Tom McKeag (tommckeag)

Tom is currently a lecturer in the Plant and Microbial Biology Department, College of Natural Resources, University of California, Spring, 2011, and teaches the course "How Would Nature Do That?' with Robert Full of the Integrative Biology Department and Lewis Feldman of the Plant and Microbial Biology Department. The course approach is experiential, project-based, and interdisciplinary and serves graduate and undergraduate students from architecture, engineering, business, science and information. It is held in the Cal Design Space, a joint effort of the College of Environmental Design and the Haas School of Business.

He was also the course moderator for the graduate seminar “How Would Nature Do That?” offered through the Integrative Biology department of the University of California, Berkeley, Fall, 2008.

Tom is an Adjunct Professor at the California College of the Arts, and teaches "How Would Nature Do That?", an upper division interdisciplinary studio course that teaches innovation using bio-inspired design. He had co-taught the course “Applied Biology for Designers and Artists” for four semesters since 2006. The course linked the worlds of biology and design through training in biomimicry. He also established the nation’s first public school elementary course in biomimcry in the Dixie School District, Marin County, through California’s Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program in 2006. In June of 2008, he taught the nation’s first summer camp devoted to biomimicry at the Madden Outdoor Education Center in Kent Hills, New York.

He is a licensed landscape architect in private practice and holds masters’ degrees in Community Planning (University of Rhode Island) and Landscape Architecture (UC Berkeley).