About
Dr. TH Culhane - Director of Climate Mitigation and Adaptation
For the previous five years Culhane was a Visiting Faculty Researcher and full professor at Mercy College New York, teaching courses in Environmental Sustainability and Justice, Environmental Psychology and Urban Ecology and leading students on "service learning" and "voluntourism" trips to share environmental technologies in impoverished parts of the Middle East, and the Caribbean.
Culhane has been a Google Science Fair Judge for 6 years and has worked with the US Office of Naval Research and UCLA on STEM science education projects with at risk-youth. In 2010 Culhane and the Palestinian Wildlife Society introduced small-scale biogas technology to stakeholders in the West Bank and Gaza through funding from the US Embassy, US AID and private foundations, and he has been working with the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Alumni Network, Engineers without Borders Palestine, Al Najah University, and the Eco-village Network Global Campus, and the HomeBiogas company in Palestine and Israel on a yearly basis since 2006, working to help ensure "peace through prosperity and permaculture".
Culhane got his Ph.D. from UCLA in Urban Planning, living with and working on solar energy and waste management projects with the trash recycling communities of Cairo Egypt, and his Master's in Regional and International Development working on urban agroforestry issues in Guatemala. His undergraduate work at Harvard included a year in the primary rainforests of Borneo, working on community ecology issues with hunter-gatherer tribes. His mission is to empower communities to regain ecological self-sufficiency and economic security through regenerative systems integration, believing that we have all the puzzle pieces to make thriving societies, and just need to come together and put them together.
- IDS 6222 - Navigating The Sustainable Food-Energy-Water Nexus (3)
The Food Energy Water (FEW) nexus helps students navigate the complexities of sustainability, using systems thinking and case studies in food, energy, and water to create industrial ecology systems, closing the loop from the solar energy that sustains food production through food waste to new food.*This course is available on-campus and online.
- IDS 6247 - Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation (3)
This course will use an interdisciplinary approach to explore climate vulnerability and pathways of climate mitigation and adaption. Case studies will be reviewed to provide insight on climate change adaption planning and societal resilience.*This course is available on-campus and online.
*Course number may differ from the USF Class Schedule Search. - IDS 6946 - Sustainability Internship (3)
This domestic or international internship is a capstone course in the Patel College of Global Sustainability MA program. It is based on an interdisciplinary field study, designed to provide a student with an opportunity to develop a comprehensive in-depth study of sustainability with respect to a specific field. It will also allow students to build strong interactions with external stakeholders who influence practice and policy. During this internship, students will apply acquired theoretical skills to investigate real-world problems and develop innovative solutions to sustainability.
Culhane is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative and United Religions Initiative, bringing Food/Energy/Water Nexus solutions and systems thinking to areas in need, with an active "commitment to action" to bring small-scale waste-to-energy and food production technologies to areas impacted by the refugee crisis.