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Southwestern recieves grants to fund additions to Environmental Studies

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By Beth Wade Friday, 12 June 2009

The Environmental Studies Program at Southwestern University just received a lot of green. The program was awarded $1.3 million in grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Kendeda Fund and the Associated Colleges of the South that will be used to add two new staff members and a Center for Social and Environmental Justice at the school.

The money will also be used to fund other projects on campus, including an Earth Tub to compost food waste.

New faculty

Southwestern received a $750,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation and money from the Kendeda Fund will be used to hire a full-time, tenure-track faculty member — the program’s first since being founded in 1999.

The program is the only one of its kind in Texas, said Laura Hobgood-Oster, chair of the Environmental Studies Program. Though other schools in Texas have environmental programs, she said the program is unique in its setup as an interdisciplinary study. Students in the program take classes relating to a multitude of disciplines, including religion, history, sociology, economics, anthropology and sciences.

“Right now, we are the only program in Texas that is offering an environmental studies academic program that is integrated in terms of all these different approaches,” Hobgood-Oster said.

She said the program has a visiting professor, but the school has been looking for a way to fund a full-time position.

“We will be searching for somebody next year, and we are already playing around with the job description,” she said. “It will be someone with either a [doctorate] in environmental studies or environmental geography and does [Geographic Information Systems]. That is going to be part of the focus of the academic arm of this.”

GIS is a mapping system that takes different kinds of data and layers it into digital maps. Grant money from the Kendeda Fund, which totaled $436,000, will be used to buy the equipment for the GIS lab and support sustainability projects on campus.

Part of the grant money will also be used to fund a full-time staff coordinator who has strong skills in GIS, said Hobgood-Oster. The new faculty member should be hired in the fall and help in the staff coordinator search. Both positions would likely start in August 2010, she said.

Other Mellon grant money will be used to create a Center for Social and Environmental Justice and create a Mellon Environmental Fellows Program.

Students will be able to apply for $5,000 through the fellows program to participate in study-abroad programs with a focus on environmental studies during their junior year.

Upon their return the students apply the knowledge they gained while abroad, which could translate into local environmental projects that may benefit Georgetown and the surrounding area, Hobgood-Oster said. The program could also provide student leadership at the center.

“[The fellows program] is tying together this idea of cultural and environmental studies — that you can’t really understand what is going on with environmental issues unless you understand the global impact of it,” she said. “The idea is that the students will bring these ideas from abroad back here, and also take ideas of things they learn here when they study abroad and those things will all play together.”

Postdoctoral fellow

A $129,000 grant from the Associated Colleges of the South will fund a postdoctoral fellow for two years.

Jinelle Sperry accepted the position with Southwestern and will begin teaching in the fall. Sperry, who completed her doctorate in conservation biology at the University of Illinois, will teach a course in biodiversity in the fall and may teach community ecology or conservation biology in the spring, Hobgood-Oster said.

Sperry has spent time in Killeen researching the Texas rat snake and songbird nests.

“Her research really looks at how predator and prey relationships happen,” Hobgood-Oster said. “She looks at snakes and birds more than anything else, and which snakes are eating which endangered birds and where they are doing that. It is really interesting research.”

Her research has also included the effects of military equipment on animal habitats and how that affects the relationships between predators and their prey, she said.

Student environmental activism

Students at Southwestern can participate in the Students for Environmental Activism and Knowledge group, whose purpose is to encourage more environmentally sound practices and bring awareness to Southwestern, according to the school’s website.

“One of the things that is so fun and also very challenging about environmental studies — and it is a lot like feminist studies in this way — is that the academic component almost necessarily means a kind of activist thing on campus,” said Laura Hobgood-Oster, chair of the Environmental Studies Program.

SEAK is one of Southwestern’s largest student groups, she said. Last year some meetings drew up to 50 people.

SEAK projects:

Earth Day – Each semester, students promote activism on campus and provide information.

Recycling initiatives – Recycling bins for paper, aluminum, plastic and glass are available in all academic, administrative and residential buildings.

Green residence hall – Students who reside in the Dorothy Manning Lord Residential Center practice sustainable living. Hobgood-Oster said the group hopes to make all residence halls “green.”

Earth Tub – Using approximately $10,000 from the Kendeda Grant, Southwestern will purchase an Earth Tub, a large bin to compost all of the school’s food waste.

To-go boxes – Compostable to-go boxes instead of Styrofoam will be available in the dining hall. The new boxes will cost students 25 cents a piece in the first year. The cost will be absorbed into meal plan costs in 2010.