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Abram Kaplan
| Affiliation: | Faculty |
| Title: | Associate Professor, Environmental Studies |
| Email: |
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| Phone: |
740-587-6736
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Dr. Kaplan started his environmental career at Oberlin College, where he was one
of the very first ES majors, and he also majored in Poli Sci. After
college, he went off to Northern Virginia to work for a quirky company as a
computer systems analyst. After two years there, he moved on to the
Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison, where he earned his M.S.
in Land Resources and a certificate in Energy Analysis and Planning. He was
the computer techie guy for IES during that time as well. Then he was off to
Chapel Hill for his Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from UNC. His
dissertation was about how to get electric utilities interested in solar
(photovoltaic) technologies, relying on a national survey of managers. Dr.
Kaplan was hired as the founding director of Denison's ENVS program in 1993,
and finished his Ph.D. requirements just weeks before moving to Granville on
New Year's Eve that year.
Kaplan's courses include Environmental Politics
& Decision Making, Environmental Planning and Design, Environmental
Dispute Resolution, the Practicum and Senior Project classes, and his new
love, Farmscape: Artistic Perspectives on Farmland Preservation. His
research spans a variety of areas that are all connected by the question,
"How can we best relate to our environment?" In working with the U.S.
Geological Survey, his efforts
focus on creating an organizational culture
that places this agency at the forefront of environmental science. In
working with photography, his work deals with views of the environment that
might make us think differently about who we are and where we fit in. In
working with the spatial patterns of homeless people in Newark, Ohio, his
interests are about designing urban communities to tolerate and encourage
different peoples who perceive the environment differently.
Dr.
Kaplan has two boys who love to explore and who care a great deal about the
planet they're inheriting as they grow up. What can be more inspiring than
that?
