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Famed scientist considers climate change denial in the age of Trump

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Climate scientist Michael Mann will speak at ��̽̽, Thursday, October 10. (Photo: Patrick Mansell)

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American Birding Podcast: Birding to Change the World with Trish O’Kane

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 14:39:50 +0000

This was originally posted on the American Birding Association blog By Nate Swick, on September 19, 2019.

All birders intuitively understand the value of birding, even if we’re not so great as a community as expressing that value. Birding as a means for personal growth, and coming to grips with the changing world around us is an important part of why we enjoy this hobby. It’s certainly a fascinating topic with a lot of rich veins to mine. It’s something that Dr. Trish O’Kane of ��̽̽’s Rubenstein School of the Environment and Natural Resources has thought a lot about. Her piece Of Fledglings and Freshmen was published recently in The New York Times, and she joins me to talk about her program “Birding to Change the World” and how birding can be a salve in this age of environmental anxiety.

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Policy For Parks

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 17:15:57 +0000

As Alma Ripps rides the Metro to work in downtown Washington, D.C., she might be thinking about drones, electric bicycles, battery-powered scooters, or vaping. No, not as a distraction from her job as the Chief of Policy for the National Park Service, but because of it.

Of course, she knows the story of how, in 1903, the famed conservationist John Muir and President Teddy Roosevelt went camping in Yosemite National Park. After three days of quiet solitude, the president said, “It was like lying in a great solemn cathedral”—and he went on to be perhaps the nation’s greatest champion for what became the National Park Service.

Ripps would like to protect and extend Roosevelt’s legacy, making what he called “the most glorious heritage a people ever received,”—the natural wonders within the national parks—available and well-managed for all the American people. “They’re our parks,” says Ripps, who graduated from ��̽̽ in 1988, “They belong to all of us.”

Which is why she spends time thinking about drones, e-bikes, scooters, and vaping.

Electrifying experiences?

A few year ago, Ripps got a report about a climber on El Capitan in Yosemite getting buzzed by a drone. “Very dangerous,” she says, “if you spent hours and hours scaling a wall, the last thing in the world you want is a buzzing drone near your head, right?” She heard about parks, such as Zion National Park, where people were flying them close to herds of Bighorn sheep, “spooking wildlife. We were having mothers leave behind their young,” she says. She was hearing from park managers: what do we do about these things? So, Ripps and her team developed a policy memo that was issued by the director of the National Park Service: “recreational drones are not allowed in our national parks,” she says, “though we do use them internally for firefighting, for checking on invasive species, and other research.”

Ripps’ work stands at a crossroad where ancient natural features, untrammeled wilderness areas, and hallowed historic grounds meet a rapidly changing American culture. “A lot of what we’re dealing with now are new technologies,” she says. “Obviously we never had a drone policy up to a couple of years ago because they didn't exist.”

Electric bikes present another new management challenge in the 419 different sites—more than 84 million acres—that make up the U.S. National Park System. “More and more people are using e-bikes for recreation. People with disabilities are using them to access remote areas. People are using them as an alternative to cars,” Ripps says. “There are a lot of benefits associated with them, but we don’t have a consistent policy on their use across the system.” So what’s a policy chief to do? Find the middle way. “In some areas of a park it's a very appropriate use; but in some it's not,” she says. “Right now I have on my desk a piece of policy we've been working on for e-bikes that we hope will be finalized soon.” Even an urgent policy memo can take a year or more to finalize—there are many stakeholders to hear from and details galore (e.g., there are numerous classes of e-bikes).

Finding her path

Ripps grew up in a New York City family that did a lot of hiking and camping. “I always wanted to be a wildlife biologist,” she recalls, and at ��̽̽ she majored in environmental studies with a wildlife biology minor. Summer courses in botany and a stint tracking endangered ocelots in south Texas confirmed her love of natural places—and made her rethink her plans to be a field scientist. “You can’t go to ��̽̽ and go hiking in the fall and not fall in love with Vermont. I absolutely loved my four years there. But being in Texas, tramping through the thorny brush and heat, and being bitten by everything, well, I realized: this isn’t who I am,” she recalls. “Still, I wanted to protect natural and cultural resources and developing the policies to do that seemed like a better fit for me,” she says.

Ripps has done just that for the federal government since 1992, starting as a Presidential Management Fellow at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She joined the National Park Service in 2000 working in the Office of Legislative and Congressional Affairs. She was appointed deputy chief of staff in 2010, and policy chief in 2013. “I'm on my fifth administration in DC and the wonderful thing is that national parks are a nonpartisan resource,” she says. “Some of the biggest park supporters are conservative Republicans, so it doesn't track to any one political party. People just love our national parks.”

Politics and potholes

Of course, politics affects her job. “Every administration will have different priorities; the current one is promoting expanded access and opportunities for outdoor recreation on public lands. They’re very pro-hunting and fishing,” she says. “There are some uses that may be appropriate in wildlife refuges or natural areas, but not in our parks.” And the popularity of national parks with the public hasn’t translated into federal appropriations sufficient to maintain them. “Our roads have huge holes and we have a deferred maintenance backlog of over $11 billion,” Ripps says. This reality affects the roughly twenty pieces of policy she has in motion at any one time—from seawall construction to protect buildings and historic sites against sea-level rise to new initiatives bringing national park rangers into inner-city schools.

A recent policy on vaping puts electronic nicotine delivery systems in the same category as cigarettes—banned in many park areas—but what about electric scooters in urban parks? “We have no policy yet,” Ripps says. “that’s one we will need to figure out at some point.” In the meantime, she’s recently returned from her own family camping trip to Yosemite with her husband, two sons, “and my siblings and their kids, 18 of us in all. All in tents,” she says—a happy outing to one of the nation’s natural sanctuaries without one drone in sight.

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Alma Ripps '88, Chief of Policy for the National Park Service. Ripps would like to protect and extend Roosevelt’s legacy, making the natural wonders within the national parks available and well-managed for all Americans. “They’re our parks,” says Ripps. “They belong to all of us.” (Photo: Alex Edelman '13)

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��̽̽ Junior Jillian Scannell Named Truman Scholar

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 22:00:51 +0000

Junior Environmental Studies major Jillian Scannell has been named a 2019 Harry S. Truman Scholar, one of only 62 college junior-year students in the country to win the highly competitive national award. The Truman Scholarship recognizes students who want to make a difference in public service and provides them with financial support for graduate study, leadership training and fellowship with likeminded students.

Scannell was selected for her environmental commitment and campus leadership.

“We congratulate Jillian on this recognition for her combination of political and leadership experiences and her deep commitment to climate change policy,” said Honors College interim dean David Jenemann. “Jillian’s contributions on campus speak to her ability to make things happen, while courageously facing systemic problems and facilitating solutions.” The Fellowships, Opportunities, and Undergraduate Research Office, overseen by the university’s Honors College, coordinates the application process for the Truman Scholarship and other nationally competitive fellowships.

A native of Rutland, Mass., Scannell is deeply committed to addressing climate change, a cause she became passionate about after attending Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Corps Training in 2017. She plans to devote her career to the issue, through environmental policy and by running for elected office.

Scannell has been active in environmental and related issues throughout her years at ��̽̽. She has served as an Eco-Reps Change Agent, an Environmental Studies Peer Mentor and a Steering Committee Member for ��̽̽ Stands in 2016, which organized an environmentally-focused rally on Inauguration Day and chartered a bus for students to attend the People’s Climate March in Washington, D.C. in April 2017.

One of her most impressive accomplishments was organizing ��̽̽’s Rally for Climate Action in the fall of 2018. Thanks to her outreach, over 300 members of the ��̽̽ community, including many students, gathered to hear addresses on raising awareness of climate change and developing plans to combat it from a group of speakers that included Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Peter Welch.

Scannell is also an active student leader. She currently serves as the speaker of the Student Government Association and is a member of the SGA Committee on the Environment, the ��̽̽ Food Insecurity Working Group and the President’s Commission on Alcohol and Other Drugs. Jillian has volunteered during the ��̽̽ SGA Community Clean-Up and assisted in planning the 2017 ��̽̽ SGA Women in Leadership Summit. Jillian has been elected to serve next year as the president of the Student Government Association.

Candidates for the Truman Scholarship go through a rigorous, multi-stage selection process. In 2019, 840 candidates were nominated by 346 colleges and universities, a record number of both applications and institutions. The 199 finalists for the award were interviewed in March and early April by one of sixteen regional selection panels.

The new Truman Scholars will receive their awards in a ceremony at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri on May 26, 2019. Scannell hopes to use the corresponding award of $30,000 for graduate studies in pursuing a Masters of Public Administration at ��̽̽.

The Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation was created by Congress in 1975 to be the nation’s living memorial to President Harry S. Truman. The Foundation has a mission to select and support the next generation of public service leaders. The Truman award has become one of the most prestigious national scholarships in the United States.

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Jillian Scannell ’20 is one of only 62 college juniors in the U.S. to win a highly competitive Truman Scholarship. In her time at ��̽̽, Scannell has been active in environmental and related issues, including as an organizer for the 2018 Rally for Climate Action on campus. (Photo: Sally McCay)

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Alumni Spotlight - John Alessi '17

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 10:52:39 +0000

Throughout my time at ��̽̽, I consistently identified myself as a student with strong suits in the humanities, rather than the sciences. I pursued a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies and Political Science so that I could focus my coursework at the intersection of these two fields and perform research in environmental policy. I believe studying in these departments at ��̽̽ provided me with thorough background in the environmental issues facing the world today, the skills needed to create solutions to these problems, and how they can be implemented through policy. As I reached my senior year, though, I began to reflect upon the scientific foundations that make up environmental policy, and areas such as ecology, geography, and environmental planning particularly sparked my interest.

After graduating in 2017, I decided to take a break from my studies and spend time improving my fluency in French. I moved to France and have been serving as an English Language Assistant since leaving ��̽̽. Today, I am teaching in Chamonix, a town in the French Alps located at the base of Mont Blanc. Life here parallels greatly to that in Burlington, as my free time is spent skiing, hiking, and trail running in the mountains.

My time abroad has been greatly reflective and has allowed me to consider the path I would like to pursue with my degree from ��̽̽. Even though I do not envision myself as a teacher later in life, the past two years have inspired me to seek out careers that are engaging, challenging, and most importantly, hands on. It’s quite a cliché to say, but I have no interest in a job where I am stuck behind a desk all day. I’d like to be in the field performing research and working directly with others on environmental projects. The scientific curiosity I experienced by the end of my undergraduate courses, coupled with my newfound desire to perform scientific fieldwork in a policy career, then influenced me to seek out master’s programs where I could learn the foundations of environmental science and understand how it informs the creation of policy.

The majority of programs I researched were accommodating to only science or policy; I seldom found universities where one could study both. Moreover, most required substantive prerequisites in science. I eventually researched Northeastern University’s Graduate School and discovered a new program that had been recently introduced, a Master of Science in Environmental Science and Policy. The program brands itself as an opportunity for students to learn and work at the intersection of science and policy. In addition, students with social science backgrounds would be brought up to speed in the sciences, or vice versa. I was excited at the prospect of becoming fluent in both environmental science and policy, thus allowing me to work in both of these fields.

With the help of the Environmental Studies department at ��̽̽, I applied to the Northeastern program and am now enrolled to begin this upcoming school year. I am incredibly grateful to the ENVS program for providing me with a thorough and rewarding undergraduate experience and helping lead me to where I am today. Every person within the department, including its faculty, academic advisors, and staff, is without a doubt supportive and encouraging to all students. Though I’ll be on a new campus come this fall, I’ll always keep the memories from my alma mater close to me!

- John Alessi '17

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CarShare VT: Accelerating Towards a More Sustainable Vermont Future

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 22:21:02 +0000

A low hum of traffic lines Burlington’s streets at 8:45 am on a Monday morning. Cars inch along, waiting impatiently for their turn at the stop light. A steady stream of exhaust spews from a colorful array of tailpipes, making frozen patterns in the icy Vermont air. Today, more than three-quarters of Vermonters get to work by car, with the majority driving alone. Average car ownership in Vermont? Two cars per household. The story of transportation in Vermont did not always reflect this car dependent society, and there is potential for future change as some companies work to decrease single use vehicles through carsharing. CarShare VT is celebrating its 10th anniversary in Burlington, working towards this goal and a more sustainable future, striving for network expansion and membership growth.

One of the CarShare VT fleet’s new vehicles. (photo credit: Isabel Lisle)

Before World War II, Americans used other forms of transportation to commute to work. Many people lived in cities and towns, taking public buses, trolleys and trains to get around. Robin Chase, founder and CEO of ZipCar, writes that in those days, about 40 percent did not own cars. As soldiers returned home from the war and people began moving outside of cities to mass-produced housing projects, a growing need for specialized forms of transportation developed in the suburbs. Thus began the building of highways inevitably followed by an onslaught of personal automobiles.

This car-centric solution generates a toxic impact on our environment. An article published by National Geographic states that vehicles produce about one-third of all U.S. air pollution, emitting smog, carbon monoxide, and other pollutants from the tailpipe into the atmosphere at street level. The actual production of automobiles is environmentally intensive because materials like steel, rubber, glass, and plastics must be created to start the process. The article mentions that gas and petroleum products cause ecosystem damage at the extraction level and have the potential to cause disasters like oil spills during shipping. As world demand rises, the price of gas will undoubtedly increase.

Organizations are popping up in cities around the country on a mission to combat these negative environmental effects while redesigning the norms around transportation. Carsharing promotes a network of shared vehicles that members can use to get around their city. According to a study done by the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at Berkeley, one carsharing vehicle replaces 9-13 vehicles, along with most users increasing their use of other forms of transportation such as taking the bus, walking, biking, and carpooling. The study found that with less cars on the road, greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 34 – 41% per year for one household. In addition, it reveals that carsharing has major financial benefits for its members with a total of $154 – $435 saved per month by US household members after joining carshare. Because many of these members are not also buying cars of their own, there is a reduction of vehicle miles travelled per year of 27 – 43% considering vehicles sold and purchases postponed.

Promotional sign for CarShare VT. (photo credit: Isabel Lisle)

This idea of car sharing travelled to the streets of Burlington in 2008, with the name of CarShare VT. Ten years later, the organization now provides 1,000 active members with year round access to twenty different vehicles in both Burlington and Winooski. On average, each vehicle is used several hours a day by anywhere between one and six members, with the length of each of those trips lasting from a full day to half an hour. There is a one time $30 application fee to join, and members benefit from free 24 hour roadside assistance, a gas card, ski racks and bike racks, and access to any car with a key fob. Their mission is to “provide an affordable, convenient, and reliable alternative to private car ownership that enhances the environmental, economic, and social wellbeing of our region and planet.”I used my CarShare membership the other day to drive to Stowe, and I loved the convenience of simply booking the car online, fobbing into the car, and driving! If I needed more time, I could simply add time to my reservation. Curious about the success of this non-profit organization and its potential for expansion, I interviewed Tim, the Member Services Manager at CarShare VT.

He explained that about a quarter of CarShare members are full-time ��̽̽ and Champlain College students. The remaining three-quarters are a mixture of families, young workers and professionals, and business members who use carsharing instead of having a small fleet of company cars. Their demographic mainly mirrors that of Burlington as a whole, as far as age, income level, and race, with carsharing members skewing slightly younger than the average Burlingtonian, in line with the nationwide trend of declining levels of car ownership among young people.

Interestingly, the main motivation of many members is financial, as many drivers choose not to own their own costly vehicle. They also cite convenience and time saving as a major reason for vehicle sharing, as CarShare handles many of the more time-consuming and frustrating details of car ownership (inspections, maintenance, repairs, snow removal, parking concerns, insurance, etc.). It seems that members put environmental reasons second to economic incentives when signing up, although they appreciate the reduced reliance on fossil fuel consumption that carsharing provides. From an economic standpoint, CarShare has the potential to gain a vast amount of customers looking to save money as car and gas prices rise.

As a small, local non-profit service, CarShare VT faces several challenges in maintaining a safe, affordable, and efficient carsharing program. For one, most carsharing services work best in large cities with high population densities and extensive infrastructure for public transport, cyclists, and pedestrians. This infrastructure in Burlington is still in its development phase, and the size of the city makes individual car ownership the most obvious and convenient option for a large portion of the population. Members rely to some degree on combining carsharing with other alternatives to car ownership, so continuing to develop a reliable network of public transportation in Burlington is key to the success of the program. CarShare does not see carsharing in isolation as a total replacement for individuals, households, and businesses transitioning away from car ownership; they believe that for many of their members, carsharing in an important component of a car free lifestyle, that also includes public transportation, biking, walking, car pooling, ride hailing, and other options that are available and accessible to folks.

They are regularling looking to expand the program to other communities in Vermont, but many towns lack the factors that make Burlington and Winooski viable for carsharing. High population density, varied public transit options, general walkability and bikeability of the town, and support from local businesses, the municipal government, and higher education institutions are all important things they look for, and unfortunately there are few communities in the state that can adequately meet all these needs. They hope that in the future there will be opportunities to expand, or support others in their efforts to start unique local carsharing services, but they are not quite there yet.

Even so, the smallest independent carsharing company in North America is largely self- sufficient financially, relying on generous support from private donors, grants, or government funding. They have thrived for ten years in a constantly evolving industry, growing from a modest array of cars to a large fleet of vehicles and members.

Five years from now, driving around Burlington may be a totally different experience. It’s 8:45 am on a Monday morning and the streets are free of congestion and tailpipe exhaust. A few “coffee awake” employees drive by in a CarShare vehicle, carpooling with friends and coworkers. The vehicles are now electric, and charging stations line priority parking spots in parking lots around the city, powered by solar panel shelters. Several morning enthusiasts ride past on Greenride Bikeshare bicycles, using an automatic assist button to peddle up the hill. Others bustle to work on foot, walking on tree lined sidewalks and well paved paths. Some take the reliable public bus around town, stopping at a wide variety of locations with easy access to the airport, grocery stores, restaurants, and businesses. Friends and families out of town over the weekend booked a special car with CarShare out of a new weekend hub, equipped with all day rental cars and a discount carpooling rate. There is less traffic noise, less pollution, and more pedestrians out enjoying the crisp Vermont air.

As sustainability moves towards the front of agendas here in Vermont as an economic and environmental priority, a car sharing paradigm shift is on the horizon for Burlington’s transportation system. The success of CarShare VT suggests a bright future for this non-profit and the redesigning of Vermont’s single use automobile culture.

Happy 10th birthday, CarShare VT!

Isabel Lisle, our spring 2019 Vermont Independent journalism intern, is a 3rd year University of Vermont student pursuing an undergraduate environmental studies degree. This is her first article in a four part series focusing on TRANSPORTATION in Vermont.

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��̽̽ Program Turns Local Farms into Learning Laboratories

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 18:09:12 +0000

Senior environmental studies major Nell Carpenter is holding court, in a friendly, peer-to-peer kind of way, with eight fellow students in her PSS 212, Advanced Agroecology class at Bread and Butter Farm in Shelburne, where the group will be taking soil samples as part of a weekly on-farm lab that's a feature of the course.

Clipboard in hand, Carpenter lays out the plan for the day. “We’ll be bagging three cups for every two-acre sample site, as well as taking penetrometer readings everywhere that you do a core, a six-inch core, as well as moisture meter readings,” she says.

The students hang on her words.

Carpenter’s impressive command, and her fellow students’ attentiveness, didn’t just happen. They’re the product of a carefully thought-through redesign of PSS 212 prompted by the Engaged Practices Innovations (EPI) Grants program, an innovative University of Vermont initiative that is systematically making student learning at the university deeper, more impactful – and often more fun.

The EPI program encourages faculty members in all disciplines to apply for grants from the Office of the Provost that allow them to rethink and rebuild their courses around a series of “high impact practices,” teaching approaches – like students partnering with faculty on research projects – that studies have shown inspire and motivate them to learn more deeply.

Since the program was created in 2015, 15 EPI grants have been awarded in academic disciplines ranging from classics and Asian studies to physics and wildlife biology, as well as in Student Affairs and Residential Life. Based on the impact evaluations they require, the grants are having just the positive effect on engaged teaching and learning and the student experience they were designed to inspire.

EPI has had a transformative effect on PSS 212 and its work with five Vermont farms, including Bread and Butter, ��̽̽’s Catamount Farm, Diggers' Mirth Farm, The Farm Between and Jericho Settlers Farm.

Something missing

Plant and Soil Science professor Ernesto Mendez has taught the seniors-only advanced course for 10 years. It always gave students an opportunity to learn the foundational principles of agroecology – that agricultural land should be viewed as an ecosystem and the people who work the land as part of a social fabric, both of which deserve respect and care – not only in a classroom setting but also on local farms.

But there was always something missing.

A key tool Mendez wanted his students to acquire in the class, ideally through first-hand, on-farm experience, was a foundational element in his own work called participatory action research, or PAR, where researchers collaborate on an equal footing with the people they’re studying to make sure the work has value for both parties.

The problem? Participatory action research requires participation, and the farmers weren’t interested.

“I had asked them, there's a possibility we could be doing something of value for you,” says Mendez. “But they had always been like, you know, the labor is great in terms of the benefit we get, and we like the students,” but the research itself wasn’t a priority.

And while the class did feature student research, in the form of soil testing on the farms, the farmers’ lack of engagement robbed it of its power.

“When you create an artificial research project, so the students are just learning how to collect data, it's not that meaningful,” Mendez says.

After years of watching students do soil tests, the farmers’ position evolved. Two years ago, they decided research would be an effective tool in addressing some of the challenges they were facing.

Specifically, they asked if the students could help them gauge the health of their soil over time, establishing a baseline in year one, then measuring it annually each year with a new crop of students.

That represented a great opportunity for Mendez and his students – but also an intimidating responsibility.

Could farmers trust the accuracy of the data students were collecting, which could drive business decisions affecting their livelihoods?

The salience of that question hit home after a pilot version of the course in 2017 yielded data that Mendez knew was not up to snuff.

Mob activity

Soil health was a topic of interest for all five farms the students visit weekly in teams of six to eight, especially so for Bread and Butter Farm, which produces organic vegetables and grass-fed beef and pork the farmers sell locally.

Owner Corie Pierce and land-manager Brandon Bless practice a form of land management called mob grazing, which mimics the behavior of the wild ruminant herds of buffalo, elk and deer that once roamed the Great Plains.

“The animals played this important role of walking through, fertilizing, eating just a little bit, trampling the rest of it as mulch and moving on,” which created some of the most fertile land on earth, with “topsoil several feet deep,” Pierce says.

For the past nine years, the farmers – with Bless taking the lead the past three – have practiced just this kind of intensive rotational grazing, moving their cows, and the enclosing fences with them, up to four times each day.

While the farmers know intuitively that the practice has enriched and restored their pastureland – an end in itself in agroecology, but also a means of a creating nutrient-dense diet for their herd – they have a clean slate with a new piece of land they’ll be managing that’s much in need of revival after years of dairying, haying and heavy machinery depleted and compacted the soil.

On the new land, the farmers are keen on using students to precisely measure the impact of mob grazing “on the depth of the soil and the species that are growing there,” Pierce says. She and Bless could then evaluate “how that translates to our animals' health and productivity.”

Flash of insight

The EPI program, and some old-fashioned creative thinking, were instrumental in guaranteeing the class delivered to Pierce and Bless and the other farmers accurate, reliable data – at the same time ramping up student engagement.

With the help of EPI funds, Mendez and several faculty colleagues, including Martha Caswell and Vic Izzo in Plant and Soil Science, Karen Nordstrom in the Environmental Program and Joshua Faulkner in ��̽̽ Extension, threw themselves into the PAR process, meeting regularly with the farmers to learn exactly what each wanted the student-led research program to accomplish. It is also paying for the analysis of soil samples that aren’t done at ��̽̽ and for a rigorous evaluation of the program’s impact on student learning – one of the requirements of an EPI grant.

But the biggest change came from a flash of insight – that the five talented students, including Carpenter, in the new Undergraduate Research Fellows program, who worked with Mendez research group, the Agroecology and Livelihoods Collaborative, could be redeployed.

“We started thinking about linking them to the program,” he says. “We would put one in charge of each farm and they would help the students collect the data. They’d get trained, connect with the farmers, set everything up and would be like team captains.”

That vision prompted Mendez and his team to apply for the EPI grant.

Checking it twice

It’s hard to imagine a better example than PSS 212 of the impact the EPI program can have on student engagement.

After Carpenter finished her information session with fellow students at the start of their lab at Bread and Butter Farm, the group descended on a greenhouse and engaged in a whirlwind of simultaneous soil testing activity: measuring the moisture content of the soil, gauging its pressure at depths of six and 12 inches, bagging soil samples just so at key spots for biological analysis later. Some students did the physical work, others acted as scribes taking down the measurements, still others checked the notetakers’ work for accuracy.

The due diligence – and academic engagement that came with it – is just what Mendez and his colleagues predicted would happen after the research took on real meaning.

For senior environmental studies major Harper Simpson, the knowledge that she’s making a real contribution is a powerful motivator.

“It gets our team on our toes, since we’re the baseline year, and that's pretty awesome,” she says. “It also makes me want to do well for Ernesto and his research results, as well as the farmers.”

But perhaps the greatest impact of a program designed to promote engaged student learning has been on the Undergraduate Research Fellows.

In weekly meetings of the five fellows, supported by off-the-cuff sessions with Caswell and Izzo, teaching assistant Katie Horner, a doctoral student in the collaborative, and Nordstrom, the fellows are learning soft skills like leadership, reflection and teamwork.

“There is this really cool dynamic between all of us, where we really are lifting each other up together,” Carpenter says. “We learn both about how to navigate these things as humans as well as learning about the material.”

Everyone knows about learning by doing, Carpenter adds, but the fellows program takes things a step further.

“It’s learning by teaching,” she says. “It's incredible. It's not something everyone might be interested in, but I think for the five of us and for myself personally it's a really incredible way to be steeped in this, as opposed to just having stacks of books on my conference table.”

In addition to Carpenter, Undergraduate Research Fellows include Lizzy Holiman, Food Systems and Ecological Agriculture; Emily McCarthy, Environmental Studies; Allie Pankoff, Environmental Science; and Elise Schumacher, Food Systems. The EPI program is funded and administered through the Office of the Provost. Learn more about the EPI Grant Program.

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Grant Program Helps Faculty Use “High Impact Practices” to Engage Students in Classes Ranging from Physics to Agroecology

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Vermont

Fish Give Up the Fight After Coral Bleaching

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Oct 2018 19:05:10 +0000

A research team, including University of Vermont scientist Nate Sanders, found that when water temperatures heat up for corals, fish "tempers" cool down, providing the first clear evidence of coral bleaching serving as a trigger for rapid change in the behavior of reef fish.

Publishing in Nature Climate Change on October 22, the researchers show how the iconic butterflyfish, considered to be sensitive indicators of reef health, can offer an early warning sign that reef fish populations are in trouble.

The international team of scientists spent more than 600 hours underwater observing butterflyfish over a two-year period encompassing the unprecedented mass coral bleaching event of 2016. Led by marine ecologist Sally Keith of Lancaster University, the team examined 17 reefs across the central Indo-Pacific in Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.

During the initial data collection, the researchers were unaware that the catastrophic bleaching event was on the horizon. Once underway, the researchers realized that this serendipitous "natural experiment" placed them in a unique position to see how fish changed their behavior in response to large-scale bleaching disturbance.

The team sprang into action to repeat their field observations, collecting a total of 5,259 encounters between individuals of 38 different butterflyfish species. Within a year after the bleaching event, it was clear that, although the same number of butterflyfish continued to reside on the reefs, they were behaving very differently.

"We observed that aggressive behavior had decreased in butterflyfish by an average of two thirds, with the biggest drops observed on reefs where bleaching had killed off the most coral," said Keith. "We think this is because the most nutritious coral was also the most susceptible to bleaching, so the fish moved from a well-rounded diet to the equivalent of eating only lettuce leaves—it was only enough to survive rather than to thrive."

Early warning

"This matters because butterflyfishes are often seen as the ‘canaries of the reef,'" said Nate Sanders, director of ��̽̽'s Environmental Program and professor in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. "Due to their strong reliance on coral, they are often the first to suffer after a disturbance event."

Such changes in behavior may well be the driver behind more obvious changes such as declining numbers of fish individuals and species. The finding has the potential to help explain the mechanism behind population declines in similarly disrupted ecosystems around the world.

By monitoring the fishes' behavior, "we might get an early warning sign of bigger things to come," said co-author Erika Woolsey of Stanford University. And the new work shows that animals can adjust to catastrophic events in the short term through flexible behavior, "but these changes may not be sustainable in the longer-term," said co-author Andrew Baird of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University.

��̽̽ and the oceans

"��̽̽ is known for its work on how climate change is affecting forests, mountains, and of course Lake Champlain. This work goes beyond that and highlights the impacts of ongoing climate change on biodiversity in the ocean," says Nate Sanders.

Sanders' role in the new reef fish research started—surprisingly—with ants. "I wanted to know how the behavior of individuals scales up to influence entire collections of species," he explained. "Do interactions between individuals matter for entire communities and ecosystems? A few years ago, Sally Keith and I began talking about whether what I know about ants applied to what she knows about coral reef fish. And thus began an amazing collaboration."

"It’s not just that we’ve documented a climate change effect on these reefs," said Sanders, a community ecologist and fellow in ��̽̽'s Gund Institute for Environment. "It’s important that we’re beginning to understand why these changes happen, and are building the knowledge to try to predict when, and where, these kinds of changes may happen in other ecosystems in the future."

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��̽̽ scientist helps uncover climate change signal in oceans

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Butterflyfishes are often seen as the "canaries of the reef." —��̽̽ ecologist Nate Sanders

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Aggressive displays by a species of butterflyfish, Decussatus vagabundus. (Video: Sally Keith)

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joshua.brown@uvm.edu

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Sometimes called the Philippine butterflyfish or panda butterflyfish, Chaetodon adiergastos is found in the Pacific Ocean. New research shows how coral reef bleaching is putting stress on fish like these—and changing their behavior. (Photo: Sally Keith)

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Vermont

Kerry Duggan '00 named as one of Crain's Detroit 40 Under 40

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Oct 2018 15:50:38 +0000

Kerry Duggan has traveled the world, but she always knew she would come back to Detroit.

That conviction came to her at age 18 during a Copenhagen coffee house conversation with a stranger.

“I was already on my soapbox, pontificating to a fellow traveler about all the big issues I wanted to fix in the world,” said Duggan, who traveled Europe on the Nike All-Star basketball team. “The woman listened to me and then asked a simple question: ‘Can you drink the water where you’re from?’”

At that time, said the Farmington Hills native, you couldn’t even “stick a toe” in the Rouge River.

With that question, and its answer, Duggan’s broad focus became very narrow.

“That random conversation made me realize: it’s always about home,” said Duggan. “Take care of the place you’re from, or what’s the point?”

In 2011, while at the Energy Department, she was selected for President Barack Obama’s Detroit task force, which she led as a deputy through the end of the Administration. She simultaneously served as deputy director for policy, directly advising Vice President Joe Biden on energy, environment and climate.

One of her proudest accomplishments in this position includes making the technical case for the conversion to LED streetlights in Detroit.

“It’s really about the kids being safe, the neighborhoods being safe, it’s a quality of life that everyone deserves.”

Another feather in her cap: She worked to place an electric vehicle in Biden’s motorcade for his final domestic policy trip as vice president, which just happened to be to Detroit in January 2017. It was the first electric vehicle in a presidential or vice presidential motorcade since 1902.

Duggan spent seven years traveling between Washington, D.C., and Detroit before making the move home with her husband and two children.

“I always kept one foot in the door,” said Duggan, who happily traded a four-mile, 45-minute commute for a nine-minute walk.

As a resident in her home state, Duggan made the move from public service to private sector as a partner for sustainability at Ridge-Lane, a strategic advisory firm and merchant-bank.

“As our CEO knows, I’m unabashedly a Detroiter,” said Duggan. “I’ve never made a secret about it: drawing business to Detroit is my big goal.”

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Original story by Laura Cassar: Crain's Detroit Business

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Take care of the place you’re from, or what’s the point?

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