CLAS Acts September 2020

Monthly newsletter for tenure-line faculty of the college

A Note from Dean Drake

Every term has its challenges.  We can count on something unexpected arising. Perhaps something in the news has bearing on a course we are teaching or a student requests an accommodation we have not had requested before.  But not since WWII have academics started a term with the expectation that conditions might call upon us for a high degree of sudden adaptability.  Back then, calendars and curricula were suddenly changed--for instance, Harvard dispensed with summer vacation and ran year-round.  We've some idea what that is like.

 
Adaptation has not been far from my mind as I brought my life here to Michigan to be your dean.  I'm grateful for my family's willingness to embark on this with me and make a new home.  I'm also thankful for the welcome I have received.  Thank you for all the messages and to the eyes that smiled above the masks.

In a time of more than the usual uncertainty, I'm sure you are very curious about what I have planned.  Certainly, a great deal of listening and learning are high on my agenda.  I'm highly collaborative by nature and have already started the process of bringing your unit heads into discussions about the direction of the college.  As an early step, I will form the CLAS Budget Committee by the end of September.  A variety of stakeholders will participate in this group that I will convened along with AD Michelle McCloud.  In a time of limited resources and many challenges, this is work we need to do together.

This term will require some mindful balancing between the recognition of this year's heavier teaching load and giving you many opportunities to enter into collaboration and conversation about this college for which we share responsibility.

Perhaps obscured by the immediate challenges are the enormous opportunities of any time of upheaval.  We all have new capabilities.  We’ve all spotted ways systems could be improved.  Let’s start that conversation together.

Protecting Watersheds and Making Due on the Kitchen Table with Amanda Buday

By Monica Johnstone, PhD
CLAS Director of Communications and Advancement

Some faculty make it look easy.  They arrive at GVSU and in what seems like no time, they are fully embedded in local projects with lots of moving parts.  What is their secret?  I decided to ask.

Assistant Professor Amanda Buday (Sociology and Environmental Studies) has only been at GVSU for one year, but already has made productive community partnerships.

She explained that her dissertation work involved field studies and that meant attending the meetings of relevant organizations.  As a person working in areas that the organizations shared, she learned to “show up and listen.”

Even with that background, moving to a new area and starting again while settling into department life and teaching could be daunting.

When Amanda arrived at GVSU, she knew making these connections to organizations would continue to be vital to her work on community-based efforts to protect natural resources.  AWRI was an obvious contact to make. Her reading soon showed her that Rick Rediske was working with activist community groups and state agencies to address PFAS contamination.  Al Steinman was working on other projects with direct relevance to her interests. Amanda asked her senior colleagues how she could get involved and they proved gracious and willing connectors to their networks.

Soon she was attending meetings of the Muskegon Lake Watershed Partnership,[1] who works closely with the West Michigan Shoreline Regional Development Commission[2] on Muskegon Lake restoration projects.

“Ecological remediation has been ongoing in Muskegon, but there is also social justice work to be done.  As a sociologist, I want to connect people to the lake.   Some of the other lakes have been known for their recreational attributes, but Muskegon Lake has an industrial history.  To get people to see the scenic beauty and ecosystem services provided by the lake is a hard task given the lake’s legacy,” Amanda observes.   Attending the meetings helps her pick up the history and learn what is important to stakeholders.

Due to the pandemic, focus group work that Amanda, Dani DeVasto (Writing) and Sean Woznicki (AWRI) had planned in Muskegon has been suspended.  Door-to-door surveys by students planned for the fall are also necessarily on hold.  Amanda is looking at having virtual focus groups.  The project calls for engaging residents from neighborhoods with predominantly Black and Latinx populations in discussions about barriers to accessing public recreation sites on Muskegon Lake.  Conscious that not all groups gravitate to the same digital communication platforms, she’s thinking about other strategies that might be used.

“It’s frustrating and hard to see the path forward,” Amanda admits.  “The wind went out of our sails on that project.” 

Wind has a habit of kicking back up, thankfully, and Amanda has other projects.  The Ottawa Conservation District has been working with Rick Rediske on a watershed management plan for the Pigeon River watershed.  The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) (formerly the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality) has asked that the data used to develop the watershed management plan include social indictors of residents’ perceptions of water quality and knowledge and use of best management practices to promote water quality 

“We’ll use a Social Indicators Data Management and Analysis tool managed by MSU that is intended to standardize social science data collection across the Great Lakes basin.  We have to pay attention to people who live in the environments we are trying to remediate because their actions affect the impact of this work” Amanda explains.   “We are conducting a mail survey of residents in the watershed to assess their knowledge and interest in best management practices the Conservation District would like to implement in the watershed. My senior colleagues have really facilitated my going and meeting the people doing this significant work.”

But even with a survey by mail, wrestling with the logistics while working from home had its moments. 

“Sending five rounds of survey mailings to 900 watershed residents from home was challenging.  Ottawa Conservation District funded one undergrad research assistant, materials and postage.  I stuffed many envelopes on my kitchen table and we eventually had some socially distanced work parties at the Conservation District office before we were allowed back on campus.”

“There was a second delay, too.  Anna Hammersmith (Sociology), Bradford Dykes (Statistics) and I have been working to create a Social Science Data Center in Au Sable Hall.  There has been no dedicated space for sociology students to work on large datasets or compile original datasets from survey research. We wanted a computing center near our offices.  Anna wrote a successful FTLC funding proposal and we were all set to commence in summer 2020 to be ready for fall.  Unfortunately, the needed renovations could not take place.  The four computing stations and the retrofitted electricals and HVAC had to wait.  Even so, I’m really grateful to FTLC and the CLAS deans office for supporting this effort.”

“A lone student colonized an office to use a single computer for now,” Amanda said. “Speed-bumps.”

I asked Amanda if she is able to do this sort of community engagement work within the constraints of her courses. 

“The 15-week timeline is tricky.  Years of relationships with community partners and hard-won understanding of the stakeholders’ needs as well as the necessity to produce a product make that hard.  If something can be chunked out to fit the 15 weeks, that could be a component in the future,” Amanda explains.  “We need to be very careful about any promises we make and remain conscious of what students can accomplish in 15 weeks.  GVSU’s reputation is at stake.” 

“Most projects run a couple years.  High-performing research assistants with methods courses under their belts, like my current research assistant, can become valuable contributors.  There is a lot of personal responsibility involved; we have to be conscientious about personal health and safety measures during the pandemic.” 

“My research assistant is clearly going to be successful in life,” Amanda predicts. “But it is also important to engage the less stellar students with care and a lot of quality control and accountability checks.  It is more oversight, but worthwhile.” 

Is she still on the lookout of additional partnerships?  Amanda says she’s “up to the eyeballs” and still looking because projects take time to develop.  Whether waiting for funding or creating the willingness and confidence in the project’s legitimacy with stakeholders, it can be hard to tell when work may commence or when a pandemic gets in your way.

“We are waiting on a funding decision to complete a social indicators survey in the Macatawa watershed.  Al Steinman, director of AWRI, was already involved with Project Clarity, in partnership with the Macatawa Area Coordinating Council and the Outdoor Discovery Network.” Steinman introduced her when they needed a sociological perspective. “Sometimes you spot something in emails that come to you from the Governor’s office, the DNR[3], or EGLE[4].  I ask if they have an interest in social science data.  It might be years, but hopefully they’ll give me a call.”

Before we leave our Zoom meeting, Amanda concludes with this thought:

The reason that watershed management plans matter is that having an EGLE-approved management plan is a prerequisite for applying for EPA 319 grants for implementing projects to reduce nonpoint source water pollution. Since almost all of Michigan lies within the Great Lakes Basin, our surface waters eventually end up in one of the Great Lakes, so it’s important that we take care of our local waterways. A watershed management plan provides watershed monitoring data and sets goals and benchmarks – it’s the bones of a remediation plan. Increasingly, they also include social science data on stakeholder attitudes and behaviors. There is also 319 funding available to help watershed organizations and conservation districts develop their management plans. The funding comes from EPA to EGLE to the Conservation District and then to us for research. Learning how all this works from colleagues like Rick and Al is invaluable.
 

[1] An independent nonprofit, non-political, non-sectarian organization. The MLWP’s area of endeavor shall be the immediate drainage area of Muskegon Lake as well as Cedar and Mosquito Creeks. The MLWP is organized exclusively for charitable, educational, and scientific purposes and shall be a coalition of community interests dedicated to working cooperatively for the improvement of the Muskegon Lake ecosystem, and for the delisting of Muskegon Lake as an Area of Concern.

[2] WMSRDC provides services and manages and administers programs in transportation planning, economic development, environmental planning, community development, local government services, and other special projects.

[3] Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

[4] Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy