Dr. Chris Leininger
Senior Director of Workforce Innovation
PhD. Building Performance and Diagnostics, LEED GA
A tenured faculty member in the Parks and Conservation program – Biology Department – at Slippery Rock University (SRU), Dr. Leininger has more than 25 years of teaching experience across a range of topics, including environmental resource analysis, sustainable park and conservation planning, environmental grant writing, construction technology, sustainable design, and building performance. He was also the Lead Faculty and Director of the Mascaro Construction Technology and Management program at Community College of Beaver County.
At GBA, Chris provides regional workforce innovation trainings, upskilling, and credentialling for students and career professionals in the areas of sustainable design, green building and sustainable construction management.
Chris completed his PhD. at the Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics in the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, where he was the teaching and research assistant for his advisor, Dr. Volker Hartkopf. His dissertation, Food Producing Facades Key to a Sustainable Future, focused on enhancing building performance by planting food producing plants on a living façade on the CMU campus. This research explored the role of living systems providing ecosystem services to reduce the amount of fossil fuels needed for food production and air-conditioning, decreasing urban heat island effect with green infrastructure, improving urban air quality and utilizing roof collected rainwater for irrigation.
As an undergraduate architecture student at Iowa State University, Chris participated in an Architecture Foreign Study program at Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul, Turkey. His Master’s thesis as a student in the MS in Sustainable Systems program was the design and construction of a timber frame, straw bale/clay straw barn at SRU’s Macoskey Center, where he was also President of the Alternative Living Technologies and Energy Research Project. He also works on sustainable design, construction and consulting projects with his company, Sustainable Home Designs, LLC. Chris recently made presentations and consulted on projects internationally in Istanbul, Turkey, and he has worked in architectural offices in New Jersey; Washington, D.C.; and Western Pa.
Education
- BA Architecture, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
- MS Sustainable Systems, Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania
- PhD. Building Performance and Diagnostics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania