Ted Grevstad-Nordbrock PhD

Office Hours

Immediately following class or by appointment

Bio

My teaching in CRP reflects my 20+ years of professional, non-academic experience in historic preservation and planning. I also teach in the Design Studies (DSNS) core, and in the Master of Community Development (MCD) and Master of Real Estate Development (MRED) programs. My students are not only from CRP but from across the seven majors in the College of Design, Architecture and Landscape Architecture in particular.

The following courses comprise my regular teaching rotation

• CRP 3910 Field Travel
• CRP 4170/5170 Urban Revitalization
• CRP 5110 Preserving the Historic Built Environment
• CRP/MCD 5210 Historic Preservation Planning
• CRP/MRED 5280 Financing Historic Preservation Projects
• CRP 5930 Field Travel
• DSNS 1830 Design in Context

Learning outside the classroom is invaluable for students and so field travel figures prominently in many of my classes. I've taken students to Omaha, Dallas, Chicagoland, Savannah, Portland (Maine), Duluth, and many, many places around Iowa and the Midwest. We've also traveled abroad to London, Stockholm, and Edinburgh, and to the College of Design's Rome Center. We've met with professional planners, private developers, and elected officials, and visited sites that help students understand how planning, preservation, and development function in the real world.

Research Interests

My research interests revolve around historic preservation, cultural resource management (CRM), and the historic built environment. I'm especially interested in heritage as a driver of both revitalization and gentrification--most of my work to date has been in this area. But my years of experience as a practitioner, mainly in State Historic Preservation Offices, raised questions about preservation planning and administration; this is another angle on preservation that I'm currently exploring. Most of my research uses a mix of qualititative and quantitative (mainly GIS) methods.

Recently I've developed an interest in the relationship between heritage, sustainable planning, and climate change. The land access concept known as “right to roam” is another area I've been exploring with students in my teaching.

I'm a Midwesterner born and raised and the Midwest is central to most of my work. I'm interested in the heritage of ethnic settlement in the Upper Midwest region, that of Scandinavians and Germans in particular. This is a side area in which I want to do more work in the future.

Current Projects

Qualifications:

• US Secretary of the Interior's Standards and Guidelines - Professional Qualification Standards for historic preservation practice met under 36 CFR Part 61 (History and Architectural History areas)

Recent publications:

• Skrede, J., Andersen, B., & Grevstad-Nordbrock, T. (2025). The significance of culture for social sustainability – a discussion of cultural security and insecurity in neighbourhoods. Local Environment, forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2024.2424427
• Grevstad-Nordbrock, T., & Vojnovic, I. (2024). An analysis of diverse gentrification processes and their relationship to historic preservation activity in Chicago. Urban Geography, 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2024.2354669
• Grevstad-Nordbrock, T., & Vojnovic, I. (2024). Uptown on the upslope? Heritage and gentrification in Chicago’s Sheridan Park. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2024.2401811

Recent grants/scholarships:

• Fulbright Scholarship, Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, Oslo (2022): ISU planning professor wins Fulbright Scholar award for heritage policy research in Norway – College of Design

Ongoing projects:

• Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway advisor for the non-profit Prairie Rivers of Iowa (2021-present)  
• US Department of State Cultural Heritage Documentation Project, Founder and Principal Investigator (2015-present)
• ISU Preservation and Cultural Heritage Undergrad Minor and Graduate Certificate (2015-present)

Recent projects:

• The Black ISC Student Experience to 1950 – A Tracing Race at ISU Project