As a historian of 20^th century U.S. and vernacular architectural history I study the ways that the built environment and landscapes reveal the past.My book The Seattle Bungalow: People and Houses 1900-1940 showed how ordinary people's expanded ability to consume influenced early twentieth-century neighborhood architecture. My current work The Toxic House focuses on the rapid transformation of building materials after World War II. Petroleum-based components in modern houses created noncontiguous but linked environments that threatened the bodies of residents and workers. A portion of this project appears in Technology and Culture April 2011 in the article Mobile Home Syndrome: Engineered Woods and the Making of a New Domestic Ecology in the Post World War II Era.

Along with classes in 20^th century U.S. history I teach in CSU s MA program in Public History particularly the historic preservation and cultural resource management concentrations. My teaching brings together my academic research and my experience as a local historic preservation officer CRM consultant and member of various historic preservation review boards. With this background I help prepare our Public History graduate students to enter careers as fully-trained scholars who can take their historical knowledge and skills to public audiences.

Since 2007 I have been active as a founder and a Faculty Council member of CSU's Public Lands History Center. I have overseen researchers and students on projects with the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service. A sample includes a historic furnishing plan for the Olaus Murie Homestead in Grand Teton NP a National Historic Landmark evaluation for one of the first Forest Service smokejumper training sites a National Register of Historic Places context for trails in Zion NP and oral histories of retired Forest Service employees.