Dr. 科瑞娜McKendry, CC Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Environmental Studies Program, 博士和. 米罗Kummel, CC Professor and Associate Director of the Environmental Program and a group of their students won a merit award from the Colorado American Planning Association for their re搜索 on food access and temperature in Southeast Colorado Springs.
What started off as a re搜索 project for an earlier capstone class turned into important, community-based re搜索 with community partners leading the way.
“Our focus was on the community group and the students; applying for an award never would have occurred to me,麦肯德里说. “But why it is important to me is because it is a recognition that class projects, if done thoughtfully and in partnership with community organizations, 能有影响力吗, 高质量的, 并有所作为.”
A few years ago, McKendry and Kummel were teaching 环境综合, the senior capstone course required for Environmental Science and Environmental Studies majors. 的 class did a climate vulnerability assessment for Colorado Springs, where the students created a map of summer surface temperature for Colorado Springs and analyzed it with respect to the social data found by the U.S. 人口普查. 的 class also did a spatial examination of food access in the area.
“One of our most striking findings was that Southeast Colorado Springs, which is the most racially diverse part of the city, 比城市平均温度高几度,麦肯德里和库梅尔说. “Our students presented the findings to members of City Council, and the finding was reported frequently in local newspapers and in discussions of the need for more trees and green spaces in the Southeast, two of the interventions that can decrease temperature and therefore help mitigate the urban heat island.”
McKendry and Kummel were scheduled to teach the capstone class again in Spring 2022, 所以到2021年底, the two were trying to pick a re搜索 project for the class. Around that time, they were contacted by a staff member of the 固体岩石发展公司, a social and environmental justice organization based out of Southeast Colorado Springs. One of the key officers in the organization had seen the re搜索 McKendry and Kummel and their class had done, and wanted to get more information and see if there was additional re搜索 on the issue. 在和Solid Rock讨论了几周之后, McKendry and Kummel decided it would be useful for the organization if their upcoming class did a more in-depth analysis of heat in Southeast Colorado Springs.
“由Solid Rock和他们的利益所领导, we designed re搜索 projects for our students to do as their Synthesis capstone project,麦肯德里说. “的 main reason we did this re搜索 was in support of a request for re搜索 by a community organization, but also because it was a great opportunity for students to apply what they had learned in their majors to a number of pressing environmental justice issues in Colorado Springs.”
All Environmental Studies and Environmental Science majors in the graduating Class of 2022, 共47名学生, 参与了这项研究. McKendry and Kummel divided the students into teams for each specific question, though all teams had both Environmental Studies and Environmental Science majors.
“We thought this was important because each question had both policy aspects and physical science aspects associated with it,两位教授说. “This allowed the students to complement each other's expertise, to teach each other and led to better product in the end.”
This project intersected with what McKendry’s re搜索 focuses on, 她研究城市和气候治理, and is particularly interested in how cities can address the impacts of climate change and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in a socially just way. 的 study also related to important themes in Kummel’s re搜索, 他关注当地气候和食物公平.
“It was incredibly rewarding to work on a project that had real-world consequences and that was guided by the needs and questions of our community partners,库梅尔说。. “重要的是, 这是我们合作伙伴的工作, Solid Rock primarily and City Planning secondarily, 这是值得庆祝的.”
的 Colorado Chapter of the American Planning Association is a non-profit that provides a vision and leadership for future development of communities in the state. 共有8个项目类奖项, 包括学生和最近的研究生项目, 麦凯瑞属于哪一类, Kummel, 他们的学生获得了奖项.