THE GREEN: PEOPLE & PROFILES

BIO

Raquel Rivera Pinderhughes is currently a Professor of Urban Studies, San Francisco State University. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology, with specialization in Urban Sociology, in 1989 from the City Graduate School of New York. Her research and teaching areas at SFSU include: Urban Environmental Planning & Policy, Sustainable Development in Cities, Urban Infrastructure Development & Management, Environmental Justice/Equity; Sustainable Urban Agriculture, Appropriate Technologies; Alternative Urban Futures, Social Policy & Family, and Research Methods.

She was promoted to associate professor in 1995, tenured in 1998, served as the director of the Urban Studies Program from 1998-2001, and was promoted to full professor in 2001. From 1999 through 2001 she served as the coordinator and principle grant writer for an innovative Intra-System Educational Excellence Transfer Program, which is designed to create a joint SFSU-Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Masters Program in City and Regional Planning.

Professor Rivera Pinderhughes has received an impressive number of awards for excellence in teaching. They include: recognition in 2000 from SFSU's Center for Enhancement of Teaching, Student Recognition of Excellence in Advising and General Education at SFSU in 1999, 1998, 1997 and 1995, recognition of Inspiring General Education Teacher Award at SFSU in 1996, and a prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award from the Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Association in 1996.

She has also received a significant number of awards for professional development and innovation in teaching, these include among others: a Presidential Award in 1995; awards from the International Programs/Community Service Learning Programs to create an international course structured around a 12-day international student learning experience focused on urban planning and sustainable development in Havana, Cuba in 1999 and 2000.

She won the International Programs Grant for Curriculum Enhancement to collect case studies of sustainable development projects in cities throughout the world in 1998. The case studies she collected come from 36 countries and 70 cities throughout the world. She uses these cases to illustrate best practice models in the courses she regularly teaches on Sustainable Development in Cities and Alternative Urban Futures. Many of these case studies she collected are featured in her forthcoming urban environmental planning textbook entitled: Alternative Urban Futures: Sustainable Developing Planning in Cities Throughout the World (Rowman and Middlefield, 2004).

Professor Rivera Pinderhughes has exhibited a consistently innovative approach to teaching, including her development of a highly popular international student learning experience which takes SFSU students to Cuba to study environmental planning and policy; innovative assignments which include: students researching and designing sustainable urban appropriate technologies such as composting toilets, solar food dryers, bicycle cargo systems, and hydroponic seed starting greenhouses (featured on her web site), students researching and writing a hands-on, how-to manual for sustainable urban living for which they are currently seeking a publisher, students producing a CD-ROM of high quality PowerPoint presentations which summarize successful urban planning initiatives throughout the world.

Her most recent contribution to undergraduate education in the institution, community and professional fields is directing an off-campus college program at the Delancey Street Foundation. This innovative undergraduate program is designed to offer Delancey Street residents an opportunity to pursue their entire college education on site at Delancey Street. Delancey Street is a highly successful reeducation program for convicts and drug addicts. All of the students in the college program have spent time in prison and are long-term residents (from 5 to 15 years) in Delancey Street. The program is taught entirely by volunteer faculty. In addition to directing the program, recruiting faculty and advising students, Professor Rivera Pinderhughes is the core professor in Urban Studies. The special characteristics of the program and student body have presented a number of administrative and teaching challenges, which have required Professor Rivera Pinderhughes to develop and implement a wide range of teaching innovations.

Raquel Pinderhughes' Alternative Urban Futures explains what we know how to do now better than nearly any other book we've yet seen. In a little over 200 well-footnoted pages, Pinderhughes covers the basic innovations for dealing with water, energy, transportation waste and food.

Urban planners and policymakers will have to promote land uses and land use policies principally developed to shape the urban environment in ecologically responsible ways and enhance the livability of human settlements. They will need to support processes and technologies that are explicitly designed to use fewer resources and produce less waste, reduce inefficient patterns of production, distribution, and consumption, use water more efficiently, reduce dependency on nonrenewable resources, and increase reliance on renewable energy sources.