Spring 2012 Educational Grant Initiative awards from the H&S Dean's Office to the Environmental Studies and Sciences Department are as varied as the cross-sectoral and multi-disciplinary studies the department exemplifies.Spring 2012 Educational Grant Initiative awards from the H&S Dean's Office to the Environmental Studies and Sciences Department are as varied as the cross-sectoral and multi-disciplinary studies the department exemplifies.
ENVS student Braeden Cohen will designing and develop a prototype for a new invention that will improve our options for disposing of domestic organic wastes. This device will make composting easier and more accessible (also less smelly!), and so perhaps encourage wider adoption of sustainable home waste disposal practices.
Professor Jason Hamilton will use the making of simple, well-tested herbal medicines in his Interdisciplinary Physical Science class to convey the basics of organic chemistry in a way that makes it both more accessible and more relevant to non-science or non-chemistry majors. By studying medical herbalism, students will gain an understanding of common organic chemicals that they are likely to encounter in reading press reports, regulatory literature, medical studies, toxicological studies, etc. In addition, by making the medicines, they will become familiar with standard organic chemistry laboratory techniques and gain experience with the practice of science.
ENVS/ANTH faculty Paula Turkon and her Senior Research class are looking at how the past – including both prehistoric data and traditional knowledge that has accumulated over very long periods of time – can be useful for understanding and formulating conservation and land management strategies for the present and future. Students will combine ethnohistoric and ethnographic information on historic period land use among the Native Americans of the region between Ithaca College and Geneva with macrobotanical and wood charcoal analyses from historic Seneca sites in central New York to develop a set of land management recommendations for the Ithaca College Natural Lands. Their research will feed into a larger on-going archaeological project being directed by Cornell’s Dr. Kurt Jordan.
And, finally, Professor and Chair Susan Allen-Gil’s Sustainability in the Amazon class will build a professional-quality, interactive table-top model of the Amazon Basin to enhance their understanding of the cultural and physical geography and the spatial interactions of indigenous people and potential resource extraction conflicts. The model will also be a good outreach tool to expand knowledge about the region around the IC community, and perhaps will go on exhibit at the ScienCenter downtown.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20120306191241568