news • events • accolades
Indian Ridge Marsh, Chicago, IL
- 12/2024: *Extirpated species alert!* Following around botanist Nathanael Pilla, we found a plant species last cataloged in the 1800s on the Southeast Side of Chicago! Check it out: The Rediscovery of Eleocharis geniculata
- 10/2024: Mentioned in a great interview about the Calumet Quarter featuring faculty from 2024: "This is not a pipe", in UChicago Magazine.
- 09/2024: Proud to represent the BSD as part of this year's cohort in UChicago's Executive Program for Emerging Leaders (EPEL).
08/2024: Published with Maddie, Jesse, and Pete, Find Ch 6. of the special issue "Finding Fields" here, and the rest of the spectacular research in this issue of Archeological Papers of the AAA, here. We did some fun fieldwork, groundtruthing lidar and historic aerial photos to uncover intact Native American-constructed ridged agricultural beds, near known cultural mounds. They are a sight to see!
- 06/2024: Quoted in a lovely article by Sheryl Devore about the incomparable Victory Garden and Dunes at Rainbow Beach Park.
- 05/2024: Gave an invited lecture about Calumet slag barrens and urban ecology to UChicago students in the Calumet Quarter (with Prof. Mary Beth Pudup). Very glad to be able to stay involved in this storied and important program!
- 02/2024: Presented our slag research program at the Chicago Park District's Community Science and Research Summit, followed by two other slag talks (Nathanael Pilla and Erin Snyder)! Calumet slag aficionados are on the rise.
- 12/2023: Happy New Year and hooray for a 2023 publication under the wire! We surveyed vegetation at a few extant cultivated ridges in the Menominee Nation and found an interesting diversity of plant species, potentially suggesting differences in the vegetation legacy at ancestral agricultural sites.
- 11/2023: Article accepted at Ethnobiology Letters with collaborators Maddie McLeester and Jeff Grignon! Watch this space for the final MS.
- 09/2022: Led a Chicago Studies Urban Hike at Rainbow Beach Dunes
- 04/2023: Funds from an anonymous donor were awarded to support surveys for 10 Chicagoland slag sites by the experts at Midwest Biological Survey!
- 09/2022: Started a new position as Associate Dean of Students and Executive Director of the Medical Scientist Training Program at UChicago.
- 08/2022: Lauren Umek presented pilot data from our slag research at the Natural Areas Conference.
08/2022: Presented pilot data from our slag research at Ecological Society of America - in Montreal!
07/2022: Appointed to the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization at UChicago.
02/2022: Spoke to UChicago's Environmental Research Group about urban greenspace.
02/2022: Published in Restoration Ecology with collaborators Lauren Umek and Laura Merwin: slag is cool!
01/2022: Interviewed by PGE student Hannah Wilson-Black about the Calumet Quarter.
01/2022: Named a Fellow in the inaugural Faculty Pedagogy Fellows program at UChicago.
12/2021: Taught Urban Ecology in the Great Nearby and students made badass final projects.
10/2021: Collaborator Maddie McLeester presented pilot results of Wisconsin fields research at the Midwest Archaeology Conference.
10/2021: Led Chicago Studies Urban Hike to Beaubien Woods.
08/2021: Fieldwork on the Wisconsin fields project with collaborators Maddie McLeester, Jeff Grignon and Pete Geraci. Honored to visit and hold space in sacred places on Menominee land.
06-08/2021: Mentored student research assistants for tree ecosystem services project for EF Campus.
04/2021: In celebration of Earth Day, had a discussion with conservation ecologist Erika Hasle about the Field Museum's Monarch Butterfly community science program.
02/2021: With Lauren Umek, led discussion on restoration potential of slag at Calumet Restoration Roundtable.
11/2020: Featured along with Chicago's urban ecology in Medicine on the Midway!
11/2020: Served on the review board for the inaugural distribution of Green Fund grants to University of Chicago students.
10/2020: Joined the advisory board for The Nature Conservancy's Chicago Biodiversity project.
07/2020: With collaborators, and field assistants, pursued an abbreviated field season at Big Marsh, setting up plots for long term monitoring of plant community composition on slag.
02/2020: Joined Nootan Bharani and Luke Joyner at a Research Roundtable for Chicago Studies featuring the theme of Connectivity.
12/2019: With Hengxing as the first author, we published our first work on slag vegetation in PLoS One, "Early succession on slag compared to urban soil: a slower recovery"!
08/2019: Undergraduate advisee Hengxing Zou (who starts his PhD training at Rice University this fall!) presented our research, in collaboration with Cathy Pfister, at ESA in Louisville, KY.
SU 2019: Joined the Galapagos Urbanization Trip with Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation and Program on the Global Environment. Find updates via Twitter from MI and PGE or the hashtag #UChicagoGalapagos.
06/2019: Was awarded the 2018-19 Faculty Community Impact Award from University of Chicago University Community Service Center.
06/2019: Featured on WBEZ's Curious City after posing the question: How is Chicago doing on its ambitious 2020 climate goals? Read more here. Listen to the podcast here.