Category Archives: Uncategorized

A StoryMap featuring Glacier Lab Work to Build a Just Climate

Since 2021, when the Just Futures Institute at the University of Oregon was formed with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, students like Dara Craig and Sijo Smith in the Glacier Lab have been working on an initiative related to climate justice and Tribal communities. The project extended work that Mark Carey and Kathy Lynn had been doing since 2012 through the Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples Initiative. But with the Mellon funding to support graduate students full time, and with the impetus through the Just Futures Institute to expand work on racial and climate justice in the Pacific Northwest, graduate students within and beyond the Glacier Lab have spent the last three years working much more substantially than ever on these issues.

A new StoryMap called “Engaging Graduate Students in Building a Just Climate: Stories and Reflections from a Climate Justice Initiative” explains how this work has expanded and continued, thanks to student energy and leadership. Designed by Glacier Lab Master’s student Sijo Smith, the StoryMap highlights the work that she and fellow Environmental Studies graduate students Dara Craig and Dehlia Wolftail have done for this climate justice initiative since 2021, including their reflections and takeaways from the project.

Click here to view the full StoryMap and learn more!

Apply Now: Student Research Awards

Call for Applications (deadline June 10, 2024)

Summer 2024

Climate Change and Environmental Justice Student Research Awards

Overview

Thanks to generous support from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Professor Mark Carey (Environmental Studies Program/Geography Department) is able to offer several $4,000 Summer Research Awards for either graduate students or undergraduate students to conduct independent research on environmental justice and climate change in the Pacific Northwest. Students at any level are eligible to apply provided they meet the following research and eligibility requirements.

Research Criteria

The research proposal must be sound, feasible, and relevant
The Summer 2024 research travel, supplies, and time are not already funded by another source
Proposed research is humanities oriented
Proposed Summer 2024 research focuses on climate change and environmental justice in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, Alaska, British Columbia), with a more precise focus on either (a) Indigenous communities and/or (b) the cryosphere (snow, ice, glaciers, permafrost)

Eligibility Criteria

Projects may come from any discipline but must have a substantive humanities component
Applicants can be any student, from a first-year undergraduate to an advanced PhD student, but the applicant must be returning to the UO as an enrolled student for Fall 2024
Applicants must obtain a commitment from a faculty member to supervise their summer research project (contact Professor Carey if you have a project but not a faculty mentor)
Applicants cannot be “double paid” to conduct this research (e.g., if your travel is already funded, then you cannot get more money to fund that travel; or, if your time is already funded through a summer stipend, scholarship, or GE, then you cannot get double salary)
Applicants must secure research approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) if proposed research involves work with human subjects

Award Expectations

Commit substantial time to conducting this proposed research during Summer 2024
Maintain regular interactions with the faculty mentor during Summer 2024
Complete a progress report by July 20 to receive the first half of the award pay around August 1
Complete a research report on the research conducted over the summer by September 15, 2024 (details of the report format will be distributed to awardees)
Graduate student awardees must share the results of the Summer 2024 research conducted in some public-facing venue, such as a departmental colloquium, UO Graduate Research Forum, or national conference
Undergraduate awardees must share the results of the research project at the May 2025 UO Undergraduate Symposium
Acknowledge the Andrew Mellon Foundation in all work (presentations, publications, theses, etc.) resulting from the Summer 2024 award
Notify Professor Carey of publications, public exhibits, or presentations resulting from the award

Distribution of Funds

This Research Award will be paid out in two equal installments, one around August 1 after a progress report has been approved, and the other at the end of the Summer once the final research report has been approved by the faculty mentor and Professor Carey.

Please Note: If you are receiving federal financial aid, this award may affect your financial aid eligibility because the Summer Research Award counts as aid rather than compensation for employment. Students who receive federal aid have a responsibility to understand these federal and UO rules and to report all awards earned to the UO Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships.

Application Procedures

Submit an application with the following components:

a cover letter with all your contact information, student ID number, major or graduate program, GPA, and your faculty mentor name, department, and email address. This cover letter must also include a statement affirming that you meet all eligibility requirements and agree to fulfill all award expectations
a project proposal in an approximately one-page single spaced proposal that explains: (a) the justification for the project; (b) the proposed research questions; (c) the expected results; (d) the relationship of the project to humanities, climate change, environmental justice, and the cryosphere or Indigenous communities; and (e) your qualifications for this research
research plan and timeline of proposed activities, which should also name the type of final product (paper, art installation, etc.) you’ll eventually produce and your plan for conducting research and/or writing during summer
resume or CV
budget that explains (1) what you plan to use the Award funds for (note that funds to cover a stipend for your time devoted to research or writing is perfectly acceptable provided your time is not funded by another source); and (2) what other funding you do or don’t have, indicating precisely what those other funds do and do not cover.
The name and contact info for your faculty mentors/advisor, who will be contacted by Professor Carey. But note: your mentor does NOT need to submit a letter of recommendation.

Application Deadline: June 10, 2024

Application Submission

Submit applications as a single PDF document to Professor Mark Carey at carey@uoregon.edu

Questions: Contact Professor Mark Carey at carey@uoregon.edu

Greenland Fjords Research on the RV Tarajoq

Mark Carey joined the rest of his multidisciplinary Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) research team for ice-ocean-society research in east Greenland during August 2023. Their project, funded by the National Science Foundation’s NNA program, is called “Global changes, local impacts: Study of glacial fjords, ecosystems and communities in Greenland.” A recent article in Oceanography gives an overview of the project that runs through 2026, while the August 2023 NNA Newsletter explains the research activities.

This summer was the first time they jointly conducted fieldwork together. Being on the ship together for more than two weeks solidified the group and inspired many conversations about collaboration, interdisciplinary research, and connections with communities and Greenlandic partners.

They set sail in early August from Reykjavik, Iceland, on the RV Tarajoq, an oceanographic and fisheries research vessel owned and operated by the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources. Their goal: study the Sermilik fjord system and the continental shelf ocean through multidisciplinary approaches that involved collaboration across the team of physical and biological oceanographers, fisheries biologists, glaciologists, climate modelers, and social scientists.

A principal goal of the cruise was scientific research to understand fjord dynamics, circulation, and human dimensions. For the last decade or so, scientists have come understand the way warm ocean water enters the fjords and melts the glacier outlets of the Greenland Ice Sheet. But fjord circulation is complex, and the team strives to understand life in the fjord as well as the physical system. This requires many disciplinary approaches. It also involved communication with and input from communities along the fjord, especially a schoolteacher from Tiilerilaaq.

Another key objective was collaboration and building relationships through shared field research experiences. Carey has recently argued that multidisciplinary teams can thrive and improve research when they spend time together in the field, learn each other’s research methods, and share unstructured and informal times together that often spark some excellent collaborative ideas (see Alagona, Carey, and Howkins, 2023). On this Greenland cruise, Carey worked the noon to midnight shift on the ship, assisting with oceanographic data collection and learning new fields and research practices. The teamwork and shared experiences—and new friendships—has laid an ideal foundation for continued collaboration and fresh insights into the ice-ocean-society dynamics of the fjord system.

Carey will continue work on this project back at the UO, working closely with undergraduate Glacier Lab members Mira Cross and Olivia Black. They are focusing on fisheries policy and management, public perceptions of Greenland fjords, and the human drivers of change within fjords. Carey is working to build relationships with Greenlandic scholars and communities as well. After all, Greenland priorities and plans must ultimately shape the research. Next steps will thus involve on-the-ground learning in Greenland and from Greenlanders, with the goal of further expanding collaboration beyond the terrific current partners at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources.

Australian environmental historian visits Glacier Lab

Weaving worlds: Wetlands and multispecies politics of plants
Associate Professor Emily O’Gorman, Macquarie University, Australia
Speaking at the Geography Department Colloquium on March 16th, 2023 at 4pm. Condon 106.

Abstract below.

Wetlands in Australia have been important sites of political engagement and activism for many Aboriginal groups, who seek to care for Country, and strengthen their rights and roles in the management of water and particular sites. This paper engages with the contemporary weaving practices of three Aboriginal women at different wetland sites as they use this practice to enact ongoing connections to Country, a term used by Aboriginal people to refer to the nourishing interconnections between multiple beings. It particularly develops in conversation with Danielle Carney Flakelar, a Wailwan woman who continues to care for the Macquarie Marshes in a range of direct and indirect ways. Weaving draws us into multiple temporalities and particular multispecies relationships, involving plants and people, as well as many others. By focusing on weaving this paper shows that the concerns of Wailwan and other Aboriginal groups, concerns which may seem disparate to others, are in fact intimately connected. It aims to provide a more complex, richly woven, understanding of what is at stake in the lack of water in wetlands. Weaving interconnects generations and Country, water politics, and access to wetlands. In this way, this paper engages with the plants used for weaving as agents of and for postcolonial and multispecies politics.

Research in the Avalanche Capital

Fieldwork report by Environmental Studies PhD candidate and Glacier Lab member Zac Provant.

When I arrived in Juneau on March 11th, 2022, winter disasters were on people’s minds. In December 2020, Haines, Alaska experienced a deadly landslide that destroyed houses and killed two people. In February 2021, neighborhoods in downtown Juneau were evacuated due to extreme risk of historic avalanches. On March 24th, 2022—while I was in Juneau studying avalanches—Anchorage was hit by a massive avalanche that left debris as deep as 80 feet between houses and across roads.

This ongoing attention to winter hazards in Alaska reflects a longstanding awareness that Alaskan mountain ranges are dangerous places to live. In Juneau, people have a particularly infamous relationship with avalanches and landslides. For decades, news reporters and scientists have spread stories of disaster: National Geographic Magazine called Juneau “the nation’s worst risk for an avalanche disaster”, and in the 1950’s avalanche science legend Ed LaChapelle kicked off the decadal cycle of experts recommending no more development in certain parts of downtown Juneau. As Tom Mattice—Juneau’s Emergency Operations Manager—described in an interview with local news, avalanche scientists visiting Juneau all say the same thing: “we can’t believe you built here.”

Image 1. A natural avalanche barreling down the Behrends avalanche path. These slides occur every year, often coming within 100 meters of houses. An avalanche large enough to damage houses has not occurred since 1962. Image from the City and Borough of Juneau.

As visualized in the image above, Juneau’s concern for avalanche and landslide risk is not simply a detached fear of potential destruction based on expert opinions, avalanche forecasts, or over-protective regulations. There have been hundreds of dangerous avalanches in Juneau since it was developed as Alaska’s first mining town in the late 19th century. A document buried in a City and Borough of Juneau (CBJ) file cabinet lists many of these events, with the first recorded avalanche wiping out 3 cabins in 1887 and the well-known 1962 avalanche on the Behrends path destroying “numerous buildings, vehicles, and trees.” Many currents residents also have a clear memory of the 2008 avalanche that destroyed Alaska Electric Light and Power facilities and caused an energy crisis lasting nearly six months. A resident of a downtown hazard zone told me she paid over $3000 for electricity alone over that six-month period—a cost her family really couldn’t afford. This same woman had to evacuate her home in 2021, and she showed me her own recent cellphone video of an avalanche flying down the mountain to fully cover Thane Road. To her—and to everyone I spoke with in Juneau—deadly avalanches and landslides aren’t an abstract, back-of-mind risk like the Cascadia earthquake or the Yellowstone eruption. These winter hazards are a part of Juneau’s history, and this history plays an important role in residents’ everyday experiences.

In response to this long history of environmental disaster, local news stations, city officials, and avalanche experts have worked through various options for hazard mitigation in Juneau. This includes special avalanche and landslide property insurance, development and zoning regulations, avalanche forecasting, engineering projects, and home buyouts. The CBJ engages all of these mitigation options except home buyouts, which Tom Mattice tells me won’t realistically happen until another massive avalanche ends in tragedy. Residents in high hazard zones like the Behrends neighborhood and White subdivision have additional forms of insurance, the CBJ has regulations for property development in hazard zones, organizations like the Department of Transportation and Alaska Electric Light and Power employ their own private avalanche forecasters, and engineering projects are repeatedly proposed and constructed to protect public and private property.

Image 2. This current official avalanche and landslide hazard map was adopted in 1987 and is based on science from the 1970’s. There have been multiple attempts to update the downtown hazard maps, but these newer maps have not been adopted due to concerns about increased development regulations, property values, and insurance premiums. Image from the City and Borough of Juneau.

Image 3. Mike, Alaska Electric Light & Power’s avalanche forecaster, digs a pit to check snow stability on a steep slope near the Snettisham Dam. There are powerline towers at risk of being destroyed by an avalanche, so AEL&P regularly tests snow stability during dangerous conditions and conducts avalanche mitigation if necessary (often using a helicopter and daisy bell). Image from Zac Provant.

Yet when people talk about hazards and hazard mitigation in Juneau, they often fail to contextualize how people actually experience avalanches and landslides as a part of their daily lives. Of course, people don’t experience hazards universally—a fact that is clearly demonstrated by the high risk of a deadly avalanche or landslide in multiple downtown zones and the impossibility of a slide a few miles away in the Mendenhall Valley. However, it is not just exposure to hazards that influences someone’s vulnerability. There are also significant differences in how people experience the impacts of avalanche and landslide risk, such as accessing insurance, navigating development regulations, comprehending hazard maps and avalanche forecasts, and absorbing the cost of damages or property value changes. An illuminating example of this can be found in Rebecca Elliot’s paper “Scarier than another storm“, which looks at how people experience NFIP flood rate insurance maps. In order to understand how the many forms of hazard mitigation will or won’t help keep people safe in Juneau, I believe that it is important to examine the often-overlooked impacts of hazard risk in people’s everyday lives.

Guided by scholarship in unnatural disasters and environmental justice, I see hazard vulnerability as being produced within a system rather than as a preexisting condition for marginalized people (see: Marino & Faas, 2020). My research therefore unpacks how actors and institutions in Juneau influence the way hazard vulnerability materializes within the city. Do the mitigation strategies for avalanche and landslide risk help some people while disadvantaging others? Do wealthier residents have different experiences with hazard risk given their access to engineering consultants, insurance options, and political power? How are the avalanche experts, local officials, and residents addressing climate change as a component of hazard risk and vulnerability?

My research trip to Juneau in March 2022 jumpstarted an exciting new stage for my dissertation fieldwork and data analysis. I left with a solid foundation of key research themes and thought-provoking stories. I conducted 17 informal interviews with residents, city officials, non-profit directors, and avalanche experts, and I collected hundreds of pages of unpublished documents on the history of avalanche and landslide management in Juneau. My next steps include remote interviews, document analysis, and of course more time in Juneau. I will continue to examine how people in hazard zones influence, are erased from, and are impacted by hazard mitigation stories and strategies. As climate hazards become more frequent and more severe—from hurricanes to heat waves to avalanches—I offer the overlapping projects of hazard mitigation and climate adaptation a new approach that helps contextualize how vulnerability is actually experienced in a local community.

New Course Development Grant for Ice & Environmental Justice

Call for Applications (due May 20, 2022)

$4,500 Course Development Grant for a New Course Related to Ice and Environmental Justice in the Pacific Northwest

If you’re thinking about developing a new course related to environmental justice—and particularly if it connects to the Pacific Northwest and to snow, ice, glaciers, or glacier-fed waterways—then consider applying for a new course development grant ($4,500 stipend plus OPE). This grant is available thanks to generous support from the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

The goal of this larger Mellon “Pacific Northwest Just Futures” grant is to advance research and education on social and environmental justice issues in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, Alaska, British Columbia). There are many ways to bring these issues into a new course, and instructors from all disciplines, in all units, and all UO colleges are eligible to apply. Environmental justice courses related to ice could go in many different directions. Arctic residents including in Alaska rely on thinning sea ice for their homelands, hunting, fishing, transportation, cultural identity, and everything. Permafrost thawing is forcing some coastal communities to relocate and affecting vital infrastructure. Shrinking glaciers in Oregon and Washington play a role in farming and irrigation, environmental hazards like outburst floods and avalanches, salmon and fisheries, Tribal rights and treaties, hydropower, alpine recreation, coastal and marine ecosystems, public lands management, livelihoods and economies, identities, and food security.

Proposed new courses could focus on any of these topics and ice types (sea ice, glaciers, ice sheets, icebergs, permafrost, snow), and many others, as long as the course is connected to ice, environmental justice, and the Pacific Northwest. A new course in environmental ethics could include substantive new content on the Pacific Northwest and/or the cryosphere, while a new Earth Sciences course on hazards could add an environmental justice component, or a Law School course on water in the Northwest could bring in glaciers that feed those waterways, or an Indigenous environmental studies course could increase new content on environmental hazards and justice in Oregon.

One $4,500 course development grant will be awarded this spring/summer 2022, with the expectation that the course will be taught before Fall 2023 (so anytime during the 2022-2023 academic year, or in Fall 2023).

Eligibility and Priorities

This course development grant is designed to help an instructor create a new course or substantially overhaul an existing course with new content and structure. All UO instructors and faculty are eligible—from any unit, discipline, department, or college. Anyone who teaches their own courses can apply. Priority will be given to courses that will likely be taught at the UO more than once, rather than a one-time course offering. A course that has strong environmental justice, ice, and Pacific Northwest content will also be prioritized over a course with only minimal attention to these topics. Priority will also be given to a course that offers innovative pedagogy and interdisciplinary approaches. The proposed course must be taught by Fall 2023.

Award Details

The course development grant provides a $4,500 stipend to the instructor and covers the associated OPE. The award will be paid in two equal installments: first, at the outset of course development (in summer 2022); and, second, at the beginning of the term when the course is first offered.

Application Deadline: May 20, 2022

Application Instructions

To apply, email the following materials to Mark Carey (carey@uoregon.edu):

Cover Letter that provides (1) your contact information, (2) course specifics including proposed course number, title, and expected enrollment; (3) timing of when you will first teach the course (term/year) and frequency of course offering thereafter; (4) course approval status, or steps required for approval, to assure the course can be taught as proposed
Course Overview explaining: (1) the course rationale, objectives, and topics; (2) any pedagogical innovations; (3) course plans including potential readings, assignments, topics to cover, etc.; and (4) ways the course addresses ice, environmental justice, and the Pacific Northwest
Department/Unit Head Approval: finalists will be asked to have their unit head confirm that the course offering and plan for continued teaching align with unit-level approvals and planning

Questions: For questions about the award and process, contact Mark Carey (carey@uoregon.edu), who runs the Glacier Lab for the Study of Ice and Society and is based in the Environmental Studies Program and Geography Department. Funding for this course development grant comes from his “Ice, Society, and Climate Justice” dimension of the Mellon “Just Futures” grant.

Ice & Environmental Justice Summer Undergraduate Research Awards

Call for Applications (deadline May 11, 2022)

Summer 2022

Ice and Environmental Justice Undergraduate Research Awards

Overview

Thanks to generous support from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Professor Mark Carey (Environmental Studies Program/Geography Department) is able to offer two $4,000 Summer Research Awards for undergraduate students at any level to design and conduct full-time Summer 2022 humanities-oriented research on topics related to ice, climate, and environmental justice in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, Alaska, British Columbia).

Glaciers are of course icons of climate change. But they also play a role in farming and irrigation, environmental hazards like outburst floods and avalanches, salmon and fisheries, hydropower, alpine recreation, conservation, coastal and marine ecosystems, water supplies, public lands management, livelihoods, identities, and food security. Proposed research could focus on any of these topics, and many others, as long as it is connected to ice, the humanities, and environmental justice.

An exciting component of this Research Award is completion of a final product by the end of Summer 2022. There is flexibility in these final products. Most students will choose to write a research paper. But others may decide to develop a museum exhibit, or an art installation, or a studio project, or to publish a journalism article. Options are endless but must be agreed upon with your faculty mentor at the outset, so expectations and goals are transparent.

Eligibility Criteria

Projects may come from any discipline but should be connected to the humanities, environmental justice, and ice/climate
Applicants must be returning to the UO as an enrolled student for Fall 2022
Applicants must obtain a commitment from a faculty member to supervise their summer research project (contact Professor Carey if you have a project but not a faculty mentor)
Applicants may not be paid to conduct research through other internal UO research support programs during Summer 2022, though they may have academic-year support
Applicants must secure research approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) if the research involves work with human subjects

Award Expectations

Commit full-time effort to conducting research during Summer 2022
Maintain regular interactions with the faculty mentor during Summer 2022
Complete a research paper or agreed-upon final product (exhibit, studio, art, etc.) by the end of Summer 2022
Meet with the other award winner and Professor Carey at least 3 times during the summer
Share the results of the research project at the May 2023 UO Undergraduate Symposium
Acknowledge the Andrew Mellon Foundation in all work resulting from the Summer 2022 research
Notify Professor Carey of any publications, public exhibits, or conference presentations resulting from the research project

Award Details

This Research Award provides $4,000 during the Summer of 2022. The award will be paid out in two equal installments, one at the end of Week 5 and the other at the end of the Summer once the final research paper/product has been approved by the faculty mentor and Professor Carey.

Application Procedures

Submit an application with the following components:

a cover letter with all your contact information, student ID number, major, GPA, and your faculty mentor name, department, and email address. This cover letter must also include a statement affirming that you meet eligibility requirements and agree to fulfill all award expectations
a project description in an approximately one-page single spaced proposal that explains: (a) the justification for the project; (b) the proposed research questions; (c) the expected results; (d) the relationship of the project to ice, humanities, and environmental justice; and (e) your qualifications for this research
research plan and timeline, which should also name the type of final product (paper, art installation, etc.) you’ll produce and your plan for completing it during summer
a resume
a letter of recommendation from your faculty mentor, which should include their commitment to mentor your project during Summer 2022

Application Deadline: May 11, 2022

Application Submission

Submit applications to Professor Mark Carey at carey@uoregon.edu

Faculty mentors should also send their letters of support directly to Mark Carey.

Questions

Contact Professor Mark Carey at carey@uoregon.edu

Student and Faculty Winners of Climate Justice Awards

Two UO students and two UO faculty won the 2021 awards for research and teaching related to ice, society, and climate justice in the Pacific Northwest, with funding from the Andrew Mellon Foundation through the Just Futures Institute.

Students Jessica Gladis and Anna Mattson won the 2021 Undergraduate Summer Research Awards. Jessica’s project involved research on “Hermeneutic phenomenology: How perceptions of place form differing attitudes towards agency and climate change” focused on the Mount Rainier region to uncover climate values and experiences with glaciers. Professor Barbara Muraca (Philosophy/Environmental Studies) served as her faculty mentor. Anna’s project focused on “Glaciers, salmon, and environmental justice in Cordova, Alaska,” from a journalistic and storytelling perspective. Her faculty mentor was Professor Torsten Kjellstrand (Journalism).

Faculty members Casey Shoop and Gordon Sayre won the 2021 Course Development Grants for Ice and Environmental Justice. Professor Casey Shoop plans to teach a Clark Honors College course on “The Ice Archives,” which will grapple with how “glacial ice is both a medium of storage and the material of storytelling.” The course will ask students to explore not only how ice records the past but how stories, meaning, and even injustices are embedded in ice and what we say about glaciers. Professor Gordon Sayre plans to teach an Environmental Studies/Folklore course on “Ice and Fire in the Cascades: Memory, Energy, Recreation.” This course, to be taught in Spring 2022, aims to put knowledge about “glacial and geophysical deep time into a productive relationship with the modern timescales and methodologies of folklore and environmental humanities.”

More course development and student research awards will be offered for Summer 2022, so stay tuned for future calls. Congratulations to Jessica, Anna, Casey, and Gordon!

New Course Development Grants for Ice & Environmental Justice

Call for Applications

Course Development Grants for New Courses Related to Ice and Environmental Justice in the Pacific Northwest

If you’re thinking about developing a new course related to environmental justice—and particularly if it connects to the Pacific Northwest and to snow, ice, glaciers, or glacier-fed waterways—then consider applying for a new course development grant ($4,500 stipend plus OPE). Three of these grants are available thanks to generous support from the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

The goal of this larger Mellon “Pacific Northwest Just Futures” grant is to advance research and education on social and environmental justice issues in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, Alaska, British Columbia). There are many ways to bring these issues into new courses, and instructors from all disciplines, in all units, and all UO colleges are eligible to apply. Environmental justice courses related to ice could go in many different directions. Arctic residents including in Alaska rely on thinning sea ice for their homelands, hunting, fishing, transportation, cultural identity, and everything. Permafrost thawing is forcing some coastal communities to relocate and affecting vital infrastructure. Shrinking glaciers in Oregon and Washington play a role in farming and irrigation, environmental hazards like outburst floods and avalanches, salmon and fisheries, Tribal rights and treaties, hydropower, alpine recreation, coastal and marine ecosystems, public lands management, livelihoods and economies, identities, and food security.

Proposed new courses could focus on any of these topics and ice types (sea ice, glaciers, ice sheets, icebergs, permafrost, snow), and many others, as long as courses are connected to ice, environmental justice, and the Pacific Northwest. A new course in environmental ethics could include substantive new content on the Pacific Northwest and/or the cryosphere, while a new Earth Sciences course on hazards could add an environmental justice component, or a Law School course on water in the Northwest could bring in glaciers that feed those waterways, or an Indigenous environmental studies course could increase new content on environmental hazards and justice in Oregon.

There are three $4,500 course development grants available during the next two years, so depending on the number of funded courses in this round, there may be another call for applications next year.

Eligibility and Priorities

These course development grants are designed to help instructors create new courses. All UO instructors and faculty are eligible—from any unit, discipline, department, or college. Anyone who teaches their own courses can apply. Priority will be given to courses that will likely be taught at the UO more than once, rather than one-time course offerings. Courses that have strong environmental justice, ice, and Pacific Northwest content will also be prioritized over courses with only minimal attention to these topics. Priority will also be given to courses that offer innovative pedagogy and interdisciplinary approaches. Proposed courses must be taught within the next two academic years.

Award Details

The course development grant provides a $4,500 stipend to the instructor and covers the associated OPE. The award will be paid in two equal installments: first, at the outset of course development (for this round, in summer 2021); and, second, at the beginning of the term when the course is first offered.

Application Deadline: May 19, 2021

Application Instructions

To apply, email the following materials to Mark Carey (carey@uoregon.edu):

Cover Letter that provides (1) your contact information, (2) course specifics including proposed course number, title, and expected enrollment; (3) timing of when you will first teach the course (term/year) and frequency of course offering thereafter; (4) course approval status, or steps required for approval, to assure the course can be taught as proposed
Course Overview explaining: (1) the course rationale, objectives, and topics; (2) any pedagogical innovations; (3) course plans including potential readings, assignments, topics to cover, etc.; and (4) ways the course addresses ice, environmental justice, and the Pacific Northwest
Department/Unit Head Approval: finalists will be asked to have their unit head confirm that the course offering and plan for continued teaching align with unit-level approvals and planning

Questions: For questions about the award and process, contact Mark Carey (carey@uoregon.edu), who runs the Glacier Lab for the Study of Ice and Society and is based in the Clark Honors College and Environmental Studies Program. Funding for these three course development grants comes from his “Ice, Society, and Climate Justice” dimension of the Mellon “Just Futures” grant.

Ice & Environmental Justice Summer Undergraduate Research Awards

Call for Applications

Summer 2021

Ice and Environmental Justice Undergraduate Research Awards

Overview

Thanks to generous support from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Professor Mark Carey (Honors College/Environmental Studies Program) is able to offer two $4,000 Summer Research Awards for University of Oregon undergraduate students at any level to design and conduct full-time Summer 2021 humanities-oriented research on topics related to ice, climate, and environmental justice in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, Alaska, British Columbia).

Environmental justice research on ice could go in many different directions. Arctic residents including in Alaska rely on thinning sea ice for their homelands, hunting, fishing, transportation, cultural identity, and everything. Permafrost thawing is forcing some coastal communities to relocate and affecting vital infrastructure. Shrinking glaciers play a role in farming and irrigation, environmental hazards like outburst floods and avalanches, salmon and fisheries, hydropower, alpine recreation, conservation, coastal and marine ecosystems, water supplies, public lands management, livelihoods, identities, and food security. Proposed research could focus on any of these topics and ice types (sea ice, glaciers, ice sheets, icebergs, permafrost, snow), and many others, as long as it is connected to ice, the humanities, and environmental justice.

The goal of these Research Awards is to help students develop, conduct, and finish a research project. Ideally, the research proposal will be created with guidance from a faculty mentor. However, if you have a project idea, but not a faculty mentor, then contact Professor Carey to help. An exciting component of this Research Award is completion of a final product by the end of Summer 2021. There is flexibility in these final products. Most students will choose to write a research paper. But others may decide to develop a museum exhibit, or an art installation, or a studio project. Options are endless but must be agreed upon with your faculty mentor at the outset, so expectations and goals are transparent.

Eligibility Criteria

Projects may come from any discipline but should be connected to the humanities, environmental justice, and ice/climate
Applicants must be returning to the UO as an enrolled student for Fall 2021
Applicants must obtain a commitment from a faculty member to supervise their summer research project (contact Professor Carey if you have a project but not a faculty mentor)
Applicants may not be paid to conduct research through other internal UO research support programs during Summer 2021, though they may have academic-year support
Applicants must secure research approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) if the research involves work with human subjects

Award Expectations

Commit full-time effort to conducting research during Summer 2021
Maintain regular interactions with the faculty mentor during Summer 2021
Complete a research paper or agreed-upon final product (exhibit, studio, art, etc.) by the end of Summer 2021
Meet with the other award winner and Professor Carey at least 3 times during the summer
Share the results of the research project at the May 2022 UO Undergraduate Symposium
Acknowledge the Andrew Mellon Foundation in all work resulting from the Summer 2021 research
Notify Professor Carey of any publications, public exhibits, or conference presentations resulting from the research project

Award Details

This Research Award provides $4,000 during the Summer of 2021. The award will be paid out in two equal installments, one at the end of Week 5 and the other at the end of the Summer once the final research paper/product has been approved by the faculty mentor and Professor Carey.

Application Procedures

Submit an application with the following components:

a cover letter with all your contact information, student ID number, major, GPA, and your faculty mentor name, department, and email address. This cover letter should also include a statement affirming that you meet eligibility requirements and agree to fulfill all award expectations
a project description in an approximately one-page single spaced proposal that explains: (a) the justification for the project; (b) the proposed research questions; (c) the expected results; (d) the relationship of the project to ice, humanities, and environmental justice; and (e) your qualifications for this research
research plan and timeline, which should also name the type of final product (paper, art installation, etc.) you’ll produce and your plan for completing it during summer
a resume
a letter of recommendation from your faculty mentor, which should include their commitment to mentor your project during Summer 2021

Application Deadline: May 7, 2021

Application Submission

Submit applications to Professor Mark Carey at carey@uoregon.edu

Faculty mentors should also send their letters of support directly to Mark Carey.

Questions

Contact Professor Mark Carey at carey@uoregon.edu