David Wilsey
Director, Masters of Development Practice Program
Humphrey School of Public Affairs & Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change
University of Minnesota Twin Cities

IAS Short-Term Fellow, The Mission of the Land Grant/Land Grab University

Dave Wilsey is an interdisciplinary practitioner, educator, and scholar focused on sustainability and on the complex interrelationships between lives, livelihoods, and the environment. Since 2013, he has directed the Masters in Development Practice (MDP) program, teaching several courses and managing a dynamic portfolio of community-engaged projects that are developed through partnerships with local, national, and international organizations. Much of his current research focuses on the development of market systems that feature non-timber forest products, and on program design and pedagogy to support emerging sustainable/community development practitioners. 

Prior to joining the MDP program, Wilsey spent five years as an associate Extension professor and educator with the University of Minnesota Extension Center for Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Sciences. He focused largely on community-engaged program development and collaborative efforts with community leaders from the Fond du Lac Band and at the FDL Tribal College led to the development of the federally-funded 13 Moons Tribal Extension Program. 

Through the IAS short term fellowship focused on the Land Grant/Land Grab University, he hopes to better recognize and understand the fraught nature of the University’s relationship with Indigenous peoples, and to explore existing and yet-to-be-imagined frameworks supportive of purposeful, strategic action toward necessary transformations.