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Smith College Environmental Science and Policy Program Newsletter Capstone Seminar: Ambergris Caye Projects
Fall 2012
Inside This Issue Environmental Science and Policy Program Interns
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Spotlight on Corinna Keeler- 3 Spatial Analysis Lab Fellow A Look Inside the ENV 201/202 Integration Course
The Environmental Science and Policy capstone course is taking on a very different kind of task for their final projects this semester. All the final analyses are focused on a small island off of mainland Belize, which is touted as Belize’s top tourist destination. The island, Ambergris Caye, is in the process of drawing up a master plan to better control their environmental future; their biggest challenge is to protect their limited land and resources from international resort development.
Professor L. David Smith explained a bit about how he envisioned teaching the last class in the series of four ENV Integration Courses, and its usefulness to students, especially seniors as they prepare for careers in the environmental field.
Student Spotlight: Christina 4 Goethel (‘13)
“The primary goal of ENV 312, in my mind, is to give ES&P majors the opportunity to identify a real-world problem, design strategies or actions to mitigate or solve the problem, and communicate this information to the relevant stakeholders.
The island is very small, only a few miles across, and 25 stretched miles long. The low-lying beaches and mangrove lagoons are the prominent habitats – inherently prone to erosion and ocean storms. Fortunately, Ambergris Caye’s coastline is protected by the second largest barrier reef in the world, a natural gift and a precious responsibility.
In addition, I want students to ready themselves for life after Smith by reflecting on their accomplishments, [knowledge] gaps, goals, and aspirations and by practicing skills in class that may prove useful in their careers- for example coursework and assignments in the form of informational interviews, job letters and resume work.”
ENV 312’s focus is to craft recommendations based on research and analysis – each group for a different facet of the Ambergris Caye Sustainable Development Plan.
Students presented during the ENV lunchbag series December 4th and December 11th in Neilson Browsing Room. These talks were open to the Smith community and video recorded to send to the town council of Ambergris Caye.
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Environmental Science and Policy Program Bass Hall 106/107 Smith College Northampton, MA 01063
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Environmental Science and Policy Program Interns: Emily Dwyer (’13) I am a senior at Smith College and a double major in Economics and Environmental Science & Policy (ES&P). While pursuing this academic track, I have discovered that neither topic can be studied merely in isolation—instead, combining the two subjects has allowed for a firmer understanding of current global circumstances, and enabled me to more completely identify the relationship between economic and environmental issues.
on a daily basis. As a part of the JYA program, I also conducted an independent study focused on the carbon neutral city, Masdar, which is currently under construction in the United Arab Emirates. This independent research allowed me to learn about opportunities, challenges, and deception associated with sustainable urban development, especially within the Middle East.
Throughout my semester and summer in Geneva, I interned at the United Nations Environmental Program Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), where I assisted in the training department. At UNEP FI, I helped to edit materials for two courses: ‘Environmental & Social Risk Analysis’, and ‘Climate Change: Risks and Opportunities for the Financial Sector.’ These course materials were then used to educate risk managers and analysts in commercial, corporate, investment and retail banks. This experience exLast semester (spring 2012), I had the opporposed me to some of the many challenges of tunity to study abroad in Switzerland with the trying to incorporate sustainable practices and Smith College JYA in Geneva program. environmental awareness into a predominantly While there, I enrolled in “Climate Change and Emily in Geneva, Switzerland unsustainable sector. I was also able to participate in Trade,” an economics course at the Graduate (Photo Credit: Emily Dwyer) an intensive 3-week program which culminated in a Institute for International and Development Studies. The class certificate in Environmental and Social Risk Analysis from was taught by World Trade Organization chief economist PatUNEP FI. After I graduate, my goal is to incorporate the skills rick Low who brought a unique perspective to the class beand knowledge I gained during my internship into a career in cause he deals with real-world climate change and trade issues the environmental sector. I currently serve as the ES&P intern and program student liaison, where I help organize events and activities for students, communicate events and internship opportunities to students and alumnae, and act as the student editor of the program newsletter. I also enjoy taking part in the Green Team’s Divestment Campaign, in addition to serving as a Sustainability Representative for Morrow House.
Hannah Hurvitt (’13) I am currently a senior completing an Environmental Science & Policy and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies double degree. My path academically has not been straightforward, but doubling majoring is one of the best things I did while at Smith. My interests lie in the field of agriculture and small farm development; I am focusing specifically on rural agriculture in Brazil. I have been fortunate to have spent a semester abroad in northeast Brazil, living and working with subsistence farmers, and learning how issues of welfare, restricted seed subsidies, and corrupt government agencies can have overwhelming impacts on the lives of small farmers and their families. Hannah in Maine (Photo Credit: Hannah Hurvitt)
On campus, I am the president of LunaDisc, Smith’s ultimate frisbee team, and more recently an ES&P intern. The best class I took within the ES&P major was Nat Fortune’s PHY 201: Renewable and Non-renewable Energy; it was hands-on hard work, which I enjoyed it immensely. Outside of Smith I am the co-founder of an online farmers market called Farmdrop, which is based out of Blue Hill, ME. Farmdrop was created as an alternate vehicle for families to buy local pesticide-free food at a flexible price, with the goal of increasing patronage of local farms by working families and SNAP-benefit (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) community members. This project has pushed me to dive into the issues of community welfare and active collaboration around small-scale agriculture in my community. Farmdrop is in its second year of operation and I hope to expand its prototype to other communities when I leave Smith. I have been farming for most of my young-adult life and I hope to continue on with that after graduation; the Pioneer Valley is a great place to work and its farming community has so much to offer.
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Spotlight: Spatial Analysis Lab Fellow Corinna Keeler The Smith College Spatial Analysis Lab (SAL) provides support and instruction in geographic information systems (GIS) science and technology (such as generating maps) to engage the entire Smith community in spatial thinking and promote geographic and spatial literacy. Last January, a committee began the search for a post-baccalaureate Fellow who could to support the work of the SAL and assist director Jon Caris. Cory Keeler started work at Smith this fall. Hailing from Manteo, North Carolina, Cory graduated from Grinnell College in 2012, where she majored in Geography—Cory’s interest in GIS sprouted from an introductory course that she took during her sophomore year. She valued the analytical techniques that the hands-on assignments provided, and “thought it was so cool how GIS can help us understand spatial relationships between social, cultural, and environmental phenomena and link different disciplines together.” Additionally, Cory enjoyed the artistic aspect of using GIS to make maps visually and aesthetically pleasing.
Cory now works to support classes and research at Smith that use GIS programs and GPS units. She also helps conduct GIS workshops for individuals interested in using GIS and GPS, but don’t have time to take a formal class. In addition to supporting classes and workshops, Cory assists on the individual level, helping students one-on-one with assignments for classes, and independent projects. Cory’s favorite part about her role at Smith is working with students—she enjoys “trying to explain things using examples from the Smith campus or our daily lives to help clarify why you might do a certain procedure in GIS and why maps are such a powerful way to examine data.” When she is not working with GIS, Cory enjoys playing ultimate Frisbee, watching the Food Network, reading, and making crafts from the pages of National Geographic magazines! To contact Cory, please email her at ckeeler@smith.edu
The knowledge and skills that Cory gained from her Intro GIS course allowed her to obtain a summer internship with the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City, and a Research Experience for Undergraduates position at Clark University in Worcester, where her research focused on using GIS to model future water consumption in the Boston Metro Area for a local government agency. In addition to her internship experiences, she also held a campus job at Grinnell, where she digitized historic maps. According to Cory, these experiences “prepared me at least partially for a range of applications of GIS in the ‘real world’ because I had used spatial analysis techniques in a variety of industries (government, NGO, academia) and was familiar with perspectives from a lot of different academic disciplines across the sciences and social sciences.”
To learn more about the Smith College SAL, please visit their website:http:// www.science.smith.edu/sal/ wordpress/
Photo: Cory Keeler collecting data using a GPS unit at Smith College. (Photo Credit: Emily Dwyer)
A Look Inside the ENV 201/202 Integration Course By Julianne Busa, Postdoctoral Fellow in Environmental Science & Policy at Smith College ENV201/202 is an intense course sequence. As the methods course for the Environmental Science & Policy major, this lecture and lab have a lot to accomplish in one short term; we cover both natural sciences and social sciences approaches, quantitative and qualitative methods. That can make things a little hectic at times, but it also means that we get to do a lot of cool stuff. This fall, we started things off by heading to the local Bridge Street Cemetery where we collected data from the gravestones to build a picture of the Northampton population at different
windows in time. By comparing pre-1890 graves to more modern ones, the class was able to see evidence of medical advances, a decrease in child mortality and childbirth deaths, and increasing longevity for both males and females. And, of course, the exercise also gave us a chance to explore sampling methods and begin to discuss the way in which biases can shape the data we collect.
ENV 201/202 students during a lab at the MacLeish Field Station (Photo Credit: Julianne Busa)
We spent our next three lab periods at the MacLeish Field Station exploring patterns in land use. We meas-
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Continued—A Look Inside the ENV 201/202 Integration Course ured vegetation diversity, invertebrate diversity, and soil pH in each of three habitat areas. Using this information, we learned how to quantify the diversity of each area using specialized biodiversity indices, and also utilized regression (putting those basic statistics courses to work) to detect a significant relationship between the soil pH and vegetation diversity of our sites. While much of our time at MacLeish was spent outdoors, ENV 201/202 also had the honor of being one of the first classes to utilize the new Bechtel Environmental Classroom—a definite bonus! I like to start the course with these kinds of activities to emphasize the importance of building up a strong foundation of data directly from the natural world—but a primary focus
of the ES&P major is to make connections between the environment and ourselves, so once students have that foundation I start to incorporate more methods that allow us to investigate the way that humans relate to environmental issues. We also start to move beyond basic statistical analysis. Smith is very fortunate to have a wonderful Spatial Analysis Lab, and ENV 201/202 makes good use of it to apply spatial analysis techniques that help us define local food deserts (places where people have a hard time getting fresh food due to lack of physical access or financial constraints) and examine where climate change will have the greatest impacts and who will be most affected. Throughout the term, students also work in groups to explore qualitative methods. This year each group chose a question related to food and agriculture (e.g. the role of women in farming) and engaged in a series of in-depth interviews and participant observation experiences to learn how to turn conversation and everyday experiences into data. We then learned how to code that data and analyze the emerging themes. Later on in the semester, each group will locate a secondary data source and add a new layer of quantitative data to their project. This mixed methods approach will let us see firsthand what each type of data (quantitative and qualitative) can bring to the projects, and assess whether one or both of these methodologies is most useful for answering the questions we’ve set out to explore.
ENV 201/202 students during a lab at the MacLeish Field Station (Photo Credit: Julianne Busa)
In the end, it’s that goal of exploration that drives the entire curriculum of ENV 201/202. The specific issues we cover in class may not be the ones that drive your curiosity, but whatever question does interest you, ENV201/202 is designed to provide the toolkit of skills (and the confidence) to start exploring it!
Student Spotlight: Christina Goethel (‘13) By Emily Dwyer
Christina is currently a senior Environmental Science and Policy Major (ES&P), with a minor in Marine Science and Policy (MS&P). After two high school trips to the Arctic and Antarctic in high school, Christina was drawn to the Environmental Science and Policy program at Smith. She became fascinated with all the different ways one could study the environment, but even more intrigued by the way they were all connected to it. Christina believes that her favorite course, Marine Ecology, laid the ground work for the other MS&P courses. Furthermore, she enjoyed learning from a professor with a “clear
love and passion for both the subject as well as for teaching.” In addition to her positive experiences on campus, Christina also participated in the Sea Education Association (SEA) Semester during the fall of her junior year. Before attending Smith, she learned about the program on Smith’s website, and decided that she wanted to participate in the program regardless of where she decided to attend school. After participating in the program, Christina felt that Smith’s ES&P and MS&P curriculum laid a strong foundation for her success in classes at SEA.
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Continued—Student Spotlight: Christina Goethel More recently, Christina participated in the National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates internship program and pursued an internship at the Shannon Point Marine Center in Anacortes, WA. She believes the classes and skills learned at Smith and her time at SEA made her well prepared for this internship. Specifically, the interdisciplinary set of classes required for her studies in ES&P and MS&P allowed her to view the internship from many different points of view. Christina believes that she “focused on the ecological frame during the internship, but could also understand it in a policy frame—something that is one of the most invaluable pieces of our education.” Christina also plays an active role on the Smith campus as a member of the swimming and diving team. She was also a previous Student Research in Departments (STRIDE) student where she researched the Pacific walrus and its ecological and social role in the Bering Sea. During her free time, she attends as many lectures and lunchbag events as possible.
Christina during her SEA Semester. (Photo Credit: Christina Goethel)
After graduation, Christina hopes to eventually do research on marine ecology, with a focus on trophic interactions in the Polar Regions. She is currently exploring several graduate programs, but has not decided if she will go directly to graduate school.
Fall Events and Lectures Sponsored by the ES&P Program September 24th– Lecture with Eric Zettler from SEA @ Woodshole: Microbial interactions with plastic marine debris: Life in the "Plastisphere" September 27th‐ ES&P Celebration!: A celebration of the new semester with fellow students and faculty from the ES&P Program. Featuring local food and drinks.... October 4th ‐Sustainability Graduate School and Careers, with Eban Goodstein, economist and Director of the Center for Environmental Policy, Bard College October 13th ‐ Women's Global Leadership Celebration ‐Environmental Stewardship In and Out of the Classroom: At Smith, environmental literacy and sustainability have emerged as powerful principles, driving how the institution operates and educates students. Angela Oliverio ’12, and current students Kayla Clark ’14, Laura Malecky ’13, and Alyssa Stanek ’13 spoke about their experiences with Coral Reef Ed‐Ventures in Belize. October 22nd –Lecture with Dan Simberloff, Nancy Gore Hunger professor of Environmental Science, Ecology and Evolu‐ tionary Biology, University of Tennessee: Impacts and management of biological invasions: What's the fuss? November 6th & 14th ‐Student Presentations of NOAA Summer Internships: Student who participated in 10‐week paid internships this summer present their work. December 7th & 11th ‐ES&P Capstone Presentations: After a semester of research, ENV 312 capstone seminar students present their sustainable solutions to issues raised by the island community of Ambergris Caye, Belize.