Municipalities and nonprofit organizations from southeast Michigan will be sharing the latest environmental infrastructure know-how this week at a Michigan Green Communities workshop organized by an SNRE master's project team. The workshop will provide an update to the Michigan Green Communities Challenge, a reporting mechanism for communities to track sustainability activity and share information with one another. The Economic Energy Analysis tool make its debut at the workshop.
The School of Natural Resources and Environment received three Addy Awards last week for excellence in creative services during the 2012 Addy Awards ceremony organized by the Ann Arbor Ad Club. SNRE received a Gold Addy—the top award—in the Interactive Media: Online Mobile Websites category for a prospective student website. SNRE's Office of Communications created the site for the school's Office of Academic Programs, which launched it during the fall recruiting season.
Effective communication is a key component of SNRE curriculum, and a major reason for the opening of the first SNRE art gallery. Sara Adlerstein is a research scientist at SNRE, artist and curator for the new Art & Environment Gallery. She hopes that this new mode of communication will resonate with the students and professors, showing them that graphs and charts are not the only modes of viable visual communication.
Out of 10 Michigan Society Postdoctoral Fellows selected university wide this year, two—Kimberley Kinder and Elizabeth Pringle—are affiliated with the School of Natural Resources and Environment. Each is finishing their first of three years as an assistant professor and using funding from the Fellows program to pursue research projects.
The 112th Congress matches the 111th as including the largest number of Hispanic representatives in U.S. history with 31 members: two in the Senate and 29 in the House. According to recent research published by SNRE doctoral student Kerry Ard and Professor Paul Mohai, this diversification may bode very well for pro-environmental policy-making.
U-M researchers at the School of Natural Resources and Environment will analyze the results of surveys given to about 120 veterans before and after upcoming six-day excursions. While scientific research increasingly shows a strong link between mental health benefits and the natural environment, the Sierra Club wanted to know if its programs, which are offered for free or at reduced costs, were producing the same results. Coordinating the research work at SNRE are Rachel Kaplan, the Samuel Trask Dana Professor of Environment and Behavior, and research scientist Jason Duvall.
SNRE Professor Rosina M. Bierbaum was a featured speaker at the 2012 Investor Summit on Climate Risk and Energy Solutions, held last week at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Bierbaum's speech, "An Urgent Challenge: Economic Impacts of Climate Change and Resource Scarcity," linked the issues of climate change, development and economic prosperity. "Climate change has severe economic ramifications, affecting the availability and sustainability of financial capital and natural resource capital," she said. "It could easily exacerbate inequality in the world, as the poorest countries will experience the greatest impacts, yet have the least financial , technical and scientific resources to cope."
Marie Lynn Miranda began her term as dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment Jan. 1. Dean Miranda has devoted much of her professional career to research directed at improving the health status of disadvantaged populations, particularly children. To inaugurate her tenure, she sent the following email to faculty, students and staff Jan. 1.
More than 3,000 gallons of Huron River water were trucked to the University of Michigan campus recently to create 150 mini-Hurons that are used to study how environmental changes affect freshwater habitats like rivers and streams. The artificial streams are called flumes, and U-M's new $1 million "Flume Room" is in the basement of the Dana Building, home to the School of Natural Resources and Environment. The U-M flume lab is the largest facility of its kind in North America, and possibly the world.
U-M students in the Sustainable Energy Systems course (NRE 574/ESENG 599/PP 519) had two electrifying guests this past week, as a pair of 2011 Chevy Volts came to campus. The Volts, manufactured by General Motors, were used to demonstrate topics being discussed in the course taught by Greg Keoleian, the Peter M. Wege Professor of Sustainable Systems at SNRE and the director of its Center for Sustainable Systems (CSS). Students had a chance to sit inside the cars, look under the hoods at the battery system and learn more about the special monitoring equipment installed by GM to assess the car's performance. Nearly 40 GM engineers are also taking the course via distance learning.