The Nelson Institute Blog

buy cialis
buy kamagra
buy levitra
buy viagraA while back I announced a competition for the Journey of Facilitation workshop. Today I am pleased to announce the winners of that competition:

• Julia Caldwell will be awarded a full scholarship; and
• Catilin Littlefield will be awarded a half scholarship.

There were a number of strong memos written, and the winners were selected based on the extent to which they addressed the charge to make “an argument for why such a scholarship will be a good expenditure of Institute funds”.

Thanks to all who participated and best wishes to the winners for a productive workshop.

A huge congratulations to David Zaks (PhD in ER with Jon Foley) who just won the Laurel Clark Memorial Graduate Fellowship, named in honor of astronaut Dr. Laurel Clark, a Wisconsin native, who perished in the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster.

The fellowship recognizes exceptional graduate students from Wisconsin in the field of environmental or life sciences, who show strong leadership qualities, intellectual balance and commitment to improving the human condition.comprar levitra
comprar levitra

The International Bear Association recently awarded Becky Zug (CBSD MS with Adrian Treves) a Research and Conservation Grant for her research on Andean (spectacled) bears in Ecuador. Becky will partner with Fundación Cordillera Tropical, an Ecuadorian NGO, to carry out a 7-month camera trap study aimed at collecting baseline ecological data, identifying individual bears and estimating bear population density in this area. The results of this study will help to determine how Andean bears are using private lands within and adjacent to Sangay National Park and will support wildlife conservation plans on private properties.

The International Bear Association’s Research and Conservation Grants are awarded to help support bear conservation, education projects, and research. Emphasis is given to projects that demonstrate significant positive effects for bear species, populations, and areas of the world with the highest conservation needs.

Congratulations to Amy Singler (WRM) and Jill Baumgartner (ER/Population Health PhD). Both Amy and Jill were recently nominated and selected to receive a Graduate Student Mentor Awards through the Graduate School Collaborative and the Multicultural Graduate Network. They were recognized as someone who has demonstrated outstanding mentorship qualities while in Graduate School.

Also, CBSD MS alumna Sarah Stackpoole received an award through Horticulture.

We would like to extend our congratulations to Liz Pleuss, a Finalist in the 2008 Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) Program. This program was established by Executive Order in 1977 to attract to the Federal service outstanding men and women from a variety of academic disciplines and career paths who have a clear interest in, and commitment to, excellence in the leadership and management of public policies and programs. Each� fall, graduate students who expect to complete their degrees within the year are invited to apply for nomination� by their graduate degree programs.� Only a limited number survive the three� stages of review. For this year’s� Class of 2008,� the PMF Program selected 754 Finalists from the nation-wide pool of nominees.

As a Finalist, Liz will be participating in this spring’s PMF Job Fair, which is one of the primary mechanisms for linking PMF Finalists with appointments in the Federal government. We wish Liz our best� as she explores the upcoming opportunities!

For more information about this fellowship, see the full PMF announcement.

Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin in 1969 conceived the idea of a national teach-in to bring about public awareness of the rampant environmental problems of the times. On April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day was observed, and an estimated 20 million Americans participated.

Thirty-eight years later, the Wisconsin Historical Society has completed the first phase of processing papers and related files from Gaylord Nelson’s Senate and his post-Senate careers. In celebration of both the project and Nelson’s Earth Day legacy, the society has posted a selection of photos of Nelson on line.

Read more about the Nelson archiving project and visit the Nelson photo gallery.

And was it late or early? and on what time frame?

It seems that while I was in Washington DC smiling at the cherry blossoms, which were nearly at their peak, the ice on Mendota was giving up the ghost.� This year opening was more than a week later than recent averages. In fact, it was later than the average over the entire record, but I don’t know whether that difference is significant (the averages, though not the variances, are posted on the LTER ice page).

Upon my return to the now ice-free, although not freezing rain-free, mid-west, I attended the Graduate Faculty Executive Committee meeting with Nancy Langston. The occasion was the consideration of the CHE certificate and “option A” Ph.D. minor. The committee was very interested in the effort and I am happy to report that the proposal was unanimously approved for students beginning in Fall 2008. Susan Cook in the Graduate School was a tremendous help in ensuring that the committee had the proper materials and that the purpose of the proposal was well understood. Thanks Susan! And CONGRATULATIONS to the CHE community for the great progress we have made in elevating the role of the humanities in understanding the relationship between humans and our environments.

The reality of the phase of the semester was brought home over the weekend when I got an email from Bill Cronon announcing the final installment of the Environmental Breakfast Seminar (with Mayor Dave).� Indeed the semester is drawing to a close and our final Governance Faculty meeting will take place next Monday on 21 April at 330p.� There are many things to address, but in particular I hope that we can have a discussion about Environmental Monitoring.� In particular I need a sense from the faculty regarding the priority and scope of such an endeavor.� An earlier post elicited on a minor response - I hope that we can answer the questions posed there next Monday…

We did not present our undergrad major permission to plan proposal at the last UAPC meeting, but hope to do so at the next and final meeting of the year.� It is my sense that we are farther along in that effort than we have ever been and I hope to keep the momentum moving forward.� We have reached a good working relationship with CALS regarding our two proposals; Geography is a strong ally in moving the effort forward.� While there is much careful work to be done, we are converging on a framework that could provide the credentials that undergraduates and employers are seeking, while at the same time clearly representing the breadth of “Environment” as we currently understand it.

Wednesday will be spent at the 2nd Annual Gaylord Nelson Earth Day Forum - Sustaining Wisconsin’s Environment & Economy: Responding to Climate Change. The response to this year’s program has been quite gratifying and I look forward to reporting on the conference in a future post.

Other events on my agenda include:

• The Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies Climate is Local event.� This is the first of their Science and the Public events and it will explore how scientific knowledge of climate is manifested locally and how the public comes to understand (or not understand) science.
• Participation in the Climate Change Briefing for the DNR Natural Resources Board.� Jack Sullivan and I will give an overview of the WICCI project and its accomplishments and goals.

I met recently with the student reps and we had a good discussion in particular about how to evolve student involvement in the governance of the institute.� My notes regarding this aspect of the meeting include the following points:

• Direct democracy is not likely to work
• Representation is important
• A self-perpetuating board might be a good compromise option
• Action: continue to explore a “chartered” student board that would have governance and social responsibilities

One final indicator that warm weather will soon be with us is the Chili Cook-off, once again implemented by our hard working student reps.� This year’s event will be at the Tenney Park Shelter on 27 April from 11-3.� Tickets are available in 70 Science Hall and yours truly is honored to once again be a judge.

Congratulations to the UW-Madison undergraduates recognized recently by the Morris K. Udall Foundation! Rachel Butler was awarded a 2008 Udall Scholarship, and Honorable Mention recipients included Gabrielle Hinahara, Lesli Kiedrowski, and Brian Zimmerman. A total of 80 scholarships were awarded for 2008, plus 51 Honorable Mentions. The 80 Scholars were selected from among 510 candidates nominated by 239 colleges and universities. For more information see the Udall Scholarship press release.

A team of Nelson Institute faculty members has been awarded one of three research collaborative grants by the UW-Madison Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE).

Professors Tracey Holloway (environmental studies/atmospheric & oceanic sciences/civil & environmental engineering), Bernard Lesieutre (electrical and computer engineering), Greg Nemet (public affairs/environmental studies) and Paul Wilson (engineering physics/environmental studies) will receive a total of $100,000 over three years for a project titled, “Governing New Conflicts in Global Energy Futures.”

They will investigate conflicts emerging from changing energy policies, examine how the conflicts relate to existing global governance mechanisms, and assess the preparedness of those mechanisms for tackling these new conflicts. Emphasis will be on three themes: (1) new competition between energy, food, and water as in the case of biofuels; (2) constraints imposed by global environmental agreements on energy options; and (3) security concerns driven by inequities in energy resources and technology distributions.

Another grant-winning research collaborative, co-directed by Professor Stephanie Tai (law/environmental studies), will examine market, regulatory, and hybrid approaches to managing risk from contamination of food commodities in the global supply chain.

WAGE provides research collaborative grants to catalyze cutting-edge research on important challenges related to globalization and its governance.

Congratulation to Stephanie Dolrenry (Environment and Resources PhD with Adrian Treves)! Stephanie was recently awarded a three year NSF STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematic) fellowship.

The focus of Stephanie’s NSF research will be on the human-and-cattle-dominated landscapes of Maasailand, Kenya where African lions (Panthera leo) and spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) are in steep decline. These carnivores kill the livestock Maasai people depend on for food, money, and social status. Hyena attacks on livestock particularly ignite people’s hatred and result in retributive killings of threatened carnivores such as lions. She will analyze how livestock depredation influences retaliatory poisoning and the subsequent effect on lion and spotted hyena populations.

(more…)