Current & Past Scholars

Photo of three people seated in a communal gathering space on Eden Hall Campus, inside a building with a large skylight and tall plant wall

Rachel Carson Visiting Scholars are experts in six areas central to the mission of Chatham University’s Falk School:

  1. natural systems, including environmental science and natural resource conservation

  2. sustainable built systems, including green buildings and renewable energy

  3. equitable community development

  4. sustainable business practices

  5. food studies

  6. environmentally-inspired writing and communication

Rachel Carson Visiting Scholars take an intersectional approach to exploring the root causes of social and ecological crises; they broaden our understanding of possibilities and pathways towards a regenerative, climate-positive future.

Rachel Carson Scholars are leaders in their fields – whether they come from academia, business, government, or community organizations.

And they are proudly hosted at Chatham University as it stewards the legacy of its powerful alumna and advances a vision of equitable progress within a vital, living Earth.

Exchanging Ideas

Hear from Zygmunt J. B. Plater, inaugural Rachel Carson Visiting Scholar, and Lou Leonard, dean of the Falk School of Sustainability & Environment and Eden Hall Campus on what makes the program remarkable.

Current Scholar: Joseph Sarkis

Joseph Sarkis is a Professor within Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s (WPI) Business School.

Joseph Sarkis earned his Ph.D. in Management Science from SUNY at Buffalo. His teaching and research interests include topics in Business and the Natural Environment, Sustainability, Operations, Logistics, Technology, and Supply Chain Management. Dr. Sarkis has hundreds of publications across a wide range of topics and published 13 books. He has been a Web-of-Science (Clarivate) highly-cited researcher from 2016-2024. 

Currently, Dr. Sarkis serves on several editorial boards for a broad variety of journals, including sustainability, operations and manufacturing, technology management, production, and information systems journals. He is the former editor of IEEE Engineering Management Review and Management Research Review and was a visiting scholar at various international locations in European, African, Asian, and North American universities. He is an AT&T Industrial Ecology Fellow, an international program coordinator for the Greening of Industry Network, and chair of the Future Earth Circular Economy Working group. Dr. Sarkis is also co-editor of the Greening of Industry Networks Springer-Nature Book series. He currently serves as the Chair d’Excellence for Circular Economy, Digitization, and Transportation at the Universite Polytechnique Hauts de France.

Past Scholars

  • Portrait of Kelly Kay smiling

    Kelly Kay

    Associate Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles

  • Photo of Farha Ternikar

    Farha Ternikar

    Professor of Sociology and Director of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at Le Moyne College

  • Photo of Zygmunt J. B. Plater

    Zygmunt J. B. Plater

    Professor at Boston College Law School