Dr. Curt Gervich

I am an environmental planner. I help communities, usually small towns and cities, envision their future and develop a roadmap to meet their goals. As an environmental planner I make sure that these goals are infused with principles of sustainability, justice and equity, and resilience. Often I work in contexts where food, water, energy and biodiversity intersect. My specialty is community engagement and participatory planning. This means I create innovative ways for grassroots stakeholders to be involved in planning processes. I became interested in this field when I was young. I watched my hometown, Iowa Falls, Iowa, go through a difficult transition as a result of the agricultural crisis of the 1980s.

I attended Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and then moved to Alaska to do ecological field research and community development in the forest industry. I completed my master's degree at the University of Vermont in Natural Resource Planning. I then went to work as a watershed planner in the Etowah Watershed of north Georgia. I completed my Ph.D. at Virginia Tech in Environmental Design and Planning. I joined the faculty at SUNY Plattsburgh in 2010.