Jonathon Schramm
Professor of Sustainability and Environmental Education
Department Chair
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Faculty
Professor of Sustainability and Environmental Education
Department Chair
At heart, I’m vitally interested in seeing people develop a relationship of love and knowledge with the land that they live in, on and with. This seems to me like one of the central needs for us all to grow in this time of rapid and large global change. Such a relationship begins with first steps such as learning a bit about the incredible diversity of different organisms that can be found in our home landscape. It extends to more complex understandings of the ways in which our economic and social decisions affect people and places both nearby and far away. I love learning more about my home landscape and working to improve its quality as a home for people and all other creatures.
Acaedmic Interests
I’m interested in the pivotal role of landscapes, both ecologically and in our human manner of thinking. Landscape ecology has been emerging over the last decades as an important bridge between the large-scale patterns traced by ecosystem ecology and the interspecific interactions described by community ecology, and is powerful in part because it is an “actionable” or applied scale of thinking that allows us to design interventions and management that unite insights from these two scales. Ecologically, I’m particularly keen to study how the diversity of native and non-native species interact at the landscape scale, and how our management decisions sway those interactions. Educationally, I’m curious to understand better how expanding students’ and adults’ considerations of landscapes, which are larger in both space and time than we usually consider, helps them to understand the ecological phenomena around them and to understand the importance of their decisions in the here and now.
Other things I like to do
Hike/backpack/camp, read, goof around with my kids and wife, play my accordion, swim in ponds/lakes/oceans, bake breads and road bike.
I’m active in my church as a youth leader and Sunday school teacher, and am currently board president of the Elkhart River Restoration Association.
Education
Current Projects:
1) The landscape ecology of rare and invasive plants at Merry Lea
2) Patterns of plant community diversification over time in restored wetlands
3) Changes in students’ articulation of sustainability issues as a result of study abroad
4) Long-term effects of grazing cattle on restored prairie
Recent Publications