In the spring of 2011, Paul Mohai, SNRE professor, and Byoung-Suk Kweon, U-M research investigator, completed an extensive study that found that Michigan schools located in areas with the highest industrial air pollution levels had the lowest attendance rates—an indicator of poor health—as well as the highest proportions of students who failed to meet state educational testing standards even after controlling for factors such as school demographics, expenditures and location.That study, funded by the Kresge Foundation, was published in the journal Health Affairs and received wide media attention.
SNRE Professor Dorceta Taylor has been named chair-elect of the Environment and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association. The Section on Environment and Technology provides a home for about 460 sociologists interested in a range of environmental issues. Section members recently voted on new officers. Next year, Professor Taylor will become chair of the Section.
One of the nation' leading researchers in children's environmental health, Marie Lynn Miranda, will be the new dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE), effective Jan. 1, 2012, pending approval from the Board of Regents.
"I have followed a career path that did not exist when I graduated from the University of Michigan. But this great University gave me the skills to create it," Peter C. Mertz, Visiting Committee member and alumnus, delivered this year's Commencement address April 30. Mertz is chief executive officer and co-founder of Global Forest Partners (GFP), one of the largest timber investment management organizations in the world.
Air pollution from industrial sources near Michigan public schools jeopardizes children's health and academic success, according to a new study from University of Michigan researchers. The researchers found that schools located in areas with the state's highest industrial air pollution levels had the lowest attendance rates—an indicator of poor health—as well as the highest proportions of students who failed to meet state educational testing standards. The researchers examined the distribution of all 3,660 public elementary, middle, junior high and high schools in the state and found that 62.5 percent of them were located in places with high levels of air pollution from industrial sources.
The second conference of the Initiative on Climate Adaptation Research and Understanding through the Social Sciences, or ICARUS, will take place at SNRE in the Dana Building May 5 to 8. The theme is Climate Vulnerability and Adaption: Marginal Peoples and Environment. More than 150 papers will be presented by scholars and researchers from around the world. ICARUS II is twice as large as the first conference, held at University of Illinois in 2010, in terms of papers submitted and registered attendees.
SNRE Professor and Associate Dean Arun Agrawal was one of 180 recipients of the 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation supports scholars, artists and scientists selected from 3,000 applicants on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise. Professor Agrawal will use the fellowship support to complete a book called "Poverty and Adaptation."
Jackie Turner, a U-M undergraduate with a double major in the Program in the Environment (PitE) and Screen Arts and Cultures, found that her interests in environment, sustainability, developing nations and documentary filmmaking converged when she traveled to Mpala, a 48,000-acre wildlife conservancy and biodiversity research center in Kenya, as part of a class taught by SNRE professors Rebecca Hardin and Johannes Foufopoulos.
SNRE Professors Dave Allan and Ivette Perfecto were honored Tuesday (Oct. 5) with university-wide awards for their contributions to research and service. Professor Allan received the 2010 Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award. Professor Perfecto received the 2010 Faculty Recognition Award.
SNRE Associate Professor Dorceta E. Taylor has received the Allan Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award from the American Sociological Association. The award is for Taylor's 2009 book, "The environment and the people in American cities, 1600s-1900s: disorder, inequality, and social change," published by Duke University Press.
Environmental Justice Professor Paul Mohai, along with Byoung-Suk Kweon, researcher and adjunct assistant professor; Sangyun Lee, research fellow; and doctoral student Kerry Joy Ard, used EPA data and a formula for measuring the impact of pollutants to evaluate the toxic burden of each zip code in Michigan.
Agrawal, colleague link land management, ownership and climate change in forests of developing world
Studying 80 forest "commons" in more than a dozen developing nations, a University of Michigan researcher and his University of Illinois colleague have found links between local ownership and control of those forests and the fight against climate change. They found that greater local ownership and input into forest management appear to keep these areas, also called forest commons, from being overharvested or otherwise misused, thereby increasing their ability to capture carbon and mitigate or slow the effects of climate change. Their findings, based on data collected on three continents, appear in a paper published online Oct. 5 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors are Arun Agrawal, a professor and associate dean of the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment, and Ashwini Chhatre of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Bunyan Bryant, a founder of the academic field of environmental justice, is being honored with the state of Michigan's highest environmental honor. Professor Bryant, a faculty member in the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE), will receive the Helen and William D. Milliken Distinguished Service Award May 28. The ceremony takes place as part of the Tenth Annual Environmental Awards Celebration, coordinated by the Michigan Environmental Council (MEC). The annual Milliken Award recognizes an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the protection of Michigan's environment.
Bunyan Bryant, a prominent educator, social activist and pioneer in the environmental-justice movement, received national recognition on Oct. 20 for his personal contribution and dedication to environmental justice during a national symposium on the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University, which hosted the event in New Orleans on Oct. 19-21, presented Bryant, a University of Michigan professor, with the Damu Smith Power-of-One Environmental Justice Award. The award honors the late Damu Smith, an activist who advanced the cause of environmental justice and paved the way for the formation of the first-ever national network of Black environmental-justice activists.
Environmental injustice in people-of-color communities is as much or more prevalent today than 20 years ago, say researchers commissioned to conduct a follow-up to the 1987 landmark study, "Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States." The new report, "Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, 1987-2007: Grassroots Struggles to Dismantle Environmental Racism in the United States, " shows that 20 years later, disproportionately large numbers of people of color still live in hazardous waste host communities, and that they are not equally protected by environmental laws.