Rate My Professor Christine Jocoy

Christine L. Jocoy is a Professor in the Department of Geography at California State University, Long Beach. She earned her Ph.D. in Geography from The Pennsylvania State University in 2004, M.S. in Geography from the same institution in 1998, and B.A. in Geography with Departmental Honors from Vassar College. A broadly trained human geographer, her academic interests include urban geography, land use planning, city politics related to housing and homelessness, urban environmental sustainability and climate action, and the historical geography of urban neighborhoods. Her research examines conflicts over land use, with current projects focusing on the politics of creating and implementing policies to mitigate and adapt to climate change in cities. Funded by grants from California State University’s Office of International Programs (CSU-IP) Creating Climate Change Collaboration (4C), the John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation, and the METRANS Transportation Center, her work has supported five graduate and seven undergraduate student research assistants through CSULB programs including UROP, LAEP, and ORSP SSRA, as well as two high school interns for course credit.

In recognition of her contributions, Dr. Jocoy received the 2024-25 President’s Award for Outstanding Faculty Achievement for sustained effort aligning with CSULB's Beach 2030 strategic initiatives. She also holds the CSULB Scholarly and Creative Activities Award (SCAC) Mini-Grant for Competing Models of Economic Development in Long Beach, CA: Port Expansion and Downtown, and was a 2021 faculty stipend recipient for How Not to Lie with Maps: Ethics in Geospatial Science and Technologies. As Director of the Applied Internship Program in Geography and Environmental Science and Policy, she provides students professional development and career-readiness training for public service roles in urban and environmental planning. Her teaching emphasizes community engagement and lifelong learning about local places. Service includes curriculum development and assessment, and evaluation and mentorship of retention, tenure, and promotion candidates. Key publications comprise Green growth machines? Competing discourses of urban sustainability in Long Beach, California (Local Government Studies, 2018), Counting the homeless: the culture of quantification in American social policy (cultural geographies, 2012), and Plagiarism by Adult Learners Online: A case study in detection and remediation (International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 2006, with David DiBiase). She has been named a Sustainability Champion at CSULB.