Faculty
Program Coordinator
Melinda Stone is an interdisciplinary artist who has been engaging in community-based projects for most of her life.
- Permaculture Design Teaching Certificate, Permaculture Institute of North America, 2021
- UC San Diego, PhD, 2003
- Cal Poly Humboldt, BA, 1989
- Permaculture
- Community creation
- Nature immersion practices
Full-Time Faculty
David Silver is a professor of environmental studies and affiliate faculty of urban agriculture. He teaches classes on urban agriculture, hyper-local food systems, and food, culture, and storytelling. David recently published The Farm at Black Mountain College (Atelier Editions and Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, 2024), the product of a decade's worth of original research. He serves as the faculty advisor...
- PhD, American Studies, University of Maryland
- BA, English, University of California, Los Angeles
Seth Wachtel is the program director of the Architecture & Community Design program. He has worked in architecture and construction in India, Colombia, Haiti, Israel, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Zambia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. His focus is on culturally and environmentally appropriate design and the development of innovative construction techniques that produce regenerative and aesthetically fitting buildings and landscapes for human environments.
Professor Wachtel...
- UC Berkeley, MArch in Architecture, 1987
- UC Berkeley, BA in Architecture, 1982
- Community Engaged Design
- Construction Innovation
- Tiny House Villages
- Food Security Gardens
- Environmentally Appropriate Design
Instructor
Novella Carpenter is the author of Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer and The Essential Urban Farmer. She attended UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, where she studied with Michael Pollan. She lives in Oakland where she runs GhostTown Farm, a 1/10 of an acre homestead with an orchard, honey bees, chickens, and lots of vegetables.
- UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism