Board Chair
Jason Hamilton is Professor and Chair of the Environmental Studies and Sciences Department at Ithaca College. He received a Ph.D. in physical chemistry and a Ph.D. in plant ecology from U.C. Santa Barbara and did post-doctorial research in ecophysiology and global change biology at the University of Illinois before joining the faculty at Ithaca College in 2001. His research focus is sustainability science, the new discipline that considers humans and their local and global environments as one socio-ecological system.
Jason says, “My passion in teaching is providing students opportunities for experiential, integrative, transformative, education. I use Ithaca College’s living classrooms for classes such as Environmental Sentinels, Farming the Forest, Tracking and the Art of Seeing, and Introduction to Herbalism. In all of these courses, my goal is to help students build their own Local Ecological Knowledge System. To this end, I integrate natural history, nature awareness, academic ecology, medicinal plants, animal tracking, and wilderness living skills into my classes.”
Jason is faculty manager of the Ithaca College Natural Lands and co-founder of the Ithaca College Faculty and Staff for Sustainability. He has given countless presentations about global warming at colleges and universities nationally and serves on the American College & University President’s Climate Commitment Implementation Committee at Ithaca College.