Social Sciences Newsblog

Cookstove Project in Sustainable Design Expo

Published April 16, 2013

Michigan Tech students found a low-cost, highly effective way to reduce the impact of cooking over biomass fires without designing and installing high-tech, costly stoves. They have been invited by the Environmental Protection Agency to take their work to Washington, DC, to participate in the EPA’s annual Sustainable Design Expo. Known as P3 (People, Prosperity and the Planet), the competition challenges college and university teams to design and develop sustainable technologies to help protect the world’s health and the environment.

The cookstove project team includes Mark DeYoung and Jonathan May, mechanical engineering; Travis Wakeham, anthropology and biological sciences; and Jarod Maggio, Abram Peterson, Mollie Ruth, Kelli Whelan and Alex Wohlgemuth, environmental engineering. Their faculty advisor is Kurt Paterson, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

Read more at Michigan Tech News, by Jennifer Donovan.

CBS Detroit and its Technology Report published an article about Michigan Tech’s two student teams chosen to exhibit in the EPA Sustainable Design Expo in Washington, DC, this week. See EPA Sustainable Design Expo.

From Tech Today.

Norman Presents on Transborder Water Governance

Published April 16, 2013

By College of Engineering

Emma S. Norman (SS) presented her paper, “The Citizen, the State, and Environmental Governance: How indigenous actors, citizen scientists and regional constructions are reshaping transborder water governance” and served on a panel related to indigenous water rights at the Association of American Geographers Conference in Los Angeles (April 9 – 12).

From Tech Today.

Richelle Winkler’s website gets national attention

Published April 14, 2013

By

Richelle Winkler, MTU asst. prof. of sociology and demography, and her colleague Ken Johnson at the University of New Hampshire and other colleagues at Univ. of Wisconsin – Madison recently released a new interactive website that graphically displays net migration patterns for counties in the US from the 1950s-2010. Her work and the website were recently profiled in USA Today (12 Apr.) in an article “Age, kids and jobs affect where Americans live“. The website is available to everyone to explore at www.netmigration.wisc.edu.

Assistant Professor Louise Dyble Awarded NEH Fellowship

Published April 11, 2013

By College of Engineering

Assistant Professor of History Louise Dyble (SS), has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment of Humanities (NEH). From the NEH website:

“The NEH Summer Stipends program provides awards for individuals to pursue scholarly work in the humanities during the summer. Projects may contribute to scholarly knowledge in a particular discipline or to the general public’s understanding of the humanities, and they may address broad topics or focused research in a single field. Recipients typically produce scholarly articles, books, archeological site reports, translations, editions, or other scholarly tools in either traditional print or electronic formats.”

From Tech Today.

Proposals in Progress for April 11, 2013

Published April 11, 2013

By College of Engineering

Associate Professor Audrey Mayer (SS/SFI), Assistant Professor Laura Brown (CS/SFI), Research Engineer Robert Handler (ChE/SFI), Assistant Professor Timothy Havens (ECE/SFI) and Assistant Professor Mark Rouleau (SS/SFI), “Collaborative Research: CyberSEES: Type 2: Development of Data Driven Constitutive Platform of Models for Bioenergy Sustainability Assessment,” NSF.

From Tech Today.

Norman Publishes on Ecocolonisation

Published April 9, 2013

By College of Engineering

Emma S. Norman (SS) published the following article, “ Who’s counting? Spatial politics, ecocolonisation and the politics of calculation in Boundary Bay,” Royal Geographical Society.

From Tech Today.

Proposals in Progress for April 5, 2013

Published April 9, 2013

By College of Engineering

Professor Alex Mayer (CEE/CWS), Professor Kathleen Halvorsen (SS/CWS), Professor Noel Urban (CEE/CWS), Assistant Professor Emma Norman (SS/CWS) and Assistant Professor Richelle Winkler (SS/CWS), “Coastal SEES (Track 2) Collaborative: The Third Coast: Keys to the Sustainability of the Great Lakes Coastal Socio-Ecological System,” NSF.

From Tech Today.

Orthober Among the Thesis Award Nominees

Published April 2, 2013

By College of Engineering

The Graduate School is pleased to announce that Evan Anderson is Michigan Tech’s nominee for the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools Distinguished Thesis Award.

Three other graduate students were also nominated for consideration. Jean DeClerck was nominated by her advisors, Ann Brady and Wendy Anderson (HU) and committee member Victoria Bergvall (HU). Nathan Kelley-Hoskins was nominated by his advisor, Petra Hüntemeyer (Physics). Andrew Orthober was nominated by his advisor, Carol MacLennan (SS). All of the nominations were noteworthy for their scholarship, and the evaluation panel had a difficult task in selecting one nominee to represent Michigan Tech.

Read more at Tech Today, by the Graduate School.

SS Contributors to Oxford Bibliographies in Geography

Published April 2, 2013

By College of Engineering

Professor Barry D. Solomon (SS) and Assistant Professor Emma S. Norman (SS) contributed to the Oxford Bibliographies in Geography project, which provides overviews of the key literature in the field. Solomon served on the editorial board of the project and wrote the entry, Energy Resources and Use. Norman wrote the entry for Water.

The full project is accessible through: Oxford Bibliographies in Geography.

From Tech Today.

Social Sciences at World Water Day

Published March 27, 2013

By College of Engineering

The Center for Water & Society World Water Day poster competition was held at the Great Lakes Research Center on Thursday March 21, 2013. Among the research poster presenters were:

Mariah Maggio (Graduate Student, Environmental & Energy Policy)
Advisor: Carol MacLennan
Investigation of the Utility of Rapid Assessment Process for the Environmental Development Work of Peace Corps Master’s International Students

Emma Schwaiger (Graduate Student, Industrial Archaeology)
Advisor: Carol MacLennan
Environmental Impact of the Torch Lake Industrial Waterfront

Andrew Kozich (Graduate Student, Forest Science)
Advisor: Kathleen Halvorsen
A Great Lakes Cultural Model for Water-Related Values, Beliefs, and Behaviors

The students are shown with their posters in DOE News.

Among the faculty presenters was Emma S. Norman, Assistant Professor of Geography, Department of Social Sciences, Environmental and Energy Policy Program. She discussed Water Without Borders, water governance, political ecology, water, security, and related topics. Her presentation runs from 10:00-17:20 in the World Water Day at Michigan Tech 2013 video.