news • events • accolades
Indian Ridge Marsh, Chicago, IL
- 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.