Social Sciences Newsblog

Category: Graduate Students

Congratulations to our December Graduates

Published
By

Congratulations to our December graduates who have earned the following degrees:

PhD in ENVIORONMENTAL AND ENERGY POLICY
Dr. Brent Burns
Topic: Aging Pipeline Infrastructure in the United States: Emergency or Marvel? How does a Changing Policy Mix, Energy Justice, and Social Media Impact Future Risk Analysis?

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE AND ARCHAEOLOGY
Gary Spikberg
Topic: Augmented Reality as a Tool for Industrial Heritage Education and Interpretations

MS graduates: Ryan Williams, (MS GIS) and Gary Spikberg (MS IHA)

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN SOCIAL SCIENCES
Ezra Cotter (Magna Cum Laude)
George Gruver (Summa Cum Laude)

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCES AND SOCIETY
Nathan Hatcher
Noah Lawrence

Bachelor of Science Graduates Ezra Cotter, Noah Lawrence, Nathan Hatcher with Department Chair, Dr. Don Lafreniere


Continue Reading →

Storying a Tribal Landscape System – Undergraduate Research Opportunity

Published
By

Graduate student Larissa Juip has a unique opportunity for a student to work with her on “Applying an Indigenous Methodology: Storying a Tribal Landscape System.” Indigenous storywork, as described by Jo-ann Archibald (2008), combines traditional and life-experience stories to produce a holistic narrative by building “on the storywork teachings of respect, reverence, responsibility, reciprocity, holism, interrelatedness, and synergy.”

These stories recognize different ways of knowing, such as those present in Indigenous communities and they often reflect a great emphasis on place-based knowledge and relationships. This storywork project is designed to complement a National Science Foundation research project (Tribal Landscape Systems) being conducted in partnership with the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC), Keweenaw Bay Natural Resources, Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC), and Michigan Tech researchers.

Storywork has great potential to serve as an important method and pedagogy to reflect on responsibilities of Indigenous-University partnerships. Students will assist her in producing stories shared by partners in this project that reflect place-based connections and relationships as they form or are strengthened through research. The collection of stories shared by partners will become an iterative process that sheds light on the importance of place-based knowledge within the research project.

This project is funded through an NSF-CNH2 (Convergence Research: Bridging Knowledge Systems and Expertise for Understanding the Dynamics of a Contaminated Tribal Landscape System) and is part of a larger undergraduate research initiative in Social Sciences, the Undergraduate Program for Exploration and Research in Social Sciences (UPERSS).

Check out the other opportunities that include:

  • Ethnic Organization and Diaspora Engagement in the Keweenaw (Kathryn Hannum, SS)
  • Developing a University Partnership offering Educational / Cultural Outreach to State Prison Inmates housed in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (Susanna Peters, SS)
  • Food-Based Plants as Living Heritage (Mark Rhodes, SS)
  • Michigan Tech Inventory of Historic Scientific Instruments (IHSI) (Steven Walton, SS)
  • Historic Cemeteries: Mapping, Management, and Memory (Timothy Scarlett, SS)
Continue Reading →

On the Road

Published
By

Industrial Heritage and Archaeology PhD students, Emma Wuepper (SS) and Kyle Parker-McGlynn (SS) presented posters at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers.

Wuepper’s poster explored the material culture of settler colonialism in Copper Harbor and Parker-McGlynn’s asked how space and place could and should be considered within the design of digital heritage.

Mark Rhodes (SS) also organized a poster session on cultural geographies, presented a paper on the living heritage of the Paul Robeson tomato, and sat on an invited panel discussing the role of critical geography at technological institutions.

Continue Reading →

Marie Richards awarded Tribal Food Systems Graduate Fellowship

Published
By

Marie Richards (PhD student, IHA) has been awarded one of eleven Tribal Food Systems Graduate Fellowships from the Intertribal Agricultural Council and the Inter-Institutional Network for Food, Agriculture and Sustainability. This competitive program provides direct financial support and mentorship for graduate research during the 2020/21 academic year, including mentorship from outside MTU, monthly cohort sessions, and dissemination of project results. The experience and networks fellows will gain through participating in this inaugural Indian Country food systems cohort will expand their network and exposure to scholars multifold. IAC is the nation’s largest and longest standing Native American agriculture and natural resources organization. IAC’s efforts over the past 30 years have supported programming and policy work impacting hundreds of Tribal communities and thousands of individual Tribal producers across the country. INFAS is a national network of food systems academics and institutions. This cohort consists of members from rural communities in South Dakota, to urban populations in California; from the islands of Hawaii, to the vast landscapes of Alaska. This inaugural fellowship year is guaranteed to impact food and agriculture scholarship nationally and beyond! 

Continue Reading →