Aaron Strain 
Professor and Baker Ferguson Chair of Politics 
Whitman College 

Abstract: 

Dreams of "unf**king the planet" and "saving the world" with massive seaweed-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects exploded into prominence during the past seven years. The "Seaweed Revolution" quickly became a darling of the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, liberal media outlets, and a wide array of geoengineering, marine permaculture, and green start-up gurus. The movement capitalized on seaweed's charisma and a really good story: Seaweeds, the narrative ran, are the "rainforest of the ocean," "carbon-sucking sea trees." Even as start-ups and investors rushed forward with multi-million-dollar projects backed by this brilliant story, there was a sense that the science didn't add up and the analogy didn't work. Only a few years after the boom began, seaweed CDR now faces significant scientific challenges--and deep investor skepticism (particularly after the dramatic failure of the industry's most prominent start-up). Examining the wild ride of seaweed CDR, this talk goes beyond technical debates about the effectiveness of seaweed carbon projects to show how the cultural practices of "start-up culture" scupper real climate solutions. It ends by looking at two seaweed CDR start-ups that are trying to do things differently and suggests that "doing fine" might be better than "saving the world." 

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Kate Little has received the from the Colorado School of Public Health for her project Understanding Drivers of Firearm Access Among Colorado American Indian Youth: Opportunities for School-Level Prevention. 

Project Background: American Indian and Alaska Native youth have a high risk for death by firearm suicide and tend to have quick access to firearms in Colorado. Firearm access is the most easily modifiable risk factor to prevent a firearm suicide death. The high lethality of firearms and short time window between suicide ideation and action require that researchers develop a nuanced understanding of the individual and ecological characteristics of youth with firearm access,  as these factors may be directly associated with risk of death by firearm. Understanding how youth acquire firearms and who has access, and the characteristics their schools access can inform school-based firearm suicide prevention strategies.

Project Design: The research project will use multilevel modelling techniques to understand how individual and school-level characteristics that are associated with individual firearm access among Native American and Alaska Native High School Students in Colorado, and how those characteristics differ from students of other identities.

Kate is pursuing a Master's degree in Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder and is a Research Analyst at the Injury and Violence Prevention Center. Her work uses GIS and statistical methods to better understand firearm harms among youth and adults and how they vary geographically.  This award will support her work in investigating the contexts of the schools in which Indigenous Colorado youth gain access to firearms. She is passionate about effectively communicating research to the affected communities and hopes that this award will help prevent firearm injuries and deaths among Indigenous Colorado youth. 

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I enrolled at CU as a Teaching Associate, Fall Semester, 1965 on a two-year Master's program. John Loeffler was my advisor. After one year, I began teaching Civics and Geography in the Jefferson County Public Schools, Lakewood, Colorado. I completed my MA, Summer Session, 1968.

I taught Social Studies in the Jefferson County Public Schools until 1970 when I received a contract to teach Economics and Geography at the Community College of Denver - North Campus which became Front Range Community College, Westminster in 1976.

In addition to my teaching duties, I became a board member of the Community College Social Science Association headquartered in Grossmont College, San Diego County, California. I compiled an extensive 35mm slide collection of 19th and 20th century mining sites in Colorado. I also documented visuals of reclamation efforts at the URAD mine in Clear Creek County, Colorado, the AMAX Mine near Leadville, Colorado, and a Superfund site near Minturn, Colorado. I presented a lecture Colorado mining numerous times, using these slides. During this time, I also taught an occasional Geography class at Metropolitan State University of Colorado,

I was also chair of the Community College Liaison Committee for Economics and Geography. Our task was to meet with university faculty to standardize catalog course descriptions and credit hour offerings to facilitate transferability of our courses. The result was the creation of a community college core curriculum included in the Associate of Arts and Associate of Science degrees which guaranteed transferability to four year state schools.

I also started an European Studies Program in 1990 which enabled students to travel to western, central and Mediterranean Europe and obtain credits in Geography, Economics, or Humanities. Approximately 400 individuals participated in this program. I retired from FRCC in 1998. My most influential professors at CU included John Loeffler, Pablo Guzman-Rivas, Albert Smith and Theodore Myers. 

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Dr. Robin Roth 
Professor of Geography 
University of Guelph 

Abstract: 

The Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership is a Canada-wide network of Indigenous thought leaders, scholars, conservation organizations, Indigenous governments, and conservation practitioners united in their commitment to supporting the establishment of Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas and the transformation of existing protected areas. This presentation will discuss the work of the partnership as applied political ecology. I will discuss how key tenants of political ecology - 1) power is relational and multi-scalar, 2) the social and natural are co-constituted, 3) accepted categories of modernity need to be destabilized, and 4) transformational change is needed- are activated in the work of the partnership and, by extension, the work of decolonizing conservation. 

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Dr. Aída Guhlincozzi 
Assistant Professor of Geography 
University of Missouri 

Abstract: 

This presentation covers the recent work in health geography focused on vulnerable populations by Dr. Aída Guhlincozzi and colleagues. Specifically, this will cover the ongoing movement of the field in a direction of better encapsulating the needs of communities and populations previously overlooked and underserved by U.S. healthcare systems. This talk includes recently published results on Latina women’s healthcare access, discussions of race and ethnicity in the Latine community, and critical disability geography work regarding Autism and healthcare access. A key intervention recommended includes a brief discussion of the value of community geographic theoretical frameworks and methods.

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Dr. Clancy Wilcott 
Assistant Professor 
University of California, Berkeley 

Abstract: 

This talk discusses a series of critical cartographic interventions undertaken in collaboration between local Indigenous, activist and community groups, and studio.geo?, a cartographic research and teaching studio based at UC Berkeley. It centers on Before You Are Here, one of a series of ongoing collaborative research projects making maps with the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust (STLT) an Indigenous, Urban, Women-Led organization seeking to rematriate the land in East Bay, California. This series of works reimagines cartography, a historically colonial tool of territorialization, for telling stories of Indigeneity, sovereignty and multiplicity in Sogorea Te’s view of the Ohlone Bay Area. Together, we asked: what would it mean to decolonise at the level of the fundamentals of cartography itself and produce a map that depicts a cosmography, rather than a cartography, a living world rather than abstracted data, a map that wrenches open notions of universality and standardization to represent the landscape of the Bay as a series of seasonal space-times through which communities of people live and move, a space uncomputable rather than a fixed fact: an “Indigenous depth of place” (Pierce and Louis, 2007)?

Speaker Bio:

Clancy Wilmott (PhD) is Assistant Professor of Critical Cartography, Geovisualization and Design in the Department of Geography and the Berkeley Center for New Media at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work focuses on intricacies of power inherent in spatial representations, including mapping, cartography and GIS from an anti-colonial perspective.

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Reels with the most likes will win a $100 gift card.

To Enter:

• Record a 90 second or less reel/video about CU Geography.
• Make sure to use portrait mode.
• Upload your video (MP4 or equivalent) using this
• Feel free to share your reel on your Instagram, or Twitter/X, use #GeographyBuffs.
• Ask your friends to like and share your reel on CU Geography's social media platforms.

by Thursday, November 21st, 2024.

Reels will be uploaded to CU Geography social media platforms on Friday, November 22nd. Likes will be counted and winners announced on Monday, December 2nd.

Suggested themes for your reel:

• What’s your CU Geography story?
• What’s your favorite memory of CU Geography?
• What makes CU Geography the best? 
• Why are you a CU Geography major or minor?
• Why are you pursuing a CU Geography certificate?

All entries will be shared on CU Geography's social media platforms.

CU Geography Social Media Platforms:

Instagram: (reel with the most likes wins $100)

Twitter/X: (reel with the most likes wins $100)

Facebook:

Remember to have your friends like and share, likes will be counted and winners announced on November 8th.

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