On Friday, May 6 the Gustavus community is celebrating the work of its students during the event Celebration of Creative Inquiry (CCI). From 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm students from all disciplines display posters on class, thesis, collaborative, and/or individual research projects. This year the Geography Department will be well represented. Over 20 presentations will showcase work in human, physical, and environmental geography. I hope you can join us for the event. To give you a hint of what to expect, here are some of the projects students will be presenting tomorrow. These are summaries of students’ proposals which they have been working on as part of the Research Methods class.
Rachel Weitz: Environmental Perceptions
I am looking at how different population characteristics- age, income, gender, race, presence of family- change how people look at the environment and sustainability. Hopefully by knowing this I can find trends and relationships in how people think to better target sustainability initiatives, education programs, and find out what environmental concerns people have and are interested in working on.
Erica Brown- Public Housing
My research is about the choices and outcomes of Section-8 housing as an alternative to public housing complexes. Section-8 housing is often a way for families to move out of public housing complexes and choose where they want to live, ideally in a better neighborhood than the public housing complexes. However, Section-8 homes are normally in the same or similar neighborhoods as the public housing facilities, meaning that they are not getting a better, safer home.
Reina Nielsen – Jumping worms
My research is on the potential invasion of the invasive species Amynthas agrestis, the jumping worm. This worm can have negative impacts on the habitats that they invade. I want to find out where they can invade in Minnesota and how severe of harm they they can have on the area they invade as well as find out how jumping worms will get into Minnesota by surveying people on what they use worms for and from where they get them.
Sergio de Pablos Velez- Public Space
Public and private spaces in cities play an important role in how people experience the urban landscape. This research looks at the ways in which policies regarding these spaces affect the people’s quality of life and argues for a better model of design integrating mobility, pedestrianism and easy access for public transportation.
Megan Luick – Avulsion Opinions
The Old River Control Structure is the only thing stopping the Mississippi River from changing courses and flowing down the Atchafalaya River. It was put up for economic reasons. It keeps the rivers as they are, but creates environmental problems and a risk of catastrophic flooding if it fails. Do people living right by it feel that it should stay up?
Alex Nadeau – Energy Equity
In my Research Methods class I am creating a proposal to study the causes behind a nationwide energy industry that doesn’t seem to be solar friendly. I hope to gain insight into the relationship between the energy providers and how they see solar production in terms of affecting the current business model on the consumer’s end. A better understanding of their policies and actions either for or against solar households could help policy makers establish arguments as to why it is wrong for them to raise rates.
Danielle Olson – Residential Recycling
My research aims to decipher the most effective method for raising the residential recycling rate in Saint Peter, MN. Using a survey distributed to residents as well as interviews with LJP Waste and Recycle officials, I am able to acquire useful information about why residents do or do not recycle and what items they recycle. This research will contribute to a plethora of existing research on recycling participation and will help other locations with similar characteristics increase their recycling rates.
Shelbie Walsh: Sustainable development
Motives, benefits, and social obligation all are taken into consideration when NGOs choose to allocate aid to communities in the developing world. This relationship between developed countries giving aid to developing countries receiving aid should be critically analyzed to the extend of how much benefit are these communities experiencing while receiving from NGOs. The ultimate goal should be to create long-term development in these communities that will sustain or hopefully increase their standard of living, but this isn’t always the goal of NGOs coming into these communities and they can have detrimental effects on the communities progress. Therefore critically thinking about the development process along with motives behind giving aid are crucial to creating sustainable development successes in these communities.
Ewomamobuho Eto – Sport Intervention
There have been high levels of crime rates among populations living in inner cities with high rates of unemployment and access to quality educations. In order to reduce or prevent these outcomes, policy makers began to introduce sports programs at the times where crime rates are highest (10:00pm-2:00am) in order to provide a better way of spending leisure time, rather than getting involved in violence. The hope was to reduce crime rates by using sports to impact discipline, purity, and other forms of life. This has not been the case, because these programs sometimes involve contact sport (basketball) and which has a level of aggression that might be transferred into situations outside the field, which might lead to violence. What my study proposes, is a better way to run these programs, which is “Sport-plus program”. Incorporated education into sports programs that will help give participants a foundation for a better life outside of crime even when they are no longer with the program.
Linde Carmack – Urban agriculture
Urban agriculture has the potential to be a powerful tool for enhancing resident wellbeing, community pride, and equity at all levels of society. I am interested in characterizing those impacts for Earthworks Urban Farm, an urban agriculture program and 2.5 acre organic farm in Detroit. EUF is particularly interesting due to the long history of urban agriculture in Detroit as a tool for autonomy and empowerment of minority neighborhoods in the face of decades of depopulation, disinvestment, and growing food insecurity and racial and socio-economic inequality.
Zachary Rehnelt – Student Athlete Protest
Student athlete roles in shaping protest can often be overlooked in the social movements that we see on college campuses. These athletes have similar concerns to their non-athlete counterparts but have the added advantage of greater visibility. How has this visibility been used to gain attention to the Black Lives Matter, Title Nine, and student athlete compensation movements. Social media shares and Twitter hashtag connectedness are analyzed to show how athlete mentions compare to other posts on these issues.