Current Projects
Bradley Baltensperger
PI
National Science Foundation – "Increasing Expertise in Earth Science Education," with Wayne Pennington; Chris Anderson ($153,000). This project supports the development of online and field courses to enable science teachers to become certified to teach Earth and Space Science. The initial cohort of 6 teachers has been selected and will begin coursework in summer, 2007.
Co-PI
Michigan Department of Education – "Improving Teacher Quality: Developing Algebraic Thinking," with Shari Stockero; Chris Anderson ($247,000).
Michigan Department of Education – "Improving Teacher Quality: Statistics and Probability," with Chris Anderson; Shari Stockero ($254,000).
Michigan Department of Education – "Educators’ Science and Mathematics Institute Series 3: Applied Mathematics," with Chris Anderson ($223,000).
These three projects support mathematics teacher professional development through online and summer intensive coursework.
Hugh
Gorman studies the relationship between environmental, technological,
and social change. He is especially interested in the societal processes
by which complex technological systems come to be made more compatible
with natural ecosystems and competing human uses of the environment.
He is the author of Redefining Efficiency: Pollution Concerns, Regulatory
Mechanisms, and Technological Change in the U.S. Petroleum Industry
(The University of Akron Press, © 2001). At MTU, Hugh teaches courses
in which students examine how policy choices, market choices, and technological
innovations shape society and its interactions with nature. For the
2003-2004 academic year, he will be on sabbatical at the Chemical Heritage
Foundation in Philadelphia, where he is working on a study of environmental
monitoring technology.
Kathleen
Halvorsen specializes
in policy processes related to land use. She has worked a great deal in
the arena of public participation in these policy processes. She is currently
researching obstacles to public participation in Keweenaw land use decision
making. She has studied this issue related to USDA Forest Service land
management policy making. She is also heading a research project studying
gaps in septic system regulation in the Great Lakes region.
Kim
Hoagland is continuing her attention to vernacular architecture,
this time focusing on workers' housing in the Copper Country of Michigan.
Larry
D. Lankton is continuing his work on the social, technological
and business history of the Lake Superior copper mining industry that
once flourished in the towns near Michigan Tech. He is currently finishing
a book-length Historic Resource Study contracted for by the Keweenaw
National Historical Park.
Carol MacLennan’s research focuses on questions pertaining to industrialization of environments and communities. Her more recent work on the Hawaiian sugar industry looks into post-World War II impacts of pesticide use, soil depletion, and water diversion in the islands. It continues the investigation of changes brought by sugar production covered in her manuscript Sovereign Sugar (in preparation). She is also working with Christa Walck (School of Business) on a study of sustainability and land health in a ranching and mining community in New Mexico.
Susan
Martin is researching a collective biography of four women anthropologists
who worked among native American Ojibwa people during the early twentieth
century: Frances Densmore, Sister Inez Hilger, Ruth Landes, and Sister
Bernard Coleman. She spent significant time at the National Anthropological
Archives at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC) during June
2003. She is planning additional work there and at other archives in
Minnesota and Ohio in the near future. The work is funded in part by
an MTU Faculty Scholarship Grant.
Terry
S. Reynolds currently is working on the history of Michigan's
iron ore mining industry. Michigan was the nation's leading producer of
iron ore during America's critical period of industrialization (1880 to
1900) and has remained the second leading producer from 1900 to present.
He is editing a special issue of IA to be titled "Canals,
Power Choices, & Industrial Landscapes in Montreal, 1820-1920,"
in progress. Reynolds is also completing a paper "Cleveland Cliffs
and the Cutover: A Mining Company Attempts to Encourage Agriculture
on its Cutover Lands" for submission to Agricultural History.
Timothy
Scarlett is pursuing three different projects. The first is the
West Point Foundry Archaeological Project, site of the Department’s
archaeology field school in 2002 and 2003. This foundry was world-famous
during the nineteenth century for a broad set of products which sailed
from New York: the famous Parrott cannons, experimental munitions, boilers
and parts for iron ships (including the USS Monitor), America’s
three first domestically manufactured steam locomotives, processing equipment
for sugar refining in the Caribbean, cotton gins for the American south,
iron building facades, and a host of smaller items including gudgeons,
hat racks, park benches, and fire backs. It was, in addition, among America’s
earliest vertically-integrated enterprises where owners linked raw material
extraction and processing with a skilled workforce imported from England.
They controlled the entire production sequence— mining ore and making
charcoal, reducing iron, casting and finishing products, and shipping
them to a store in New York City or directly to customers around the Western
Hemisphere.
The second project involves Utah’s Mormon Pottery, which explores
the transfer of potting craft into America’s desert west during
the nineteenth century. His research covers a number of different interconnected
areas, including how individual potters adapted their technology to an
alien environments and social economies, how crafting families constituted
and maintained social networks through the production and distribution
of pottery, and how workers experienced the industrial revolution on the
margins of the growing global economy. This work relies upon historical,
archaeological, experimental, and materials science research for insight
into the story ’s complexities.
The final recent project involves overseeing student research at the Fallasburg
Grist Mill site near Lowell, Michigan, and the Carp River Forge site on
the grounds of Michigan’s Iron History Museum in Negaunee. Both
of these sites were early to mid- nineteenth century enterprises in Michigan.
Bruce
E. Seely’s expertise covers an eclectic range of topics
in the history of technology. He has published on transportation topics,
especially related to highways and highway engineering, and continues
to serve as an occasional consultant, most recently to the U.S. Department
of Transportation and to the Ohio Highway Department, in both instances
on matters related to the historical significance of the Interstate
Highway system. He also is writing with co-authors Mark Rose (Florida
Atlantic University) and Paul Barrett (Illinois Institute of Technology)
a history of American transportation policy since 1920. Bruce continues
to study questions related to the history of engineering education and
academic research. Future projects include completing histories of American
engineering education (with Terry Reynolds) and of the Adirondack Iron
and Steel Company in New York’s High Peaks Region. He also serves
as one of three editors of Comparative Technology Transfer and Society,
a journal published by Johns Hopkins University Press beginning in April
2003. Finally, he has recently been engaged in several consulting projects
related to highways, including efforts to consider ways of assessing
the historical significance of the Interstate highway system, the Lincoln
Highway, and highway bridges on the Ohio highway system.
Barry Solomon specializes in energy policy, emissions trading, and endangered species management. He is currently working on several projects related to renewable energy development, including interdisciplinary projects addressing biomass sources of ethanol fuel, and current issues associated with nuclear power. In addition, he is the founder and immediate past president of the U.S. Society for Ecological Economics, is a research associate at the MTU Sustainable Futures Institute, and is a consultant to the National Geographic Society.
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Emissions Trading
Systems and Environmental Justice
Why are some population segments more exposed to pollutants
than others?
Barry D. Solomon and Russell Lee
Heldref Publications |
Encyclopedia
of Energy
Elsevier |
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