reviewed journal articles on assessing the impact of climate change on water resources from river basin to regional scales.

Raúl Diaz coordinates the Information Center of Innovation Development Association Social Nicaragua – CII ASDENIC (www.asdenic.org), an organization established in the north of the country with more than 20 years developing social programs for the generation of resilience at home and community level. One of his main lines of work is the supply of good quality water in sufficient quantities for consumption and also for irrigation systems that enable productivity and diversification and positively impact the food, health and quality of life of farmers families. At CII-ASDENIC, Raúl also promotes social entrepreneurship, involving young people from rural sector and universities, developing solutions to problems in a creative and innovative way, combining theory, practice and talent to ensure skilled, innovate and undertake permanently.