Angie Carter (Social Sciences) was awarded the Rural Sociological Society Early Career Award of $1,680 for “Growing Food, Feeding Communities of Practice: Preliminary Analysis of Community Food Provider Networks in the Western U.P.”
2020 marks the 10th Year of the Green Film Series, renamed ‘Sustainability Film Series’ at the suggestion of two graduate students serving on the film selection committee. Jessica Daignault (CEE PhD candidate) and Ande Myers (CFRES MS student) suggested the new name as they felt it would sound more relevant to more people.
The Sustainability Film Series recently received a $700 donation from the Keweenaw Food Coop as part of their Bring a Bag Campaign which donates the savings from not having to purchase paper bags for customers, to local community organizations or programs.
“Purchasing public film screening rights can cost $250 to $500 for just one film, so this donation will be very helpful!”
The film series is co-sponsored by the Lake Superior Stewardship Initiative, Michigan Tech Great Lakes Research Center, Keweenaw Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Keweenaw Land Trust, Michigan Tech Department of Social Sciences, and the Michigan Tech Sustainable Futures Institute.
Films are shown from 7 to 8:30 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month, in G002, Hesterberg Hall, Michigan Tech Forestry Building, January through May. Enjoy coffee, refreshments and facilitated discussion. (Save a dime, bring you own mug). There is no admission to the film but a $5 donation is suggested
- Jan. 16 – “Saving the Dark” (57 min.) 80% of the world’s population lives under light-polluted skies. What do we lose when we lose sight of the stars? Excessive and improper lighting robs us of our night skies, disrupts our sleep patterns and endangers nocturnal habitats. Saving the Dark explores the need to preserve night skies and ways to combat light pollution
- Feb. 20 – “Banking Nature” (90 min.) A provocative documentary that looks at efforts to monetize the natural world—and turn endangered species and threatened areas into instruments of profit. It’s a worldview that sees capital and markets not as a threat to the planet, but as its salvation—turning nature into “capital” and fundamental processes like pollination and oxygen generation into “ecosystem services”
- March 19, 6 p.m. – “Saving Snow” (57 min.) and “Between Earth & Sky,” (58 min.). The World Water Day opening event follows skiers, snowmobilers, sled dog guides and others who love and/or depend upon winter across the Midwest and Alaska who are struggling with a warming climate
- April 16 – “Seed: The Untold Story” (94 min.). For 12,000 years, humans have been cultivating seeds and building empires. In the last century, 94% of our seed varieties have been lost. As many irreplaceable seeds are nearing extinction, high-tech industrial seed companies control the majority of the world’s remaining seeds
- May 21 – “Seven Generations River,” (27 min.). A new Great Lakes documentary reveals how a Native American tribe, the Pokagon Band of the Potawatomi Indians in SE Michigan, is adopting scientific methods to preserve and protect its traditional culture and the river on which it relies. While never removed from their ancestral lands, the Pokagon are seeing their way of life fractured by encroaching development and land-use changes.
Understanding how French-speaking people migrated throughout North America from the 1600s to 1940 means tracking them at work, school and home spatially and archivally.
Michigan Technological University is a partner in the $2.4 million “Trois siècles de migrations francophones en Amérique du Nord (1640-1940) (Three centuries of migrations by French-speakers to North America)” funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Sarah Scarlett, assistant professor of history, and Don Lafrenière, associate professor of geography, in the Social Sciences department, will use the Keweenaw Time Traveler and a combination of spatial and archival datasets to focus specifically on whether French-Canadians were socially mobile as they migrated from Canada to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula during the period of 1860 to 1940.
Read the full story on Unscripted.
Michigan Technological University researchers have developed a GIS-based model to identify the persistence of industrial hazards in postindustrial cities and their impacts on modern citizens. Dan Trepal, a postdoctoral researcher and Don Lafrenière, associate professor of geography and GIS, both in the Department of Social Sciences, use spatial-temporal models to demonstrate human risk of exposure to environmental hazards in postindustrial London, Ontario, but the model can be applied more widely.
“When you’re talking about human health or cumulative hazards, these places looked very different when these places are created. In the Keweenaw, the mines aren’t really gone They’re very much still here. It’s about giving presence to things that are not here anymore to the casual eye.” – Dan Trepal
Read the full story at mtu.edu/news.
The West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, NY, the site of an intensive industrial heritage and archaeology (IHA) project by Michigan Tech faculty and grad students from 2002-2009, was designated an American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Historical Mechanical Engineering Landmark on Oct. 5.
One of the largest integrated iron foundries and machine shops in the first half of the 19th century, the West Point Foundry is also one of the most intact industrial archaeological sites of its type in America.
The Tech IHA investigations helped lead to the designation. Arron Kotlensky (M.S. IHA 2007) wrote the nomination on behalf of Scenic Hudson, the property owners, and he and Steven Walton (SS) were at the designation ceremony to lead tours for the president of ASME, local historical society board members, the press and the interested public.
The story received coverage in the Cold Spring media, Foundry Management and Technology and by the ASME.
Walton and Kotlensky also designed the brochure for the event.
The annual 41 North Film Festival will be held Oct. 31 to Nov. 3 at the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts. This year’s program features more than 20 films from around the world, along with music, events and special guests Anishinaabe filmmaker/producer Michelle Derosier and Michigan Tech alumnus actor/writer/producer Curtis Fortier.
This year’s highlights include:
- Thursday, Oct. 31, 7:30 p.m.: HUMAN NATURE, which delves into the complexities of editing the human genome. Followed by a Q&A with Caryn Heldt (ChE), Paul Goetsch (BioSci) and Alexandra Morrison (HU).
- Friday, Nov. 1, 7:30 p.m.: PICTURE CHARACTER (an Emoji Documentary). This informative and entertaining film covers everything from how emojis came into existence to how new emojis are added to the unicode system. To add to the fun, come in an emoji-inspired costume and you might win a prize. Stick around after the film for emoji cookie decorating and music in the lobby.
- Saturday, Nov. 2, will feature a full day of programming about our relationship to the environment. Films include ANTHROPOCENE: THE HUMAN EPOCH, THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM, HONEYLAND, and our featured presentation of Michelle Derosier and her film ANGELIQUE’S ISLE, inspired by the true story of Angelique Mott, an Anishinaabe woman who, with her husband, was abandoned by unscrupulous copper miners and left to die during the winter of 1845 on an island off of Isle Royale (today known as Mott Island).
- Sunday, Nov. 3. Michigan Tech alumnus Curtis Fortier will be on hand to present and discuss some of his work as an actor/writer/producer. Fortier will be followed by a new docudrama about the life of information theorist Claude Shannon, THE BIT PLAYER. The festival will close Sunday evening with MAIDEN, the thrilling and emotional story of the first all-female crew to compete in the Whitbread Round-the-World Yacht Race.
See the full line-up of films and events at 41northfilmfest.org. The festival is free and open to the public. Students will need to bring their HuskyCard. Tickets for everyone else can be reserved at tickets.mtu.edu or by calling 7-2073. They will also be available in the Rozsa lobby prior to each film.
An article by Mark Rouleau (SS) was recently published in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning, published by Elsevier. The article, titled, “Agent-based modeling for bioenergy sustainability assessment,” is co-authored by Robert J. Zupko II.
Shan Zhou (Social Sciences) recently published “Environmental Justice and Green Schools—Assessing Students and Communities’ Access to Green Schools” in the journal Social Science Quarterly. This article investigates equity in the distribution of green schools in the U.S., what kind of student populations they serve, and what kind of communities host them. Leveraging national school enrollment data (2000–2014), Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) data, and communities’ characteristics data from 2010 U.S. Census, Shan Zhou and coauthors estimate logit models to examine the association between green schools and student and community demographics. Results show that higher percentages of minorities in both student population and hosting neighborhood are associated with greater likelihood that new schools are green, and that new schools in more affluent and less educated communities are less likely to be green.
Richelle Winkler was recently invited by the Director of the United States Bureau of the Census to serve as an appointee to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Census Scientific Advisory Committee (CSAC) on a three-year term. The CSAC consists of about 21 members from academia, public and private enterprise, and nonprofit organizations. It provides strategic perspective and advice to the Director of the Census Bureau on the full range of Census Bureau programs and activities.
Nancy Langston (SS) the subject of a Wisconsin Public Radio segment about Lake Superior.