Russell's studio teaching explores critical issues of sustainability, culture and landscape architecture and encourages students to explore a range of digital and analogue media as a means for initiating site discovery and developing form generation. His studios are often framed through the lens of interdisciplinary service learning community design projects. Additionally, professor Russell has been an active participant within the college's Community Research and Design Center where he has contributed and participated in over 10 service learning design projects since joining the faculty in 2010.