About Me

My work focuses on the perplexing nature of environmental values and their expression in public policy, in disambiguating important ethical concepts (like "vulnerability" and "flourishing"), in more nuanced versions of consequentialism, and in a number of thorny issues involving collective responsibility and social practices. Have a look at my research page for my published and ongoing work. 

I currently direct CSU's Mountain Campus Program in Environmental Humanities, which allows me to enjoy two of my great loves simultaneously: sharing philosophy and hiking the high country. 

I received a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy; a M.A. in Philosophy from SUNY, University at Buffalo; and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Washington University in St. Louis. 

Prior to graduate work in St. Louis, I served with the Peace Corps in Malawi where I taught mathematics and physical science at Bandawe Secondary School and, in a surprising twist, ended up lecturing philosophy at the University of Malawi. During my stint with the Peace Corps I also served as logistician for volunteer training programs and in various other administrative capacities. 

While an undergraduate I spent a year as a philosophy exchange student at the University of Warwick in the UK. Later, while writing my PhD, I spent a year as a Fulbright Fellow in the Philosophy Program, and in the Social and Political Theory Program (which has seemingly now morphed into this) of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. After finishing my PhD, I spent a year teaching in the Philosophy Department of Barnard College, Columbia University before spending thirteen wonderful years as a professor back at the University at Buffalo. 

I enjoy travel and hiking (being as fond of densely wooded low-lying areas and swampy tropical regions as the alpine areas more normally traversed by members and graduates of the National Outdoor Leadership School, of which I am  a big fan and with which I have has been affiliated on a couple of occasions: OEC 07/24/00; WFR 01/03/23), I do a fair bit of trail running, and I am an avid martial artist (having been a practitioner of Kenpo Karate since the 1980s). Jennifer Enge-Shockley and I proudly hail from the great state of Wisconsin. Our son, Brady, is a Buffalonian by birth. But, now relocated in Fort Collins, all three of us have come to love and call home the high country of Colorado's Rocky Mountains.