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Interview
Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today, Rob. As I understand it, there are several ways that you connect with community through your work. Can you tell us a little about yourself and more about your research and teaching?
My background as a conservation biologist is in ornithology which is the study of birds. I am specifically interested in the changes that occur to native birds as areas become progressively more developed. My outreach efforts in science and environmental education center on three programs with three different audiences: Minnesota Master Naturalist, Driven to Discover, and the Minnesota Bee Atlas. Minnesota Master Naturalist is a volunteer program that teaches adults about Minnesota's natural resources, empowers them to educate others, and provides opportunities to do conservation projects. Driven to Discover is a project that seeks to expand the reach of Citizen Science for middle- and high-school youth. The Minnesota Bee Atlas is a Citizen Science project that is mapping bee distributions in Minnesota. I also teach a community-engaged learning course for undergraduates called Environmental Ethics and Natural Resources that helps prepare students for some of the ethical challenges they will face in their careers after graduation.
All of this sounds so interesting, and I’ll ask more about the course in a little bit, but first can you tell us more about citizen science and those projects in particular?
Citizen Science incorporates members of the public in the scientific process and it can be as simple as collecting and reporting data on rainfall from a rain gauge in your back yard to an extensive project where citizens come together to propose a question that they would like support in answering. An example of the latter type of project I’m involved with is called Project BirdSafe. Project BirdSafe was presented to me by Audubon Minnesota (an organization interested in restoring bird habitats). They were concerned about bird-building collisions in the two downtowns and knew that some buildings were more prone to collisions were more problematic than others. One project that has stemmed from this citizen interest is with regard to the U.S. Bank Stadium. Working together with Audubon Minnesota to collect data, we will soon publish a paper that will report our findings and we anticipate that this will be of interest to urban areas across the nation.
This is actually the same way that the Minnesota Bee Atlas project started, as well. A couple of people from the Department of Natural Resources approached me with the idea to track the species of bees in Minnesota, because the last time it had been done was in 1916, and so now we are partnering with people all over the state to collect data on the native bee population. There is simply no way that we could collect enough data on our own as academic researchers for these types of projects, so citizen science makes it possible.
So, as a researcher, you are able to publish and share the data which is an important part of the work you do at the University, but what are the benefits to the citizen scientist volunteers who participate in your projects?
I would say that just like there is a range of the types of citizen science projects, there is also a range of how volunteers are recognized for their contributions. We know that most people participate in our projects because they are a personal passion area for them, but acknowledging their time and efforts is an important part of the process. In terms of repatriation of the data, most often and most importantly we always share the data back with them from the projects so they know the overall results and how their contributions were important to those results. In many cases we offer in depth trainings for participants in the projects which are essentially free natural resource education opportunities for our volunteers. In cases where journal publications are a result of the research process, many citizen science projects have begun naming all of the volunteers in the appendices so they can have their name formally associated with the project.
I hear that you are also a part of institutionalizing Citizen Science at the University of Minnesota? Can you say more about that?
Currently, I am working with a few colleagues to establish a Center for Citizen Science here. Our hope is that once created, the center could assist other researchers who would like to use citizen science to deploy their research questions, and also as a way to ensure that volunteers are managed well and utilized appropriately. It’s still in the beginning stages, but it’s something that I hope will get off the ground soon.
It sounds like you’re working with community-engaged learning at many levels at the institution – I’m also interested to learn more about the course you teach. Can you give us the highlights of that course?
I’ve been working with the Center for Community Engaged Learning for about 15 years on a course called ESPM 3011W Environmental Ethics and Natural Resources. Over that time we’ve been able to develop long-standing relationships with environmentally-focused partner organizations who are always eager to host the students from this course, and it’s those relationships that help us place the 70 students in the class each time I teach the course.
The students in 3011 are all on a trajectory to becoming park rangers, fisheries biologists, wildlife biologists, etc, and this course is the one time in their college career that they are asked through their course content to think about the why behind the work they are doing, and to think through some of the ethical dilemmas they might come across in their careers.
What is an example of an ethical dilemma they might encounter?
Some students work at the wildlife rehabilitation center, for example. There, they take in any animal that is native to Minnesota and that also needs rehabilitation. Although it seems like a simple dilemma on the surface, students will sometimes get into heated discussions about the merits of the organization using their funds to rehabilitate baby bunnies when they could be using their funds to rehabilitate animals that are rarer in the state.
How do these experiences connect to course content and the learning objectives for your course?
Since the students are encountering real world scenarios in their day-to-day work at their organizations, we are able to apply ethical theory to the scenarios. For example, deontological theory would support rehabilitating the baby bunnies while utilitarian theory might be used to make the argument to focus on other less prevalent species. Students can begin to think through how organizations or individual policy makers make arguments for how to use public funding, but more importantly students can use these scenarios to think through how and why they would make their own decisions in these areas. Any decision that is made in natural resource management is going to be opposed – some people want to restore savannas while others get upset at the thought of removing volunteer trees growing amongst the oaks in the savanna, as an example – and my students need to know not only what they believe, but also be able to anticipate others’ reactions, and this course accomplishes that goal beautifully.
It has been so great speaking with you today, Rob! We appreciate the many ways you contribute to community-engaged learning here at the University of Minnesota.