CCS welcomes Moncrieff Cochran as Adjunct Scientist

March 3, 2015

Moncrieff (Mon) Cochran, PhD, has been appointed Adjunct Scientist at the Center for Coastal Studies.

Mon Cochran is Professor Emeritus in Human Development within the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University, where he completed a 35 year career in June, 2008 focused on the ecology of human development, with early care and education, parent empowerment, and parenting education as substantive foci within that conceptual framework.  His academic degrees are in social relations from Harvard College (BA), and education and psychology from the University of Michigan (MA and Ph.D.).  Mon received an honorary doctorate from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden in 1999.

While at Cornell Mon played a major role in the development of the human ecological framework, working with Dr. Urie Bronfenbrenner.  Mon’s research and extension outreach concentrated on ecological systems mediating the relationship between the young child and encompassing social and physical environments.

From 2008-11 Mon had an appointment as Visiting Professor of Child Development in the Eliot Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University, where he assisted in the re-design of the department’s Early Childhood Education Program and built a collaboration with the City of Somerville.  At the national level he has served on the Governing Boards of the Family Resource Coalition and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).  Between 2007-2009 he served as Senior Advisor to the NAEYC Office of Applied Research.

Most recently Mon has shifted his focus to understanding human impacts on the natural environment, using James Lovelock’s Gaia paradigm with its emphasis on complex interactions among the oceans, the atmosphere, and the earth’s crust.

He is currently completing a series of enhanced e-books for young readers (9-12 year-olds) in narrative form that introduces the fundamentals of climate science (book 1), presents the nature and workings of alternative energy sources (solar, wind, hydro, book 2), and takes readers on trips to ‘alternative energy islands’ in Denmark, Germany, and the U.S.

Set primarily on Pleasant Bay in Orleans, the book series will be backed by a website containing an array of resources that will expand the concepts and knowledge presented in the book series.

Mon serves on the governing boards of the Friends of Pleasant Bay and the Orleans Conservation Trust.  He is a member of the Open Space Committee for the Town of Orleans.