Peggy (Peg) Petrzelka, Associate Professor, joined Utah State University in 2001. She received her M.S. in Rural Sociology and PhD in Sociology from Iowa State University. Her BA is in Political Science from College of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN.
Peg’s research interests focus on the interrelationships between the physical and social environment in a number of settings. Domestically, her current work examines (1) absentee landowners of agricultural land and obstacles to their participation in conservation management on their land and (2) past and present community reactions to polluting industries. Internationally, she and colleagues have begun research on a unique guest worker program established between Spain and Morocco, where mothers of dependent children are recruited to pick strawberries in Southern Spain. The program is touted by the European Union as one to emulate throughout EU countries, thus we are involved in both evaluating the program as well as researching the gendered aspects of the program.
She teaches Sociology of the Environment and Natural Resources, Methods of Social Research and the Sociology Capstone Research Seminar at the undergraduate level. At the graduate level she teaches Public Sociology: Ecological Justice and Community Action.
She has spent several years in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco as a Peace Corps Volunteer and Fulbright Scholar, and speaks Moroccan Arabic (with a bit of Imazighen thrown in). She is the proud parent of 9 chickens and the proud aunt of 9 nieces and nephews, enjoys odd numbers, hiking, gardening and traveling.