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Environmental Studies Department |
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A Publication of Macalester's Environmental Studies Department
Letter From the Chair Dear Friends of Environmental Studies, As has become tradition, we had a great 2009 graduating class with 24 majors receiving their diplomas. As part of the assessment program at Macalester, we surveyed seniors regarding their experience in the ES Department. We were pleased to see that students felt they were well acquainted with the environmental issues that face the world today and gratified that students felt they were able to view environmental issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. Given the centrality of an interdisciplinary approach to environmental issues as laid out in our mission statement, we feel that our curriculum, pedagogy and department functioning is on the whole meeting the mission of the department. Also students ranked both the breadth and depth of their education in ES as “about right. I encourage you to visit the ES website to read our assessment plan and the report from 2009. Three of our graduates were given special acknowledgement by the department. Asa Diebolt and Ellie Rogers shared the Environmental Studies Citizenship Award. Asa from Lansing, New York was an Environmental Studies major with expertise in Environmental Policy. Asa was involved in MULCH – the Macalester organic garden, helped develop the Edible Forest Permaculture garden for the EcoHouse and was one of the co-originators of CERF (College Energy Revolving Fund). This is a fund that uses savings from energy efficiency projects to invest in additional energy savings projects. Ellie Rogers from White Bear Lake, MN, was an ES major with a Core in Biology. Ellie was involved in developing a couple of Green roofs projects here at Mac, one that she helped write and receive funding from the EPA to implement. Ellie was also part of the initial team of students that worked to gain funding from the College and elsewhere to open the Ecohouse (including developing a video that was sent to MTV). Ellie also worked on a Shoreline restoration project through the Action Fund grant. The Environmental Studies Scholarship Award was presented to Cael Warren. Cael from Stevens Point, WI, was an ES major with an emphasis on economics and International Studies. She has a particular interest in the interplay between the environment, economics and agriculture. Cael was one of the lead presenters of the work done by this year’s senior seminar on implementation of the Presidents’ Climate Commitment at Macalester. Cael was instrumental in developing some of the economic models for this report and spend a good deal of time educating folks on the meaning of Net Present Value! The 2009 Senior Seminar, taught by Macalester’s Sustainability Manager, Suzanne Savanick Hansen and assisted by Justin Lee ’08, developed Macalester College’s Institutional Action Plan for Carbon Neutrality. This plan provides a series of recommendations that should allow the College to meet its commitments to reduce its carbon footprint under the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment. This plan can be found on the ES website. This year we are pleased to be joined by our new climate scientist – Louisa Bradtmiller. As some of you may recall, we hired Louisa in the spring of 2008 and she deferred her start until fall 2009 so she could complete a post-doctoral program at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. In the fall, Louisa will be teaching Environmental Science, and in the spring she will be teaching Climate Science and co-teaching the Senior Seminar with Suzanne Savanick Hansen. Louisa will be in Chris Wells’ office this year as Chris spends a year on sabbatical. We are looking forward to Roopali’s return from sabbatical. She will be team-teaching a first-year class with Kelly MacGregor (Water Science and Policy). She will also being teaching her “old reliables” including the Leadership Practicum and Environmental Politics and Policy. We are also fortunate to have three “visitors” returning to the department – Jerald Dosch, Christie Manning and Stephanie Rutherford. This year’s International Roundtable should be of particular interest to ES students and faculty. The Roundtable, which will be held October 8-10 is entitled "Global Environment: The Eleventh Hour?" The keynote speaker is Dr. Robert Costanza, the Gund Professor of Ecological Economics and Director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont. I encourage all of you to attend as many sessions as possible. Welcome back to returning students and welcome to new ES majors and minors. Feel free to stop by and say hello. Dan Hornbach
Environmental Studies Honors Thesis This year, two Environmental Studies majors pursued an honors thesis. Sam Adels' project, titled "Restoring the Mississippi River Ecosystem in the Twin Cities: The Values of a Historical Approach," illustrated the uses of a historical perspective to research and understand the underlying philosophy and values of the field of ecological restoration. Hannah Wydeven's project, titled "C/N Ratios and Total Organic Carbon, as Proxies for Climate and Environmental Change in Lake Josephine, Glacier National Park, Montana," compared data of cores from Lake Josephine in order to paint a picture of climate and environmental change in this area during the late Holocene. For more details on their presentation, click here.
Art Explores People and the River Environment at Macalester This past school year, the Environmental Studies Department sponsored the Olin-Rice Smail Gallery with the theme "Born by the River" with 15 prints of artist Ron Merchant’s paintings showing scenes from the river cities along with photographs and first-person interview excerpts.
Senior Graduation Pledge This year 115 Macalester 2009 graduates signed the Senior Graduation Pledge and wore green ribbons at this year's commencement ceremonies, thanks to the work of ES seniors Becky Schneider and Sam Adels. The graduation pledge states, "I pledge to explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job I consider or any organization for which I work."
Macalester's Three Rivers Center During the second year of our three-year grant from the Mellon Foundation to establish the Three Rivers Center at Macalester College, the following activities took place in connection with the Center:
EnviroThursdays There were 24 EnviroThursday presentations during the 2008-09 school with with over 663 in attendance.
You can read more about these presentations at www.macalester.edu/environmentalstudies/envirothursday/envthurs.htm and click on the Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 links. EnviroThursdays take place every Thursday during the school year in Olin-Rice 250 at 12 noon.
Environmental Studies Faculty News
It was a great summer working on the St. Croix. Dan, Kelly MacGregor (Geology), and Mark Hove (Biology and U. MN) had five great students working with them this summer on the National Park Service funded research projects. They are investigating the impacts of sediment transport and changes in the operations of the hydroelectric dam at St. Croix Falls, WI, on mussel communities in the St. Croix River. The students were Alese Colehour, Karen Jackson, Carl Skarbek, Cara Weggler and a special “guest” student from Washington and Jefferson College in PA, Brandon Sansom. The group spent the summer collecting dirt (sediment to the geologists!) and living rocks (mussels to the biologists!). It was a cool and dry summer – great sampling weather for them and not too great for the mussels. They will continue this research for the next couple of years and hope to provide the NPS with some helpful information for managing the endangered species found in the river. This year Dan will be teaching Aquatic Ecology in the fall and Environmental Science in the spring. In addition, he’ll be continuing to manage the Mellon Three Rivers Center and chair the ES Department. Dan will continue to serve on the Sustainability Advisory Committee, so if you have ideas about enhancing sustainability on campus, feel free to contact him. Prof. Louisa Bradtmiller Louisa spent the past year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution studying the behavior of uranium-series elements in ocean sediments and seawater as they relate to climate change. She enjoyed her time on Cape Cod, but is excited to be in the Twin Cities! She is looking forward to teaching three courses for the ES department this year, including a course on climate in the spring.
Roopali was on sabbatical during the 2008-09 academic year. She spent the bulk of that time working on her NSF funded project about the visual impacts of wind energy. Two ES students, Matt Kazinka and Asa Diebolt, worked on this project as summer research assistants. You can read more about their work at www.macalester.edu/windvisual.
Chris Wells welcomed two additions to his family, Jack and Annie Milligan-Wells, on October 29--and spent the rest of the year wandering Olin Rice with a heavily caffeinated, sleep-deprived grin. When he wasn't at home with the babies, he taught his regular classes and co-authored an article for the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education--with Suzanne Savanick Hansen and Christie Manning--which focuses on the campus carbon audit conducted by the 2008 ES Senior Seminar. He is looking forward to finishing his book, Car Country: Automobiles, Roads, and the Origins of Car-Dependent Landscapes in the U.S., during his upcoming sabbatical year, though he suspects he's going to miss teaching when classes begin in the Fall.
During the 2008-09 academic year Jerald taught courses in Environmental Science and Ecology. This coming year Jerald will teach the labs for Environmental Science, lecture and lab for Ecology, and a new course entitled Restoration Ecology. He is also the new faculty advisor for EcoHouse. This summer Jerald has been working on an NSF funded planning process for Macalester's Katherine Ordway Natural History Study Area and has been helping establish a new research project at Ordway investigating the ecological impacts of the invasive species common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica). Jerald will teach Environmental Science and Ecology during the 2008-09 school year.
During the 2008-2009 academic year, Christie taught courses in both Environmental Studies and Psychology: The Psychology of Sustainable Behavior, Environmental Classics, Environmental Leadership Practicum, an upper level Psychology seminar about consumerism and materialism called Psychology in the Material World, and a 2-credit J-Term psychology course in Germany through the Upper Midwest Association for International Education (UMAIE). In November 2008, Christie presented research, done in collaboration with students Ann Balzer and Joelle Taknint, at the Behavior, Energy, and Climate Change conference. She also published two research papers, one in the International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management and a second in the new journal Ecopsychology. Christie will offer Psychology of Sustainable Behavior in Fall 2009 and Environmental Classics in Spring 2010. She will also once again teach the J-Term course in January 2010, renamed “Psychology of Sustainable Behavior in Germany.” This summer, Christie continued her research on the psychological factors that influence individual behavior. She recently completed a handbook, published by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, titled: “The Psychology of Sustainable Behavior: Tips to Empower Sustainability.” In July and August, Christie conducted several studies to further explore the role of message framing and systems understanding in how people process information about climate change and other ecological issues.
Stephanie was very pleased to join the Department of Environmental Studies at Macalester as a Visiting Assistant Professor in September 2008. During the 2008-2009 academic year, she taught Environmental Politics and Policy, Environment and the Media, Sustainable Development, and Environmental Justice, a course she has been hoping to teach for many years. Stephanie is looking forward to the fall 2009 semester, when she will add Environmental History to her repertoire of courses. Stephanie spent her summer researching two topics, both focused on popular culture and the environment. She is co-writing a paper with Dr. Pablo Bose of the University of Vermont about representations of nature in three video games: ZooTycoon, Spore and BioShock. She is also working on a book chapter that examines the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, thinking through the ways it uses storytelling and science – heart and mind – to narrate the climate crisis. This chapter is part of a large book entitled Manufacturing the Wild, which explores the intersections among nature, power, and popular culture.
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Prof. Dan Hornbach, Chair
Prof. Christie Manning
Prof. Stephanie Rutherford|
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