Elsa Deldado
Visiting Research Scholar
Phone (217) 206-7963
Dr. Yi-Sz Lin
Assistant Professor
Phone: (217) 206-7805
e-mail: ylin43@uis.edu
Yi-Sz Lin, assistant professor of Geographic Information System (GIS) and environmental planning, received his PhD in Urban and Regional Sciences from Texas A&M University in 2009. He has a B.S. in Architecture and a M.S. in Construction Science. He currently directs the GIS Laboratory in the Department of Environmental Studies at UIS.
During his PhD study, Yi-Sz worked for the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center (HRRC) at Texas A&M University on several research projects including the Mid-America Earthquake (MAE) center project that developed algorithms to map social vulnerability and estimate post-disaster population dislocation as well as shelter needs for communities, the National Center for Disaster Reduction (NCDR) project that compares the patterns of housing recovery after 1992 Hurricane Andrew in Florida and 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake in Taiwan, and the NOAA Sea Grant program that develops a coastal communities planning atlas as an educational tool for decision makers and local residents.
Yi-Sz’s interests include environmental hazard management, GIS applications in environmental planning and hazard management, and statistical/planning methods. He is certified in GIS, Remote Sensing, and Environmental Hazard Management by Texas A&M University.
Dr. Andrew Predmore 
Assistant Professor
Phone (217) 206-7895
e-mail: spred2@uis.edu
Andrew received his PhD from the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation at Virginia Tech. Before joining the Department of Environmental Studies at UIS, Andrew conducted postdoctoral research at Virginia Tech geared towards determining which factors—public controversy, planning team leadership, interdisciplinary team work styles, or public involvement values and techniques—most commonly predict success in planning efforts on federal lands. Results from this work are being used to improve environmental planning efforts across the national forest system. In addition to his work on federal public lands, Andrew is interested in relating public involvement, environmental values, and environment discourse to planning outcomes. Results from his research have been published in Society and Natural Resources, the Journal of Forestry, the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, and Environmental Impact Assessment Review.
Andrew’s passion for natural resource issues stem from his own love of outdoor recreation, and when he is not working he can be found playing tennis, taking his kids to Washington Park, or occasionally backpacking. Although Andrew has mostly lived and worked in the southeastern U.S., he is excited to learn about sustainability issues in Illinois, as well as those directly linked to the UIS campus and the Springfield area.
Dr. Hua Qin 
Assistant Professor
Phone (217) 206-8585
e-mail: huaqin2@uis.edu
Hua received his PhD degree in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (with a specialty area of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and Ecology) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2009. He is an environmental and natural resource social scientist with emphasis on human population dynamics and sustainable development. His dissertation research integrated theories and methods from the fields of population and the environment, sustainable rural livelihoods, and community development to investigate the impacts of rural–urban labor migration on rural environment in Chongqing Municipality, Southwest China. During his graduate study and postdoctoral research at UIUC, he also worked on various projects at the Community and Natural Resources Lab including southern Illinois regional assessment and community response to forest disturbance by bark beetles in Alaska and Colorado. Hua joined the Environmental Studies faculty at UIS in the fall of 2012 after working for two years as a postdoctoral research fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. While at there, he was involved in all activities related to the research initiative on resilient-sustainable cities and climate change, the ADAPTE project on the health impacts of air pollution and climate change in Latin American cities, and the NSF-funded Data Conservancy project on data practices and curation across life, Earth, and social sciences.
Hua has a diverse academic background in sociology, demography, geography, environmental science, and both quantitative and qualitative methodological research. His teaching and research interests include environmental and resource sociology, population and the environment (climate change), community and natural resource management, and research methods and statistics. His research work has been published in interdisciplinary environmental social science journals including Human Ecology, Society and Natural Resources, Human Organization, Global Environmental Change, Environmental Management, and Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability.
Read more about Dr. Qin’s research on his Google Scholar page.
Dr. Dennis Ruez, Jr. 
Associate Professor
Department Chair
Director of Graduate Admissions
Phone: (217) 206-8425
e-mail: druez2@uis.edu
Dennis received his Ph.D. in geological sciences from The University of Texas at Austin in 2007 and joins UIS after spending three years teaching at Auburn University. Dennis is a vertebrate paleontologist with research interests inthe relationship of past climate changeand fossil mammal communities. This includes the rigorous testing of paleoecological models and developing new quantifiable methods of examining past environmental change. To this end, Dennis has done field work throughout the US – coast to coast, and border to border. His work is published both in regional journals and international ones (including Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Journal of Human Evolution, and Journal of Paleontology).
Visit Dr. Ruez’s web site or read more at Inside UIS.
Dr. Tih-Fen Ting
Associate Professor
Phone: (217) 206-7876
Email: tting1@uis.edu
Areas of Interest: Resource ecology and conservation, population-environment interactions, ecosystem management, and sustainability studies.
Tih-Fen Ting received her Ph.D. in Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan in 2003. She has a B.S. in Biology and a M.S. in Wildlife.
Her work before Michigan focused mainly on the ecology, behavior, and demography of various avian species (including northern spotted owls). At Michigan, as a doctoral student, Professor Ting began an interdisciplinary exploration on issues regarding interactions between human populations and the environment. Her dissertation focused on how resource accessibility affects individual reproductive decision-making in China. She also participates in a collaborative project on public health and environmental integrity along the Danshui River ecosystem in northern Taiwan. At UIS, Professor Ting has been active in campus sustainability initiatives.
In 2002, Professor Ting was selected as a LIFE fellow in the International Max Planck Research School. She has published her work in journals including Population and Environment, Science of the Total Environment, and Environmental Justice. Read more at Inside UIS.
Dr. Brett Werner 
Assistant Professor
Phone (217) 206-8580
e-mail: bwern4@uis.edu
Prior to joining the Environmental Studies faculty at UIS, Brett completed his PhD in Rhetoric at the University of Minnesota, a visiting instructorship in History at St. Olaf College (MN), a Mellon Fellowship in Environmental Studies at Centre College (KY), and a postdoctoral research appointment in Natural Resource Management at South Dakota State University. During that time, he taught courses spanning environmental studies, including: Env. Discourse; Env. Ethics; Env. History; Env. Policy; Env. Justice; Landscape Ecology, Saving Wild Places, and In Search of Nature (Env. Literature and Writing).
Brett’s research in the humanities occurs at the intersection of rhetoric, ethics, history, and literature, having ecocritically examined the writing of Kathleen Dean Moore, Sandra Steingraber, and Scott Russell Sanders, along with a more famous political figure (but less famous environmental communicator), George W. Bush. In the sciences, Brett develops simulation models to investigate the impact of climate change and tile drainage on the ecology of prairie wetlands, research funded by the EPA, USGS, and USFWS and published in BioScience. Practically speaking, Brett helped students start a campus garden at Centre College, helped his brothers start Muddy Pumpkin Farms, an organic vegetable operation in South Dakota, and helped complete research at EcoSun Prairie Farms, a for-profit restored tallgrass prairie.
Associated Faculty
Professors from the natural and social sciences and the humanities often lend their expertise to broaden the educational experiences of our students. Below is a partial list of those faculty members.
Harshavardhan Bapat
Associate Professor, Chemistry
(217) 206-7744
e-mail: hbapa1@uis.edu
Environmental chemistry
Michael Lemke
Professor, Biology
(217) 206-7339
e-mail: lemke.michael@uis.edu
Microbial and aquatic ecology
Amy McEuen
Associate Professor, Biology
(217) 206-7341
e-mail: mceuen.amy@uis.edu
Ecology
Robert McGregor
Professor, Hisory
(217) 206-7442
e-mail: mcgregor.robert@uis.edu
Environmental history
William Siles
Associate Professor, History
(217) 206-7432
e-mail: siles.william@uis.edu
Urban and agricultural history
Emeriti Faculty
Edward Hawes, Malcolm Levin, John Munkirs, Charles Schweighauser, William Warren, Roy Wehrle.
Adjunct Faculty
The department brings in individuals from the surrounding community, and worldwide, whose professional expertise in a particular subject allows students to broaden their educational experience.
Matt Evans, Mary Frances, Deanna Glosser, Stephen Janasie, Tom Heavisides, Roger Kanerva, Tom Miskelly, Mehdi Nassirpour, Erinn Nicley, Jennifer Perry, Mohammed Shahidullah, Jennifer Scanlan, John Sherrill, Darlene Snyder, Chris Widga.
