People

The CCSS and its cooperators are comprised of dozens of faculty, staff, graduate assistants, and undergraduate student technicians.

CCSS faculty may be affiliated with graduate fields and academic departments across Cornell, and staff are part of Cornell’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment. Our graduate faculty have membership in the fields of Natural Resources, Development Sociology, Public Affairs, Global Development, and Water Resources. Graduate faculty committee members for CCSS graduate students come from a variety of departments: Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Communication, Design and Environmental Analysis, Development Sociology, City and Regional Planning, Applied Economics and Management, Natural Resources and others.

Contact us

Center for Conservation Social Sciences
Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at Cornell University
Fernow Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-3001

Phone: (607) 255-2902
Email: ccss [at] cornell.edu (ccss[at]cornell[dot]edu)

Core faculty

Bruce Lauber

Specializations: Conflict and collaboration in natural resource management; citizen participation in decision making; risk management and communication related to fisheries management; invasive species management; Great Lakes.

woman with curly brown hair and blue shirt

Specializations: Human dimensions of natural resource management, natural resource policy, environmental attitudes and behavior, with emphasis on forest and water resources.

Daniel Decker

Specializations: Integration of human dimensions insights into wildlife management decision making, policy, planning, and practice; stakeholder involvement in wildlife management; community-based natural resources management; risk perception and communication related to wildlife management.

A woman smiles on Tower Road

Specializations: Great Lakes and marine fisheries resource policy and management; risk communication and risk management related to chemical contaminants in fish; human dimensions of ecosystem-based approaches to fisheries management.

Richard C. Stedman

Specializations: Sense of place; community resilience; impacts of social and environmental change on wildlife recreation and community; risk and policy; environmental attitudes and behaviors; community-based resource management; landowner attitudes and behaviors; coupled human/ecological systems.

Affiliated faculty

Paul Curtis

Specializations: Resolving conflicts between people and wildlife; citizen participation in decision making; outreach and policy education.

Marianne Krasny

Specializations: Environmental and climate education; grassroots environmental stewardship (civic ecology); strategies for scaling up of individual climate actions and stewardship behaviors; online and engaged learning.

Heidi Kretser

Specializations: Land-use development and patterns; how human activities in rural landscapes influence wildlife and human-wildlife conflicts; how communities, groups of actors in a conservation issue, or a single organization move from process and discussion of an issue to on-the-ground conservation impacts.

Katherine McComas headshot

Specializations: Risk, science, and environmental communication; community involvement and public participation; trust and credibility related to science communication.

A man

Specializations: Health and environmental communication; public communication campaigns; public opinion and social policy.

Krysten Schuler

Specializations: wildlife disease ecology, population ecology, regional wildlife health research, risk communication, applied tools, policy support, New York State Wildlife Health Program.

keith tidball headshot

Specializations: Anthropology of social-ecological systems; therapeutic attributes of nature and outdoor recreation among returning combatants and survivors of traumatic events; food motivations in hunter and angler recruitment, retention, and reactivation; citizen science in angling and hunting communities of practice.

Center staff

woman with long brown hair

Specializations: Environmental social science, human geography, energy resources, legacy issues, stakeholder engagement.

Meghan Baumer stands in front of a tree with red and orange leaves.

Specializations: Environmental psychology; environmental education; volunteer management; website maintenance.

Specializations: Motivations and satisfactions associated with wildlife-dependent recreation; educational program evaluation; risk perceptions associated with human-wildlife conflicts; mass media effects on wildlife-related perceptions.

Graduate assistants

Specializations: Socio-ecological systems; community-based agroforestry outcomes, and community development; environmental education in developing countries.

Specializations: Human dimensions of natural resources management; comparative energy transitions; stakeholder engagement; climate planning and infrastructure resilience; information transfer and solutions sharing.

Specializations: Leadership; governance; conflict resolution skills; strategic organizational planning and management; fundraising and donor development; biodiversity conservation; human dimensions in natural resources; ecosystem services; climate change and community-based adaptation; REDD+.

Specializations: Political ecology of natural resource and protected area management. Social and environmental outcomes of payments for ecosystem services. Participative, adaptive conservation planning and management.

Specializations: Human dimensions in natural resources; wildlife disease; governance; communication campaigns; behavioral change

Specializations: The application of sense of place theory to predict pro-environmental behaviors; social psychology.

Specializations: Rural studies; public policy; energy; natural resource dependent communities; public engagement.

Specializations: Large carnivore monitoring and conservation in human dominated landscapes; human leopard conflict; leveraging communication and outreach for human wildlife conflict mitigation; designing capacity building program for protected area staffs and local communities; social survey for conservation.