Eric Strauss

Organization/Institution
About Me (Bio)
Dr. Strauss came to LMU from Boston College in 2010 as a Presidential Professor of Urban Ecology and is the Founding Director of the new Center for Urban Resilience (CURes). This Center focuses on community-based ecological research, science education and career development. He also serves as and director of a new interdisciplinary graduate program that is scheduled to start in the fall of 2012 and is Senior Editor of the online peer-reviewed Cities and the Environment Journal. With research specialties in animal behavior, urban ecosystem dynamics and science education, Eric Strauss extended the model for traditional faculty scholarship by helping to co-found the Urban Ecology Institute in Boston in the fall of 1998, which provides educational,research and restoration programs to under served neighborhoods and their residents. While serving as Science Director at UEI and a faculty member at Boston College until 2010, his team was awarded over $7M in funding from the National Science Foundation to conduct urban ecology research through the Urban Long Term Research Area Program (ULTAex), implement interdisciplinary secondary school and college ecology programs and develop the first national urban ecology curriculum for high school students. His current research includes collaborative long-term studies of coyotes, feral cats,shorebirds and other vertebrates. His courses include Urban Ecology,Animal Behavior, Ecology of a Dynamic Planet, Introductory Biology and Biology for Engineers. In addition, he is the senior author of Biology: The Web of Life and the Teaching Company video series, Earth At The Crossroads: Understanding The Ecology Of A Changing Planet. Strauss received his PhD in 1990 from Tufts University with a focus in behavioral ecology.
Loyola Marymount University (LMU)
08/01/2015

This project will examine the relationship between teacher professional development associated with newly developed modules in urban ecology and the achievement and engagement of long-term English learners (LTEL).  Existing Urban Ecology learning modules will be enhanced to accommodate the needs of LTELs, and teachers will participate in professional development aimed at using the new materials to effectively integrate academic science discourse and literacy development for LTELs.

Loyola Marymount University (LMU)
10/01/2010

The Lynch School of Education and the Urban Ecology Institute at Boston College are partnering with the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) to develop, test, evaluate and disseminate a year-long set of urban ecology course materials for use in high school-level capstone science courses. The standards-based materials emphasize locally-relevant field studies and incorporate principles of Universal Design for Learning and Educative Curriculum.