Prof. Michael A. Krassa

Michael Krassa joined the University of Illinois faculty in 1984 after receiving the PhD from Washington University. At Illinois he served as professor and chair of Human Dimensions of Environmental Systems until he became emeritus. As emeritus professor at Illinois he continues his research and works with students at Illinois as a member of Professor Ming Kuo's Landscape and Human Health Laboratory.  He now also serves as the Avriel Shull Clinical Professor at Purdue University and currently is a candidate for a second doctorate (in Urban and Environmental Engineering) via what he jokingly calls the Nerd Completion Program. This program, for university professors who do interdisciplinary research, allows them to earn the ScD (an advanced PhD) in a second field related to their work while continuing to hold the University Professor rank, expand their research, and supervise graduate students.

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Professor Krassa has written over a hundred articles, books, and papers that examine the interplay of humans with their physical and social environments.  Today his primary focus is on the neighborhood environment, it's physical design, and the attitudes, social relations, beliefs, and behaviors of those who live there. He has studied how a neighborhood's built, natural, social, and economic environments affect interpersonal friendship and information networks, business climates, the residents' receptivity to change, their politics, and even their physical and mental health.

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Outside his ivory tower he remains an active member of his civic community, working to make Champaign, Urbana, and Illinois better places to live, more responsive to their citizens, and building a higher sense of community and commitment among the residents. He has worked with political campaigns, charitable and religious groups, planning commissions, advisory boards, civic organizations, and others to help build a more informed, unified, and neighborly local community. He is also a frequent consultant to architects, developers, planners, and others interested in creating more suitable, sustainable, healthier and inhabitable residential settings.

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In leisure time he enjoys photography, travel, literature, history, and is working to become a master gardener. Besides academic pieces he writes occasional OpEd's, often with his friend and former student, Ben Radcliff, as well as periodic commercial travel guides focused on finding and understanding the hidden history that still can be unearthed in modern American places. While highly computer literate he regularly decompresses from the artificial urgency of constant connectivity by unplugging for extended periods of time, writing letters, notes, and even drafts of some manuscripts using his beloved artisan fountain pen instead of a keyboard, and having real conversations instead of asynchronous electronic ones. He recommends that everybody should do this on a regular schedule as a way of enhancing both their lives and society writ large. 

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In the warmer months he often can be found exploring the Great Northwoods of America and Southern Canada, preferably after the last snowstorm. He tends to save Southern travels for times it is cold or snowy at home.