Dr. Joseph M. Simpson received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Oklahoma State University in 2013 with a concentration in environmental sociology and social psychology. He is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M University-San Antonio and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Communication. He lectures in environmental sociology, social psychology, and quantitative methods. His recent publications with his co-author Dr. Jennifer Correa, “Building Walls Destroying Borderlands” in Nature and Society and “Abrogation of Public Trust in the Protected Lands of the Lower Rio Grande Valley” in Society and Natural Resources interrogate how the intensification of border security over the last twenty years has eroded the intuitional protection of ecological resources in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. He is currently pursuing a National Science Foundation (NSF) Dynamics of Integrated Social Ecologic Systems grant with a multi-institutional and interdisciplinary team of sociologists and wildlife ecologists led by Dr. Timothy Keitt of UT-Austin titled “Revealing the Socio-Environmental System of the Lower Rio Grande Valley.” This extends his sociological work into a more holistic frame of socio-ecological dynamics.  He is also co-pi on an NSF S-STEM grant titled “Creating Educational Pathways and Cultivating Leadership at a Hispanic-Serving Regional University to Prepare Undergraduates for STEM Careers in Water Science and Technology Fields.”  The Texas A&M University-San Antonio Research Council awarded him a grant to conduct a water conservation social survey of San Antonio. He is working with an S-STEM scholarship student on the analysis.