Professor Barry Solomon was recently interviewed for WalletHub’s article on “2015’s Most & Least Energy-Expensive States” that investigated various criteria that impact monthly energy costs across the nation. They looked at monthly costs for electricity, natural gas, gasoline, and home heating oil to come up with an “Total Energy Cost” for each state. These costs range from a low of $223 in the District of Columbia to a high of $410 in Connecticut (Michigan came in at #27 at $304). Because the total monthly cost is a mixture of the four energy source costs, states’ rankings are not in any immediate pattern because, as the author points out, “lower prices don’t always equate with lower costs, as consumption is a key determinant in the total amount of an energy bill.”
Associate Professor Adam Wellstead (SocSci) presented a paper “Beyond Adaptive Capacity: Policy Capacity and Climate Change Adaptation Assessments and Frameworks” at the Midwest Public Affairs Conference in Milwaukee on July 9-11, 2015.
Wellstead chaired the Environmental Policy session. The topic of the 2015 Midwest Public Affairs Conference was “Restructuring Governance: Emerging Solutions for Advancing the Public Interest.” The conference was hosted by the UWM Department of Public and Nonprofit Administration and the Helen Bader Institute for Nonprofit Management.
HOUGHTON — Michigan Tech’s mascot, Blizzard T. Husky, met the challenge of squeezing into the driver’s seat of the US Peace Corps’ Peace Car, which arrived on the Michigan Tech campus this afternoon — one of many stops on a Midwest Tour by representatives from the Peace Corps Midwest Region office in Chicago. The Peace Car enables Peace Corps staff to share their mission while limiting their carbon footprint.
Michigan Tech has the greatest number of Peace Corps Masters International programs in the US. The programs — from Forestry to Environmental Engineering, Geology and more — are now in ten different MTU departments that offer a Master’s Degree combined with Peace Corps service.
Kari Henquinet, Michigan Tech Peace Corps Master’s International Program director and senior lecturer in Social Sciences, was on hand to welcome the Chicago Peace Corps team.
“They’ll come back in the fall for recruiting,” Henquinet said.
Bruce Seely, Dean of the College of Science and Arts authored the chapter, Engineering and the Land-Grant Tradition at the University of Illinois, 1868-1950, pp. 269-96 in “Science as Service: Establishing and Reformulating American Land-Grant Universities, 1865-1930” edited by Alan I. Marcus, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2015.
Bruce E. Seely, Dean of the College of Sciences and Arts contributed The Challenges of Transportation Integration in the U.S.A., 1890-1960, (pp. 229-47) in “Linking Networks: The Formation of Common Standards and Visions for Infrastructure Development” edited by Martin Schieflebusch and Hans Liudger-Dienel. (Ashgate Publishing, 2015).
Bruce E. Seely, Dean of the College of Sciences and Arts, contributed the chapter Inventing the American Road: Innovations Shaping the American Freeway, (pp. 233-73), in “From Rail to Road and Back Again? A Century of Transport Competition and Interdependency,” edited by Ralf Roth and Colin Dival (Ashgate, 2015).
Seely and Atsushi Akera, associate professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at RPI, contributed to the chapter A Historical Survey of the Structural Changes in the American System of Engineering Education, in “International Perspectives on Engineering Education: Engineering Education and Practices in Context,” edited by Steen Hylgard Christensen, (Springer, 2015).
Chris Henderson, MS student in Environmental and Energy Policy, won the Rural Sociological Society’s Natural Resource Research Group’s Student Paper Award for his paper entitled “A Quantitative Analysis of County Hunting Trends in Michigan.” Chris will present this paper at the Rural Sociological Society’s annual meeting in Madison, Wisconsin on August 9, 2015. The award comes with a $100 cash prize.
Mary Durfee (SS) gave a paper, “TTIP, CETA and the Arctic: Social and Environmental Indicators in the EU’s Trade Impact Assessment Process” at the Interdisciplinary Approaches to Security in the Changing World conference held in Krakow, Poland, June 18-20, 2015.
Durfee led the discussion on the Food, security, and free trade panel, as well as chairing the panel on Security of Global Commons.
Members of the Department of Social Sciences and the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science (SFRES) attended the recent 2015 International Symposium on Society and Resource Management (ISSRM). The event took place in Charleston, SC, June 13-18, 2015.
Participants included nine graduate students in the Environmental and Energy Policy (EEP) program, Erin Pischke, Mayra Sanchez, Brad Barnett, Zoe Coombs, Aparajita Banerjee, Chris Henderson, Jenny Dunn, Erin Burkett, and Rhianna Williams, and Andrew Kozich of SFRES. Also attending were Professor Kathy Halvorsen, Associate Professor Richelle Winkler, and ISSRM 2016 Conference Coordinator/Ecosystem Science Center Research Scientist Jill Fisher.
The conference is the annual meeting of the International Association for Society and Natural Resources (IASNR). IASNR is an interdisciplinary professional association open to individuals who bring a variety of social science and natural science backgrounds to bear on complex environment and natural resource issues.
Michigan Tech students created the newest IASNR student chapter. The new student chapter, named the Association of Students for People, Environment and Nature (ASPEN), was represented by a team of EEP students in the ISSRM 2015 Quiz Bowl.
Michigan Tech will host ISSRM 2016 from June 22 to June 26. The symposium theme is Transitioning: Toward Sustainable Relationships in a Different World. The conference coordinator is Jill Fisher, and the co-chairs are Kathleen Halvorsen and Richelle Winkler.
Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE) and Richelle Winkler (SS) coauthored “Resilience to Global Food Supply Catastrophes”, published in Environment, Systems, and Decisions.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10669-015-9549-2