B.Sc.(Eng.) in Environmental Engineering and an M.Sc. in Soil Science from the University of Guelph (Canada) Ph.D. in Soil Science from the University of Alberta (Canada)
Prof. Plante joined the Department of Earth & Environmental Science in 2007. He currently serves as Undergraduate Chair in the department and as the Faculty Director of the University Scholars program at the University’s Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships (CURF). Before coming to Penn, Prof. Plante was a research associate at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University, and a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute for Agronomic Research in Versailles, France. He holds a B.Sc.(Eng.) in Environmental Engineering and an M.Sc. in Soil Science from the University of Guelph (Canada), and a Ph.D. in Soil Science from the University of Alberta (Canada). Prof. Plante is a soil scientist by training and uses biological, chemical and thermal methods to study carbon storage and cycling in soils. Prof. Plante has worked at study sites in Mongolia, Puerto Rico, New Zealand, west Africa and across the U.S. and Europe. He teaches courses in introductory environmental science, soil science, biogeochemistry, and the Anthropocene. He also teaches a Penn Global Seminar (PGS) on environmental sustainability that has traveled to Iceland and New Zealand.