Reid Bertone-Johnson

Reid Bertone-Johnson received a B.S. from Tufts University, where he majored in geological sciences and environmental studies. He received an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1998. After five years of teaching earth science, environmental science and a wilderness survival course at Amherst Regional High School in Amherst, Massachusetts, Reid went back to graduate school to earn an M.L.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has worked professionally for Dodson Associates (now Dodson/Flinker), a landscape architecture and planning firm, and for the Library of American Landscape History. 

Bertone-Johnson has been at Smith since 2007 and has taught design studios for the art department and in the landscape studies program.  For eight years he was also staff in the Center for the Environment, Ecological Design and Sustainability [CEEDS] as the manager of the Ada & Archibald MacLeish Field Station. Reid is now a senior lecturer in the landscape studies program, teaching a range of courses including design studios and seminars. He also directs the annual Landscape Studies Lecture Series (LSS 100: Landscape, Environment, and Design) every Spring.

Since arriving at Smith, Bertone-Johnson has expanded the landscape studies studio program and integrated the work of his studio classes into projects important to both Smith College and the City of Northampton. He develops studio projects for his students that take advantage of his own expertise in sustainable landscape design, broad-scale landscape design, regional planning, and the interpretation and preservation of historic landscapes. His students generate creative solutions to complex problems for actual clients such as the Mill River Greenway, Healthy Hampshire, Friends of Northampton Trails, Community Action Pioneer Valley, and the City’s Office of Planning and Sustainability.

Bertone-Johnson has been part of the Design Thinking Initiative (DTI) since its inception. His work with DTI has helped broaden the range of tangible, hands-on learning opportunities for Smith students both on campus and through study away opportunities. In addition to his work in Landscape Studies, Reid is the co-director of the Interdisciplinary Making Concentration (IMX).  He combines all of his professional and academic interests and expertise in research projects within the Greenway Lab, which he co-directs with Gaby Immerman, Senior Lecturer in Biology, and his own project designing, making, and deploying a mobile park-making kit – a ParKit – with a team of undergraduate students researchers.