News

The 2019 Lear-Conant Symposium

3/11/2019

On a snowy Saturday, March 2nd, 2019 the GNCE hosted its biennial Lear-Conant symposium on

"Climate Action from Below:
A Cause for Optimism?"

We're grateful to our four wonderful speakers who made the trip to New London:

David Gordon (UC Santa Cruz)
Matt Hoffmann (University of Toronto)
Lisa Kretz (University of Evansville)
Barry Rabe (University of Michigan)

We're especially glad that so many from the New London community and from around Southeastern CT were able to join us for the day.

L to R: Matt Hoffmann, David Gordon, Barry Rabe, Lisa Kretz

Subnational action on climate change

We wanted to host a conference focusing on climate change, but also wanted to investigate alternatives to the usual ways of framing the issues. So we invited three political scientists (Gordon, Hoffmann, and Rabe) whose work focuses on subnational climate action: networks of cities holding each other accountable, regional carbon markets, and other kinds of municipal, state/province, and regional experiments in climate change mitigation.

Making the case for hope

We also had a philosopher (Kretz) who addressed questions about the moral psychology of climate action, arguing that a hopeful attitude can have pragmatic, political and psychological benefits.

Thanks to Linda Lear, to the Frederick Henry Sykes Memorial Fund, to the Jean Thomas Lambert Lecture Fund, to the Beaver Brook Fund, and to the Dilley Lecture Fund.

For more information about previous GNCE conferences, visit our web site.

GNCE scholar and Fulbrighter Clare Loughlin '18 blogs about her work teaching English in Malaysia

1/26/2019

Clare Loughlin, a member of our GNCE class of 2018, received a Fulbright fellowship to teach English in Malaysia. She is writing about her experience at her awesomely titled blog, ClareAbouts.

Philosopher Lori Gruen delivers the November 2018 Lambert Lecture

12/19/2018

This November we hosted Dr. Lori Gruen, Professor of Philosophy & Coordinator of Animal Studies at Wesleyan University, for her second Lambert Lecture for the Center. Gruen’s work lies at the intersection of ethical and political theory and practice, with a particular focus on issues that impact those often overlooked in traditional ethical investigations.

Titled "Empathy and Sanctuary: Reimagining our Relations with Other Animals", her compelling talk had the full room questioning how we do, could and should engage and relate with non-human animals. In addition to succinctly covering ethical theory, she gave an overview of some notable relation categories with case studies. Particularly enlightening was the topic of Government owned chimpanzees formerly used for lab research which are now protected, but some remain in the same caged facilities begging the question of what sanctuary could and should be.

Gruen is the author and editor of 11 books, Fellow of the Hastings Center for Bioethics, a Faculty Fellow at Tufts’ Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine’s Center for Animals and Public Policy and a member of the APA Committee for Public Philosophy. She also sits on a number of non-profit advisory boards and has become known as a bit of an archivist for chimpanzees in the US given her work documenting the history of The First 100 chimpanzees in research in the US, and the journey to sanctuary of the remaining chimpanzees in research labs, The Last 1000.

If you missed the compelling talk, do not despair, it can be accessed here.

Welcome the GNCE Class of 2021!

12/19/2018

Join us at the Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment in giving a warm and hearty welcome to the incoming class of 2021! It was a competitive application process but these twelve amazing Sophomores are the selected scholars who officially start in the program this coming Spring 2019. Enjoy the pictures and a little about their environmental passion that they will pursue in the next two and a half years in the Center. Notice the variety of interests and majors which continues to make our Center interdisciplinary and engaging!

Maya Sutton-Smith ('18) at work in Vermont

9/8/2018

This summer, Associate Director Jennifer Pagach had the pleasure of visiting Maya Sutton-Smith ’18, at her place of employment and residence in Stowe, Vermont. Immediately after graduating, Maya started working and living at Sage Farm Goat Dairy in a tiny home on site. Also living on site are the two sisters who conceived and started the farm. Molly, a food writer and chef and Katie a wildlife biologist decided to team up in 2007 after Molly purchased the former sheep farm.

Maya tends the herds including harvesting the milk and making delicious goat cheese that is sold on site, at local farmers’ markets, and at stores throughout New England. Her favorite part is that every day is different, maybe some chores repeat but a new flow and experience. As apparent in the pictures, the goats adore Maya, and she notices they have distinct personalities. To reside close to the land and animals, and to create for others is a fantastic way to live your days.

And Maya gets to live in a tiny house!

Charles Van Rees (Class of '10) shares his research on Hawaiian Gallinules

4/28/2018

On Wednesday, April 25th, GNCE alum Charles Van Rees (Class of 2010) returned to campus to give a talk in the Biology Seminar. Charles has just completed his PhD in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at Tufts University. He has also just received a Fulbright grant to continue his work on bird conservation next year in Seville, Spain. Charles's dissertation research focuses on the Hawaiian gallinule (or `alae `ula), an endangered waterbird with very specific habitat preferences. The birds live in fragmented coastal wetland areas on the island of Oahu, areas that are threatened by coastal development and likely sea level rise. Charles's research uses a combination of methods--including banding and direct sighting, genetic sequencing, and GIS mapping--to try to understand the relationships among those seemingly isolated populations. One finding that he reported was the the birds seem to like to travel along freshwater pathways, such as canals and drainage ditches. Charles is also an advisory ecologist with a non-profit conservation group, Livable Hawaii Kai Hui.

Lear Lecture: "Free For All At the Factory Farm"

4/12/2018

L to R: Carole Morison, Michele Merkel, Jane Dawson, Derek Turner

On Thursday, April 12th, the Goodwin-Niering Center hosted two speakers who gave a tag team Lear Lecture. Michele Merkel is an environmental attorney, and co-director of Food and Water Justice, the legal arm of Food an Water Watch. Carole Morison is a farmer/activist from Maryland's eastern shore. She was featured in the documentary, Food, Inc., and has written here about regulation of the poultry industry. They spoke to a packed house in the Chu reading room in Shain Library. Together, Merkel and Morison described how a small number of corporations have come to control the poultry industry on the DelMarVa peninsula, a situation that is pretty bleak from environmental, public health, and animal welfare perspectives. But they also described some victories, such as getting arsenic banned from chicken feed in Maryland. And Morison shared the compelling story of her transformation from an industrial farmer with a contract with a major poultry producer to a smaller scale independent farmer and political activist. We are grateful to Linda Lear, whose support for the Goodwin-Niering Center made this incredible event possible.

Jean Thomas Lambert Lecture: "Can a Corrupt Company Be Green?"

4/9/2018

On March 1, 2018, the GNCE hosted Jack Ewing, from The New York Times, who has reported extensively on the Volkswagen emissions scandal. Ewing is the author of Faster, Higher, Farther (W.W. Norton, 2017), which tells the story of the VW scandal. In his lecture to a packed house, Ewing discussed the history of Volkswagen, and he told the story of how researchers first discovered that the company was cheating on emissions tests. He joined the Center students and fellows for discussion over dinner, and also held a book signing after the lecture.

Students from the Class of '18 Share their Research

4/7/2018

At Connecticut College, the new Fran and Otto Walter Global Commons provides a great space for sharing research and talking shop. Nine of our seniors recently represented the GNCE at an all-Centers research session the most representation of any Center! They offered updates on projects ranging from urban forestry in New London Connecticut to the history of anti-nuclear activism at Rocky Flats, Colorado.

Sustaining Pollinators

4/7/2018

In February 2017, we brought in four guests for a symposium on Sustaining Pollinators - our first ever Lear-Conant Symposium. Our title, "Sustaining Pollinators," was a double entendre: we wanted to spend the day learning about how pollinators sustain us, but also what we can do to help sustain the pollinators that we depend on.

This time, we opted for a more modest event than our ambitious (hugely successful, but impossible to replicate) 2015 food conference--just one day, with fewer speakers, and more time built in for discussion and intellectual exchange.

At right: Center Director Jane Dawson with several GNCE students.

Alexandra Harmon-Threatt, an entomologist and ecologist at the University of Illinois, spoke about her research on prairie restoration, and how to design restoration projects that are maximally beneficial for pollinators. Rachael Winfree, a pollinator researcher at Rutgers University, shared some of her findings about pollinator diversity and what it means for agricultural crops. Sam Droege, who works with the US Geological Survey, described his experience trying to set up a native bee inventory and monitoring program. Droege is also an incredible photographer, and we enjoyed some exquisite images of bees. Finally, Simon Potts, Director of the Centre for Agri-Environmental Research at the University of Reading, UK, brought an international perspective on pollinator conservation strategies. Potts was a contributor to a major recent report on pollinators by the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). It was an intense day, capped off by a panel discussion and a banquet. Thanks to our fabulous guests, as well as support from friends on campus and beyond, the symposium was a wonderful success. We especially appreciate having so many guests from New London and Southeastern Connecticut.

Left to right: Alexandra Harmon-Threatt, Simon Potts, Sam Droege, Center Director Jane Dawson, Associate Director Derek Turner, Rachael Winfree

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