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SGDE Welcomes New Faculty

Aug. 31, 2026

Welcome to our new faculty members, whose diverse expertise and experience reflect the breadth and depth of research, teaching, and community engagement that define the School of Geography, Development & Environment!

 

Caitlyn Hill
Assistant Professor of Practice, School of Geography, Development and Environment

Woman with auburn hair and black turtleneck

Caitlyn Hill (Ph.D., Arizona State University) is an assistant professor of practice in the School of Geography, Development and Environment. She also holds a second appointment as an instructor in the Biosystems Engineering Department and will be leading the Future Earth Resilience minor program at the W.A. Franke Honors College. Hill researches how water, climate, disasters, and society interact across coupled human and environmental systems, with particular attention to environmental risk, decision-making under uncertainty, and the ways communities and institutions respond to environmental stress. Hill uses transdisciplinary approaches to connect hydrologic and environmental science with policy, institutions, and community expertise.

Hill’s background spans water resources, environmental remediation, disaster resilience, and applied environmental decision-making in the United States and internationally. Her work focuses on complex water and resilience challenges and how cultural, social, and environmental dimensions of resilience interact. In her free time, Hill enjoys rock climbing and trail running. 

 

Karen King
Assistant Professor, School of Geography, Development and Environment

Woman with brown hair and nose ring outside smiling

Karen King (Ph.D., University of Idaho) is a biogeographer who researches Quaternary landscape dynamics and paleoenvironmental reconstruction. Her work uses dendrochronology and spatial analysis to examine how environmental change affects landscapes and vegetation communities, with a focus on understanding how climate conditions have shaped ecosystems over time.

King’s research explores how hydrologic intensification and other impacts of a warming climate are affecting montane forest communities across North America and the Caribbean. Her research connects present-day climatic and ecological processes with those that functioned in the past, providing a historical perspective for understanding environmental change. 

 

 

Ufuoma Ovienmhada
Assistant Professor, School of Geography, Development and Environment

Woman with black hair and wearing glasses is in a soft gray suit and soft lighting in front of her

Ufuoma Ovienmhada (Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is an engineer by education and geographer by training, generating data-driven actionable insights about the environmental risks experienced by marginalized identities in the United States. Previously a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona, she joins now as an assistant professor in the School of Geography, Development and Environment. 

Ovienmhada’s research agenda uses community engagement, geospatial data science, remote sensing, and critical geographic inquiry to generate empirical analyses that advance environmental and social justice movements. Her current work focuses on the dual crises of climate change and mass incarceration, documenting the environmental risks that people are exposed to during incarceration in the United States. 

She places significant emphasis on translational research, including public-facing GIS tools like the Toxic Prisons Mapping Project and partnerships with community organizers, and legal and legislative stakeholders. Her work has been featured by the Marshall Project, Grist, and Reuters.

 

Shelby Smith
Assistant Professor of Practice, School of Geography, Development and Environment

Woman with blonde hair and wearing glasses

Shelby Lillian Smith (Ph.D., University of Arizona) is an assistant professor of practice in the School of Geography, Development and Environment. She is a political geographer whose scholarship engages socio-spatial theory, geohumanities, and the geographies of belonging, with particular attention to how power and identity become inscribed onto everyday spaces. 

Smith’s current work considers how control over books, reading, and literacy is itself a spatial and political act — shaping whose stories reach a classroom or a public library shelf, and which histories and geographies become visible, contested, or erased in the process.