David Fisher

Chair, Department of Sustainable Living
Associate Professor of Botany
B.S., North Carolina State University at Raleigh
M.S., Ph.D., University of Wisconsin

David Fisher served as a research scientist at the USDA Forest Experiment Station in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, a Humboldt fellow at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and a researcher in the Botany Department at the University of Wisconsin. Prior to joining the faculty of Maharishi University of Management, he was a professor and researcher at the University of Hawaii. His research on potato breeding has been supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Lawrence (Lonnie) A. Gamble, P.E.

Assistant Professor of Sustainable Living
B.S., North Carolina State University

Lonnie Gamble is a founding faculty member in MUM’s Sustainable Living department. His expertise includes renewable energy, food and agriculture, sustainable economics and local alternatives to the global economy, permaculture design, and green building. He regularly presents and writes on these issues.

Lonnie has founded many for-profit and non-profit sustainability ventures, including Abundance Ecovillage, the Sustainable Living coalition, Big Green Summer, Abundant Planet Radio collective, and five companies in the area of renewal energy and telecommunications. He has been teaching, developing sustainability curriculum, and mentoring students since 1996. He has a degree in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University.

Lonnie and his wife live in a straw bale home, where they harvest rain for water supply, get their electricity from solar and wind power, and eat something fresh every day from their extensive gardens. They haven’t paid an electric bill in 15 years.

Travis Cox

Instructor of Sustainable Living
M.A., California Institute of Integral Studies
B.A., Central College

Travis Cox is a Ph.D. candidate in Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. His research is about the intersection of social movements, education, metaphysics, environmental philosophy, and agriculture. Travis is excited to teach and explore these disparate, esoteric themes at MUM — where consciousness, the environment, and their relationship are taken seriously.

He earned a Master’s in Philosophy and Religion — with an emphasis in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness — from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He has a Bachelor’s in Philosophy from Central College in Pella, Iowa.

John Collins

Instructor of Sustainable Living
B.Sc., Bristol University (England)

John Collins’ career began in the Hong Kong government, writing policy in the fields of marine, agriculture, fisheries, and United Nations. He then founded/directed a development and construction company that built houses, apartments, and community and office buildings which included many eco features — such as high-spec insulation, passive solar, and rammed earth. John was also engaged in politics and national campaigning on GMOs and waste management issues and served as an elected local councilor in the U.K.

John joined MUM’s Sustainable Living faculty in 2008 and has developed a range of courses related to state, national, and international policy and governance to address sustainability issues. He has a joint honors degree from Bristol University, England, in Philosophy and Economics.

Jesse Dann

Adjunct Professor of Sustainable Living
B.A., Dartmouth College
M.S., Michigan Technological University
Ph.D., Washington University

Jesse Dann has a Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences and an M.S. in Geological Sciences. He is a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Cape Town and has conducted post-doctoral research at MIT. Jesse worked for NASA and Noranda Exploration, Inc.

John Ikerd

Visiting Professor of Sustainable Living
B.S., M.S., Ph.D., University of Missouri

John Ikerd is a Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He was raised on a small dairy farm in southwest Missouri and received his Ph.D. in agricultural economics. He worked in private industry and spent thirty years in various professorial positions at North Carolina State University, Oklahoma State University, University of Georgia, and the University of Missouri before retiring in early 2000.

Since retiring, he spends most of his time writing and speaking on issues related to sustainability with an emphasis on economics and agriculture. Ikerd is author of Sustainable Capitalism, A Return to Common Sense, Small Farms are Real Farms, and Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture.

Elaine Ingham

Adjunct Professor of Sustainable Living
B.S., St. Olaf College
M.S., Texas A & M University
Ph.D., Colorado State University

Dr. Ingham is President and Director of Research at Soil Foodweb Inc., a small business that grew out of her Oregon State University research program. Her research focuses on beneficial and harmful organisms in the soil and foliage of plants, and how they can be managed to grow plants with the fewest inputs into the system while maintaining soil fertility.

Elaine’s Ph.D. is in Microbiology, with an emphasis on soil. In 1986, she joined the faculty at Oregon State University in both Forest Science and Botany & Plant Pathology. Over time, Elaine turned her attention toward grower-related issues, focusing on the expense and damage of intensive chemical usage on soil organisms.

Elaine’s current projects range from citrus groves in Florida, to cotton and avocado in Australia, turf and golf courses, roadside restoration in California, and just about every other plant system in between.

Diana Leafe Christian

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Sustainable Living

Diana Leafe Christian is an expert on ecovillages and intentional communities. She has written two books, Creating a Life Together and Finding Community, and is the editor of Communities magazine, a publication of the Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC). She lives at Earthhaven Ecovillage in North Carolina, works on a sustainable homesite, participates in Earthaven’s consensus governance process, and serves on its strategic planning and membership committees.

Robert Laporte

Adjunct Instructor of Sustainable Living

Robert is the founder of the EcoNest Company and the Natural House Building Center. He is the author of Mooseprints and co-author of EcoNest. Robert is a leading expert in earth, straw, and timberframe structures. He has designed and built natural homes for the past 25 years in Canada and the U.S. Robert has researched natural building extensively in Europe and has been a major influence in the introduction of light clay/straw building to North America.

Scott Pittman

Adjunct Instructor of Sustainable Living

Scott Pittman is one of the foremost permaculture teachers in the U.S. and has taught extensively throughout the world. He co-founded the Permaculture Institute, and his experience includes working with indigenous and traditional peoples, design projects ranging from backyards to thousand-acre farms, and activism in promotion of sustainable living.

Marisha Auerbach

Adjunct Instructor of Sustainable Living

Marisha Auerbach has been practicing, studying, and teaching permaculture for the past decade. She graduated from the Evergreen State College in 1998, where she focused on ethnobotany, ecological agriculture, and sustainability studies.

Marisha promotes sustainability by sharing knowledge on a variety of topics: permaculture, polyculture gardening, flower and gem essences, local economics, community building, ethnobotany, herbalism, edible landscape design, and organic gardening. She is enthusiastic about creating perennial forage systems and building local community as a response to peak oil.

Doug Crouch

Adjunct Instructor of Sustainable Living

Trained as both a permaculture designer and fish/wildlife manager, Doug Crouch has extensive knowledge of landscape planning and creating aquaculture systems for all needs. He has worked in temperate, drylands, and tropical climates, extending from North and Central America to Asia, Europe, and Australia. This work includes managing land and water for tourism ventures, facilitating and co-creating educational programs, tropical aquaculture and wetlands restoration, permaculture design and implementation, and market gardening. Incorporating this knowledge and experience into educational programs has now become Doug’s main focus as he continues his design and development in various ecosystems.

Troy Van Beek

Adjunct Instructor of Sustainable Living

Troy’s diverse background includes nine years in the U.S Navy Seals as a Special Forces medic, and working personal security in hostile environments, including the Middle East and Africa. After years of heart-pumping, high profile work, Troy has dedicated himself to providing a new kind of security here in the U.S.: sustainability. Troy is committed to increasing public awareness about sustainable solutions to pressing global environmental challenges. He recognizes the power of self-sufficiency and the positive widespread effects of sustainable technologies, not only in the environmental arena but socioeconomic and political areas, too.

Troy’s desire to create more efficient buildings — which save inhabitants on costly utilities and use less resources—is fulfilled through his business, Ideal Energy Inc. Troy currently lives in a home which is entirely self-sufficient through use of wind and solar power, and enjoys the freedom of not having to pay utility bills