Kristopher R. Cleland

Graduate Lecturer

Higher Education; Environmental Sustainability; AI's Impact on Education and Sustainability; Food Insecurity, Sovereignty, & Waste; Qualitative Methods; Pedagogy; Critical Theory; and Evaluation

Kristopher R. Cleland is a PhD Candidate and Graduate Lecturer at George Mason University, and a first-generation college student with working-class origins. His dissertation research focuses on how undergraduate students use artificial intelligence to navigate college and in their everyday lives. His past research was on food insecurity, and how food pantry users perceived the way they were treated and the food they received. Additionally, he conducted evaluative work on programs providing stipends to folks living in food deserts and how recipients perceived the food they received at farmers markets.

He currently teaches INTS 210, Sustainable World, for the School of Integrative Studies, which provides an overview of the challenges and possible solutions we can practice and implement so that we can meet our present needs and the needs of future generations. In this class, students learn about the different perspectives on how we can achieve a more sustainable world, and explore how artificial intelligence presents modern challenges to sustainability but also potential solutions.

He obtained a B.A. in Sociology in 2016 from Southeastern Louisiana University (SLU), a regional university, while working full-time as a department manager at a regional grocery store. He received a M.S. in Applied Sociology in 2018 from SLU while working there as a Research Assistant for the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice.

Merely interpreting the world does little to change it for the better. We must take what we learn in the academy, determine what is unjust and just about the world through the free exchange of ideas, and—based on that knowledge and those ideas—make the world a better place.