Dr. Flannery is involved with many different population groups and instructional methods, including service learning, feminist activism, K-12 education, and environmental education and justice. For many years, her students have been engaged in fundraising and pesticide awareness programs to migrant farm workers and their families in Butte and Glenn Counties, and created educational materials for women’s organizations and the local environmental health department.  Moreover, Diana and her students are active participants in events like Take Back the Night, Scour and Devour, and Diversion Excursion.  Her teaching style and classroom environment is politically driven, socially conscious, student centered and empowerment driven.

For the past 8 years she has been a faculty fellow with the Introduction to University Life course reaching hundreds of first year students each semester in a sexual health program. She has been conducting survey research on the sexual behaviors of Chico State freshman and sharing this research with the first year students each fall.  Her sexual health research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and is shared in numerous venues across campus.

Dr. Flannery has worked for the past two years with the State Department of Health Services and the National Environmental Health Association to create a much needed option in Environmental Health for CSU, Chico students, with approval Spring 2008. The environmental health option fulfills several of the university’s strategic goals and will educate individuals who not only will be wise environmental stewards but will have the knowledge and skills to protect their own communities as part of their profession.

Dr. Flannery merges her teaching and scholarly work and communicates her results to the professional and academic communities.  She is actively involved with the first-year experience, service learning, campus activism, participates in student research, and has spearheaded the new option in environmental health.