SUSSTAIN’s core team is based at Columbia University and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Our larger network includes scholars and business leaders that are currently active on SUSSTAIN-related demonstration projects as well as a Steering Committee that combines academic, NGO and business guidance.
Core Team
Elke Weber, Psychological decision making in a business context. Jerome A. Chazen Professor of International Business at Columbia Business School and Professor of Psychology and Earth Institute Professor at Columbia University. Co-founded the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED), an interdisciplinary center to consider individual and group decision making that can impact environmental risk.
Ruth Greenspan Bell, Lawyer & policy analyst. Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C. Senior Fellow and former Director, US Climate Policy Objective at World Resources Institute; Director at Resources for the Future of a program to build more effective systems of environmental protection globally; former EPA Assistant General Counsel.
Tema Watstein, Project coordinator. Concert violinist and future psychology Post-Baccalaureate student at Columbia University.
Currently Active Teams
Energy Team
Craig Parks, Group decision making scientist. Professor of Psychology, Washington State University. Expert in the internal, individual-level factors that influence a person’s frequency of cooperative responses in an interdependent group setting and cognitively-based factors such as retrospection, mood, misperception of others’ actions, and attributions for others’ non-cooperative behavior.
Michael Vandenbergh, Law and applied psychology for resolving environmental & energy challenges. Professor of Law; Tarkington Chair in Teaching Excellence. Director, Energy & Environmental Law Program. Director, Climate Change Research Network at Vanderbilt University.
Amanda Carrico, Behavioral dimensions of energy use. Research Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and the Environment, Vanderbilt University. Focused on the role of information deficits in driving energy consumption and its resulting greenhouse gas emission.
Tom Dietz, Applied sociology to solve environmental challenges. Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science and Policy (ESPP) and Assistant Vice President for Environmental Research at Michigan State University. Member of the SUSSTAIN Steering Committee.
Infrastructure Team
Leidy Klotz is an associate professor in the Glenn Department of Civil Engineering at Clemson University. His research focus is decision making for sustainability in the built environment. He will lead the engineering team members and direct the course of the of our infrastructure projects. His building industry experience provides industry credibility and his research qualifications include study of infrastructure projects using the modeling, survey and interview techniques that are essential to the present project. Leidy works closely with Tripp Shealy, a graduate student in civil engineering.
Steering Committee
- Geoffrey Dabelko (Director of the Environmental Change and Security Program Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)
- Tom Dietz (sociologist, Michigan State University)
- Michael Dorsey (anthropologist, Dartmouth University)
- Robert Fri (MBA, Resources for the Future, EPA, industry experience)
- Nancy Jackson (environmental history, not for profit sector, University of Kansas)
- Barry Rabe (Political Science, University of Michigan)
- Karen Ehrhardt-Martinez (Sociology, Garrison Institute)
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