Annual Newsletter – 2024
A Publication of Macalester’s
Environmental Studies Department
October 2024
Letter from the Chair
Dear Friends of Environmental Studies,
As we start another exciting year, I want to begin by sharing a heartfelt farewell to Prof. Christine O’Connell, who has left Macalester for a position closer to her family in California. We offer our deepest thanks for her incredible contributions to our department and our students.
This year marked the second consecutive time our department had 107 majors on graduation day–the high water mark for our major so far–when we celebrated the graduation of 33 senior Environmental Studies students. We are so proud of their achievements and are excited to see what lies ahead for each of them.
Looking to the future, we are thrilled to be searching for two new tenure-track professors this fall—one in Ecology and one in Natural Resources Management–to begin at Macalester next year. This November will be an especially busy month as job candidates come to campus, and we encourage everyone to engage with them and share your feedback.
On the faculty side, we welcome Prof. Martha Torstenson, who has joined us this fall to teach Big Data in Ecology. Please join me in welcoming her to our community!
This year also marks a special milestone—the 20th anniversary of Macalester’s Environmental Studies Department. We have a year-long series of events planned, and we’d love to hear your ideas for celebrating! Feel free to share your suggestions with your ES professors or our student representatives, Francesca LoPresti and Maggie Wang. Be sure to keep an eye out for our celebratory 20th anniversary t-shirt!
Lastly, if you haven’t yet visited the newly renamed Dan Hornbach Environmental Studies Lab (formerly Olin-Rice 243), it’s worth a stop. The stunning full-wall map of the Mississippi, Minnesota, and St. Croix rivers is a fitting tribute to Prof. Hornbach, the long-time chair of the department (and an aquatic ecologist) who played a pivotal role in shaping the department into what it is today.
Thank you all for your continued support, and I look forward to celebrating with you in this milestone year.
Chris Wells
Chair, Environmental Studies
Environmental Studies LinkedIn Group
Environmental Studies now has a LinkedIn group which you are invited to join. After you join, invite your Macalester ES LinkedIn contacts to also join this group. The goal of this group is to create a space where Macalester ES students, alum, and faculty can share job and internship opportunities, so please use this group to share any opportunities that come your way.
Environmental Studies 20th Anniversary
We’re celebrating our 20th year as the Environmental Studies Department! This spring, we’d like to use our EnviroThursday lectures series to showcase the accomplishments of our alumni. Would you like to make a presentation about the environmental work that you are doing? If you are interested, contact Prof. Chris Wells, [email protected], Prof. Roopali Phadke, [email protected], or Prof. Christie Manning, [email protected] by December 1. We have some limited funds to bring people in, so don’t let distance stop you from sharing your interest!
Environmental Studies Student Award Winners
The 2024 Environmental Studies Student Award winners are:
- Environmental Studies Citizenship Award – Mariko Yatsuhashi ’24
- Environmental Studies Scholarship Award – Solveigh Barney ’24 and Emma Squires ’24
- Environmental Studies Justice Award – Zoey Yandell ’24
Prof. Louisa Bradtmiller is the New Associate Dean for Advising
Louisa Bradtmiller will be the Associate Dean for Advising. Along with being a thoughtful advisor and instructor, Louisa brings many leadership talents to this work, including having co-chaired both the strategic planning Advising Working Group and the Employee Well-Being Working Group. She will begin her work this summer.
The Associate Dean for Advising is a three-year position structured to help implement strategic planning initiatives that are emerging around Advising, First Year Courses, and the First Year Experience.
Louisa will continue to teach one course each semester in the Environmental Studies Department.
Prof. Dan Hornbach’s Retirement
We are proud to congratulate our colleague Professor Dan Hornbach on his retirement from Macalester College after 40 years of serving the institution.
In his time at Macalester, Dan distinguished himself as a dedicated educator and a prominent aquatic ecologist specializing in freshwater mussels. Holding a Ph.D. from Miami University, he served in various roles at the College, including serving twice as Provost under two presidents, but for our purposes his more important role was here in the Environmental Studies Department, from which he is retiring as the John S. Holl Professor of Environmental Studies after chairing the department from 2006 to 2019!
There are more reasons for those of us standing up here to say thank you than we are going to be able to manage. Suffice it to say that we all owe him a lot as a colleague, as a mentor and role model, and as a champion of the department as a whole and each of us as individuals. Dan: thank you.
But the real reason we wanted to take some time tonight to celebrate Dan is that in his time here at Mac, he did more than anyone else at the college to establish the culture of student-faculty research over the summer, especially in the sciences. He took this so seriously that when he was asked to be Provost, he insisted that he be allowed to continue his summer research work, which included working with students, as a condition for being willing to take on the role as the college’s chief academic officer. In looking at his CV in anticipation of tonight, I counted nearly 80(!) student co-authors during his time at Mac, including 45 peer-reviewed journal articles and 33 non-refereed papers and abstracts.
So, in the most fitting tribute that we can imagine, it is our very great honor to announce that the department has named Ollie Branch, class of 2025, as the very first Hornbach Summer Research Fellow, an award that funded their work in the summer of 2024 on an aquatic ecology project in Professor Anika Bratt’s lab. We will be working over the next few years to endow this as a permanent award for student-faculty research in the department going forward.
Also, on September 24, 2024, the college dedicated the Dan Hornbach Environmental Studies Lab in Olin-Rice. This is a space where students will practice and build on the commitment to experiential learning that Prof. Hornbach exemplified throughout his 40 years at Macalester, first with the Biology Department and later in the Environmental Studies Department. Faculty, staff, family and friends came together to celebrate this dedication.
Prof. Roopali Phadke Receives a Department of Energy Award of $1.8 Million Grant for a Macalester-Led Project on Battery Recycling
Macalester College has been awarded a $1.77 million grant from the Department of Energy through its Battery Recycling, Reprocessing, and Battery Collection Funding Opportunity. Macalester has the distinction of being the only higher education institution among the seventeen awardees of the $125 million funding program.
The project, called CollectED, will highlight the urgent need to gather critical metals, underscore the importance of battery education, and emphasize that it will take a social collective to make this happen.
Led by Prof. Roopali Phadke, CollectED has the potential to position the state of Minnesota as a national leader in designing and implementing educational and outreach programs around battery storage and recycling.
In this Q&A, Professor Phadke shares more details about the exciting new project.
Year in Photos
Sustainability Update
By Megan Butler, Sustainability Director
It has been another exciting year at the Sustainability Office! We are proud of the progress we have made towards Macalester’s sustainability goals and have been working hard to build community and engage with staff, faculty and students from all over campus. From a zero waste fashion show, to weekly garden parties, to baking cricket (yes, literally) holiday cookies, to learning the basics of bison restoration, there has been something for everyone this year. Through the 101 series students, faculty and staff have learned how to camp, bike ride, beekeep, ride public transit, restore native species and much more. We have also been working hard to build relationships with organizations and colleges beyond the Mac Groveland Community. For example, last semester Macalester students welcomed a group of community forestry leaders from Uaxactun, Guatemala, during their first ever visit to the United States. This September, Macalester also hosted the Upper Midwest Association for Campus Sustainability Conference. During the conference, over 300 sustainability professionals, faculty members and students from campuses across the midwest convened on campus to talk shop about campus sustainability initiatives.
We are also working hard to honor the ecological communities on campus. This year as Macalester College is celebrating its sesquicentennial, our office has been working with the Macalester grounds team to document and celebrate our relationship with Macalester’s oldest historians, its trees. This October in honor of the sesquicentennial, we planted 15 new trees on campus and held an ani-fir-sary tree celebration where we unveiled a new campus tree map, a self-guided tree tour, and a tree zine full of stories and fun facts commemorating the trees in our community.
Many years of hard work from faculty, staff and students has also been paying off as the college has been listed as a top performer in the Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s Sustainable Campus Index. This year Macalester also continued our winning streak in the campus race to zero waste diversion and case study competitions. This year our winning case study featured our green residence program during which we partner with residential life to promote waste sorting in student housing.
None of our accomplishments this year would have been possible without the tireless work of Macalester students. Our Free Swap team has been hard at work re-imagining our re-use spaces on campus, re-homing thousands of items and promoting a circular economy. Students are also working with our GreenCorps member Blake Olson, who is back on campus for a second year of service, to promote reuse, repair, and waste diversion on campus. Our Food Recovery and food access teams have also been working with partners on and off campus to reduce both food waste and food insecurity in our community. Over the past year, their food recovery efforts have prevented thousands of pounds of food from entering the waste stream. At the same time, students working with MacShare, the Open Pantry and the Campus Gardens have worked to ensure that students living on and off campus have access to affordable produce year round. Our bike team has also been working to address barriers to accessing transportation on campus. From maintaining the campus rental fleet, to cultivating a welcoming environment during bike shop open hours, to teaching interested staff, faculty and staff how to ride and maintain a bike, they have worked hard to make sure that the world-class bike infrastructure in the Twin Cities is accessible to everyone.
While we are proud of our achievements, we also recognize there is more to be done. The Macalester Sustainability Advisory Committee is currently working on revising and approving a new zero waste plan that was prepared by student fellows over the past year. The plan outlines a strategy for achieving zero waste. While we have not reached our ambitious goal of diverting 90% of the waste produced on campus from a landfill or incinerator (yet), I believe that Macalester could become the first college campus to achieve zero waste! Over the next year, we are also looking forward to beginning the process of revising Macalester’s carbon neutrality goals and moving forward with new renewable energy projects on campus featuring both solar and geothermal energy.
From bikes to gardens to trees, a major focus of all of the office projects over the past year has been community building. We strive to be a space that brings people together to think deeply about, and actively work towards promoting community well-being, justice and sustainability. With our ever-growing team of students, staff, faculty, alumni and community partners, I am already looking forward to the work we get to do together next year!
EnviroThursdays
There were 15 EnviroThursday presentations during the 2023-24 school year with over 671 in attendance.
- “The Seed Keeper: A Conversation with Author Diane Wilson” by Diane Wilson
- “Environmental Studies Faculty Research Showcase” by Environmental Studies Faculty
- “Paul Bunyan and Settler Colonial Green/Whitewashing of Indigenous Environments” by Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles
- “Sustainability Social: Come and Learn About Land Tenure and Sustainability Forestry Community-Based Conservation” by Guatemalan Community Forestry Leaders
- “Deluged: Inundation of a Homeland” by Angela Parker, History Department, University of Denver
- “COP28 in Review” by Prof. Roopali Phadke and COP28 Attendees
- “Hunting Wolves Won’t Save Bambi and Other Conservation Insights” by Prof. Joseph Bump, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
- “Bodies on Fire: The Life Changing Effects of Toxins, Inflammation, and Injustice” by Devavani Chatterjea, Professor of Biology, Macalester College
- “Back to Indigenous Futures” by Vincente Diaz, Professor of American Indian Studies, University of Minnesota
- “Ecosystems in a Changing World: How Climate-Driven Disturbances are Altering Puerto Rico’s Wet Tropical Forest (..and How Mac Studies Can Get Involved in This Research)” by Prof. Christine Sierra O’Connell, Environmental Studies Department, Macalester College
- “What’s Your Climate Story? And Why Does It Matter” by Prof. Christie Manning, Marshall Roll, Marta Toledo Alcarraz and Solveigh Barney, Macalester College
- “Poetry in the Age of Ecocatastrope: Readings from Meltwater” by Claire Wahmanholm, Author of Meltwater
- “Wild California and the Antiquities Act” by Nobby Riedy and Matt Keller
- “Come Meet Community Forest Leaders from Guatemala and Learn About How They Are Supporting Forest Production, Conservation and Livelihood Improvements in the Maya Biosphere Reserve” by Elmer Francisco Mendez Hernandez and Julio Javier Madrid Cruz, representatives from the Association of Forest Communities of the Peten (ACOFOP)
- Environmental Studies Honors Presentation – “Relationships in Lacustrine Ecosystems: Carbon, Color and Precipitation in North Temperate Lakes” by Emma Squires ’24
You can read more about these presentations on the EnviroThursday home page. Click on the Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 links. EnviroThursdays take place every Thursday during the school year at 12 noon.
Environmental Studies Faculty News
Prof. Louisa Bradtmiller
The highlight of Louisa’s 2023 Fall semester was taking four Macalester students to the United Nations Conference of Parties (COP) meeting in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The group attended sessions, caught glimpses of some political celebrities, and explored the city. Four students went with Prof. Phadke the week prior, and we had fun preparing together for the conference and comparing notes (and photos!) when we returned. Louisa taught Earth’s Climate System twice, as well as Oceanography and Climate and Society in the last academic year. In April, Louisa was named the College’s Associate Dean of Advising, which means that she’ll teach fewer courses over the next three years while she works to improve academic advising college-wide. Outside of work Louisa enjoyed several family trips, as well as visiting a new National Park (Acadia!) on the way to a work trip over the summer.
Prof. Anika Bratt
Last year, Anika taught two intro level natural science courses: “Sustainable Cities: Urban Environmental Science” in the fall and “Lakes, Streams, and Rivers” in the spring. Across both semesters, students conducted group research projects that yielded interesting insights on redlining impacts across the Twin Cities Metro Area and other US Cities like Houston and New Orleans. Students’ projects included: impacts of redlining on superfund locations, disproportionate hurricane impacts across race and class, and the impact of urban ponds on biodiversity. In the fall, Anika also taught Ecology and the Environment. She is currently teaching it again and is leading a revision of the course, and infusing some extra Urban Ecology, Environmental Justice and Traditional Ecological Knowledge as well as skills in primary journal literacy and data analysis.
Over the summer, Anika collaborated with Ollie Branch, Ava Rao, Sophie Carpenter and Georgia Akins to continue to study the impacts of redlining on water quality across Minneapolis and Saint Paul. We surveyed small lakes and ponds for heavy metals, water pollutants, and algal toxin production. We also assessed the likelihood of streams and rivers flooding across all redlined US cities. Results are forthcoming, but we are finding mixed effects of redlining on these water quality/quantity metrics; one of our most robust results is that the flashiness of streams and rivers was lower in redlined neighborhoods, meaning they are potentially less likely to flood. All four students presented these data at the Summer Showcase in September.
Prof. Jerald Dosch
Jerald Dosch spent the summer at the Ordway Field Station with Mike Anderson and a crew of five fantastic students conducting research on forest plant communities, deer and epic Mississippi River flooding. Our wonderful crew included Claire Kuno (‘27), Claire Wiley (‘26), Riley Karatas (‘27), Kyra Stobert (‘25), and returning researcher Lindsey Gould (‘25). We continued work on several long-term projects looking at tree diversity and growth in permanent plots, herbaceous plant diversity in the forest understory, non-native invasive species, deer herbivory and more. We also utilized trail cameras to monitor impacts of deer herbivory on plant communities, sampled frog habitat and analyzed audio recordings of frog communities. We dove deep into statistical analyses and R, maintained trails, docks and boardwalks, canoed, motorboated, waded and hammock-napped our way through a wonderful 10-week field season.
Prof. Christie Manning
This fall, Christie is teaching Psychology of Sustainable Behavior, and an FYC: Psychology and/of Climate Change.
Christie spent much of the summer continuing her research on climate storytelling, working with five wonderful students: Rachel Campbell, Max Park, Marshall Roll, Meira Smit and Marta Toledo Alcarraz. We continued our collaboration with Jothsna Harris of Change Narrative, a local non-profit dedicated to increasing Minnesotans’ capacity for action against climate change. Early in the summer, we worked on the third installment of the online book, A Call for Change: Minnesota Environmental Justice Heroes in Action, a collection of interviews with Minnesota EJ activists, written by Macalester students. During July and August, we collected further storytelling data (with GreenCorps volunteers, and in North Minneapolis) to test a psychological model of collective climate action. We ended the summer with a report for Change Narrative, and the beginnings of a journal article describing the summer’s findings.
Prof. Roopali Phadke
This past year Roopali taught her usual suite of courses, including the “Environmental Leadership Practicum” and “Environment, Politics, and Policy courses she hopes alums remember fondly.
This past summer, she toggled between two research projects. First, two students supported the final stages of her NSF-funded Mississippi river project. Rosie Bai and Nelson Mondale coded and analyzed over 2000 postcards we received from the public with wishes for the future River. These have now been cataloged and placed into the Macalester Library archives in hopes that these messages are useful for future scholars.
The second summer project is at its very beginning stages in 2024. Roopali received a grant from the Department of Energy to develop a battery recycling public outreach program. This past summer she and Christie Manning had about 20 Mac students volunteer with them at the State Fair collecting public surveys. They want to know about people’s battery knowledge and their battery recycling behaviors. Watch for more as this project develops. They will be excited to share the results.
Prof. Chris Wells, Chair
Chris is now in his third year as department chair. His favorite part of the role is getting to connect with a steady stream of new majors. This fall he is teaching US Environmental History and Environmental Classics, and is looking forward to our 20th anniversary celebrations.