Our teachers are more likely to ask questions than to give answers. This doesn’t mean you can’t get a straight answer out of them, just that they think it is better to encourage thoughtfulness than to impose a solution from another place or time.

Core faculty provide continuity. At least one core teacher works with the students every day; sometimes it’s four. In addition to teaching classes, they carefully monitor the progress of individual students and teams, gauging where the class is as a whole and making adjustments to the timing of the subjects being presented.

Adjunct faculty and master teachers add to the experience base of the faculty by offering a depth of experience in a particular area, such as ecology. Some work with students in the studio, others interact more frequently with students in the field.

Conway students are teachers too. They have considerable life experience and have significant skills and knowledge to share. A lot of learning happens after the faculty go home.

Core Faculty

Paul Cawood Hellmund
President/Director and Professor, Design + Planning

Paul is Conway’s big-picture guy, both in terms of the future of the school and in thinking about the broader landscape. He is a landscape architect and planner whose focus is improving the relationship between people and nature, especially in urban, suburban, and degraded landscapes. Born and raised in Panama and Conway’s director since 2005, Paul has brought a pronounced national and international focus to Conway. //more//

 

Ken Byrne
Professor, Humanities

Ken joined the faculty in 2003, with primary responsibility for  humanities and as curriculum coordinator. Ken has been active in projects linking environmental and social health to community development efforts, both in the Connecticut River Valley region and abroad. His academic work draws on geography, philosophy, economics, anthropology, education, psychology, and literary theory to examine the relationship between people and the environment.  //more//

 

B. Kim Erslev

Professor, Landscape Design + Graphics

Kim is both a practicing architect and a landscape architect with her own firm, Salmon Falls Ecological Design. She has more than twenty years of experience with sustainable landscape and architectural design. Her current design practice focuses on the design of super-insulated passive solar homes, ecological landscapes, and co-housing communities.  //more//

 

Jono Neiger

Professor, Regenerative Design

Jono is a conservation biologist with nearly two decades of experience in land stewardship, ecological studies, restoration, and conservation commission staffing. A permaculture teacher and designer since 1996, Jono works to help organizations and individuals further their goals for stewarding their land and for creating productive, regenerative human ecosystems. He is the principal of Regenerative Design Group.  //more//

 

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Adjunct Faculty

Elizabeth Farnsworth
Conservation Biology Adjunct

Bill Lattrell
Ecology Adjunct

Glenn Motzkin
Ecology Adjunct

Keith Zaltzberg
Digital Design Instructor

 //more about adjunct faculty//

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Master Teachers

David Jacke
Master Teacher/Permaculture

Darrel Morrison
Master Teacher/Design

Joel Russell
Master Teacher/Conservation Law

Erik Van Lennep
Master Teacher/Sustainability

//more about master teachers//