Tony Colella

I am a part-time faculty member in the School of Geography, Development, and the Environment at the UA, where I also completed my PhD in 2020. I teach courses on a variety of subjects, including biogeography, climate, water resources, physical geography, and more. I enjoy teaching all classes and at all levels, but my favorite area to teach in is biogeography, simply because there's so much to know about life across time and space. I first taught SGDE's upper division class on biogeography in 2016 and I continue to teach it every fall semester.

I'm also a researcher in the SGDE and with the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, where I'm always learning and sharing about something new. Some of the recent projects I've been involved with have included green infrastructure and environmental justice, Colorado River law, assessments of public engagement from the US Army Corps of Engineers, and studies of landfill impacts on the well-being of nearby residents.

My dissertation research examined the experiences of queer (folks who identify with minority gender identities and/or sexual orientations) academics in university biosciences, and a lot of my own work is around that theme. I'm also a faculty mentor for the NSF-funded UA/Pima Community College Bridge Program for Inclusive STEM Mentoring, which helps students make the jump from Pima to complete a STEM degree at UA.