Faculty and Staff Directory

Introduction

I grew up in Kitsap county and completed my bachelor's degree at the University of Puget Sound, before heading east to pursue graduate work at Indiana University in Public Policy. My interdisciplinary graduate studies focused on environmental policy as it relates to human systems including institutions, stakeholder participation and community-based natural resource management, as well as natural systems such as forests, watersheds and the global climate. As a research assistant with the International Forestry Resources and Institutions program, I collaborated with international scholars examining the ecological and sociopolitical aspects of community-based natural resource management and coupled human and natural systems.

In 1998 I joined the faculty at Ohio State University in the interdisciplinary School of Environment and Natural Resources. Working with colleagues and students, I conducted research on collaborative environmental management, forest policy, watershed management and related environmental and natural resources policy topics. As one of the few social scientists in an environmental science program, I enjoyed helping students to integrate across disciplines and see the critical role of social science in solving environmental challenges.

In 2011 I spent a half-year sabbatical at Leuphana University in Germany, where I taught and researched in the sustainability program. This provided an opportunity to compare collaboration and water policy between the European Union and the U.S. In 2014 I returned to my home state of Washington to join UW Tacoma in its environmental science, environmental studies, and sustainability efforts.     

Current Research

I view environmental social sciences as comprising interdisciplinary fields focusing on human institutions, decisions and behaviors that affect and are affected by the environment. Understanding the human dimensions allows better use of science in decision making about complex phenomena such as global climate change, multi-level watersheds and ecosystem management to promote sustainability. My research program focuses on two primary areas: (1) collaborative environmental governance, and (2) the science-policy interface.

Collaborative environmental governance engages policy makers and managers across multiple levels of government, along with citizens, scientists, land owners, non-governmental organizations and industry, to address complex problems that neither could solve alone. By fostering learning and diffusion of ideas and promoting adaptation, collaborative environmental governance can enhance the sustainability of social and ecological systems. My research examines the integration of science, politics and management that shapes how humans affect and are affected by environment and natural resources policy. Much of this work has centered on watershed management in places like the Puget Sound, Ohio, Germany, and New Zealand. This includes questions of multi-level governance across scales, policy learning, and polycentricity.

While science for the sake of understanding is an important endeavor, science should also be enlisted to inform public policy.  While scientific specialities and jargon often challenge scientists communicating with each other, there is an even bigger challenge in generating science that is comprehensible and usable for policy design.  Features of scientific products and processes can affect the uptake of science and how it interacts with different ways of knowing to generate social learning. My research examines these products and processes across areas of expertise and scales.

I draw on a range of social science research methods, especially comparative case study (interviews, documents, observation) and survey (telephone, mail, web-based) methods. Recently I have expanded my methodological toolkit as a member of the advisory board for two German projects on participation in environmental decisions, one using case survey / meta-analysis methods and the other conducting field experiments. My most recent NSF research project includes interview and survey methods in the Puget Sound region.

I have a special interest in the research-teaching nexus. In addition to teaching courses about social science research methods, I use a “research learning” approach. This allows me to engage students as partners in collaborative research studies. As in service learning, the students not only perform research tasks, they also reflect on their experiences and link them to course content.

Teaching

Teaching was my motivation for choosing a career in academia, and I have enjoyed opportunities to develop and teach many different courses to facilitate student learning. Moreover, I have contributed guest lectures and discussion facilitation in a wide range of courses to integrate environmental politics and policy concepts across the natural and social sciences. In 2007, while at Ohio State University, I was honored to receive the Plimpton Outstanding Teaching award, my College’s top teaching recognition, as well as the Price Advising Award, my College’s top advising recognition.

I have experimented with a variety of teaching strategies to facilitate active student learning. In addition, an important teaching role for me entails mentoring students outside the classroom. I enjoy collaborating with students conducting research for their honors and thesis projects. These student-faculty partnerships have lea to jointly authored papers and conference presentations.

Through extensive feedback from students, colleagues, and pedagogical experts, I have come to see that there is no single “best” teaching approach for all contexts, and that student learning modes vary across individuals as well as within individuals at different stages of their learning. Over time, I have developed a repertoire of teaching tools to facilitate student learning, including questioning techniques, classroom discussion, reflective writing, application of material to student-relevant experiences, service learning, and playing games in the classroom.

At UW Tacoma I regularly teach TESC 201 The Science of Sustainability, TESC 345 Pollution and Public Policy, TEST 337 Natural Resources Policy: America's Public Forests and Parks, TEST 200 Fundamentals of Environmental Studies and Sustainability, and TGH303 Global Challenges: Tragedy of the Commons. In these courses, we explore policy making, human behavior, institutions and the relationship between science and decision making.

Affiliations

• American Political Science Association: Science, Technology and Environmental Politics section
• Western Political Science Association
• International Association for the Study of the Commons

Academic Service

• Coordinating Committee Co-chair, Elinor Ostrom Award on Collective Governance of the Commons, 2020-2023, International Association for the Study of the Commons.
• Committee member, Emerging Young Scholar Award, APSA Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics Section, 2023.
• Editorial Board member, Policy Studies Journal, 2010-present.
• Editorial Board member, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2009-present
• Member, Social Sciences Advisory Committee, Puget Sound Partnership Science Committee, 2014-present
• Member, External Advisory Board, National Science Foundation National Research Traineeship, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2017-2022.
• Co-chair, SIAS Faculty Advancement Task Force, 2019-2020.
• Associate Editor, Society & Natural Resources, 2015-2019.
• Member, Faculty Council Task Force on Graduate Faculty Status, 2017-2018.
• Campus Fellow, Teaching Evaluation Working Group, University of Washington Tacoma, 2014-2016.
• Coordinator, Environmental Sustainability major, University of Washington Tacoma, 2014-present.
• Member, Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies Advisory Committee, 2014-2020.
• Editor, STEP Ahead, Newsletter of the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy Section of the American Political Science Association (bi-monthly), 2011-2015.

Honors and Awards

Distinguished Teaching Award Nominee, University of Washington Tacoma, 2022.

SESYNC Distinguished Scholar, Postdoctoral Immersion Program, Annapolis MD, October 2017

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2017 Virtual Issue on Alternative and Nonregulatory Approaches to Environmental Governance, Nikolic and Koontz (2008) article included as one of 9 articles making important contributions to the field over the past 16 years.

Public Administration Review, 2016 Virtual Issue on Environmental Policy, Regulation, and Governance, Koontz and Thomas (2006) article included as one of 14 articles making important contributions to the field over the past 53 years.

Outstanding Faculty Award nominee, Outstanding Student Ceremony for Awards and Recognition (OS3s), University of Washington Tacoma 2016.

Newig, Jens, and Tomas M. Koontz. 2015. “Multi-level Governance, Policy Implementation, and Participation: The EU’s Mandated Participatory Planning Approach to Implementing Environmental Policy.” Selected for inclusion in Bache, Ian, and Matthew Flinders, Multi-level Governance: Essential Readings, Edward Elgar Publishing 2015.

Plimpton Outstanding Teaching Award, 2007, College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, The Ohio State University.

Price Advising Award, 2007, College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, The Ohio State University.

Pomerene Teaching Award recipient, 2002. College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, The Ohio State University