The HILC community is very fortunate to have four highly involved faculty members in our community. These full-time Cornell faculty members have a strong interest in and devotion to the students who live in the halls. They attend, sponsor, and plan programs within HILC with the intent to know you better and make your transition to Cornell a successful one. Below is some brief information about who they are and their respective areas of expertise.
Emeritus Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Here at Cornell Pete Loucks is on the faculty of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Institute for Public Affairs. His 'thing' is modelling environmental,public, and water resource systems. In another life he flew Navy airplanes and worked as a forester in Vermont and on the West Coast.Then he came here to get re-educated and stayed. Part of his benefits of being here are being able to walk to and from his job and engage in a game of squash or tennis each day. Obviously another of his benefits is being associated with HILC! When on leaves from Cornell he has spent some time as an economist at the World Bank,and teaching and doing research in Australia, Austria, Germany and in The Netherlands as well as at the Universities of Colorado and Texas, Harvard, Yale, and MIT. He has been a consultant to private and government agencies and various organizations of the United Nations, and NATO, involved in regional water resources development planning in Asia, Australia, Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. He currently serves on the Governing Board of the Natural Heritage Institute, a law firm specializing in ecosystem restoration. That firm has him working on mitigating the adverse impacts of hydropower projects in Ghana and in the Lower Mekong Basin in South East Asia.
Senior Lecturer, Department of Asian Studies
Thuy Tranviet received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2014. Her doctoral research examines how benefits are perceived and manifested in the emergent field of International Service Learning (ISL). An interdisciplinary scholar, her broad research interests are within the framework of international education, higher education and international/global service-learning encompassing development studies, gender studies, philanthropic studies,and development communication. She is particularly interested in connecting and engaging ISL in all academic disciplines especially disciplines in the Humanities. Her background training includes literary studies/Southeast Asian literature and film.She has been teaching Vietnamese in the Department of Asian Studies since 2000. She teaches Vietnamese at all levels including advanced courses in newspaper reading and Vietnamese contemporary literature.
Senior Lecturer, Science and Technology Studies
Dr. Christine Leuenberger's research is specialized in Science & Technology Studies, qualitative methods, sociology of medicine, classical and contemporary sociological theory, sociology of knowledge, interactional sociology, sociology of culture, transformation studies of Eastern Europe, Middle Eastern Studies, Peace Studies, and the sociology and history of the human and behavioral sciences. Her current research is on the social impact of borders and barriers in a global context and the history and sociology of cartography in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. She is also engaged in peace and educational initiatives in conflict regions in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.
