Environment Program Newsletter: Faculty Updates
Faculty Updates
Phil Bucolo, visiting assistant professor of biological sciences, was awarded the 2020 College of Arts and Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award and mentored multiple research capstone experiences.
Marianne Cufone, director of the College of Law's Environmental Law Program, was awarded two grants during the summer for work in urban agriculture and food justice. The first grant was to develop a garden program that includes experiential learning for youth and provides fresh food in schools, and the second grant was for a rehabilitative garden program for disabled veterans. Marianne was also appointed chair of the New Orleans Food Policy Advisory Committee, an official advisory body to the New Orleans City Council on food and farming. In May, she taught students enrolled in the new Masters and LL.M. in Environmental Law programs in an Environmental Law and Policy course on-site in the Florida Keys.
Anne Daniell, instructor of religious studies, has been enjoying the summer with her family while working on a thematic essay on ecofeminism for the online World’s Religions and Spirituality Project encyclopedia.
Eric Hardy, lecturer in history and sociology, served as panel chair and commentator for the 2019 "Configuring Urban Environments" annual meeting in Milan and continues to organize the Environmental Roundtable speaker series. Guest speakers for 2019-20 academic year included WWL Meteorologist Alexandra Cranford, Sugar Roots executive director (and ENVA alum) Brooke Bullock, and Laura Mellem, the public engagement manager of the NOLA Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. (If you are interested being a speaker in this series, please get in touch!) Dr. Hardy also helped organize a candidate forum and debate for the Louisiana House of Representatives Districts 98 and 91 in September. The event was a collaborative project between the Environment Program, the Loyola College Democrats, and Benjamin Franklin High School’s Green Society. Eric also serveds as chair of the local organizing committee for two international academic environmental conferences scheduled for the fall of 2021. Currently, he is developing a collaborative project between the Environment Program, Loyola University's Center for Environment, Land, and Law and the Environmental Protection Agency whereby Loyola students will help generate case studies to assist governments in Louisiana and the Gulf South region in adopting climate change mitigation strategies. More details to come!
Craig Hood, professor of biological sciences and the Environment Program, was selected to join the Network of Conservation Educators & Practitioners (NCEP) program of the American Museum of Natural History to share methods of teaching Conservation Biology. He participated the ESA workshop on 4DEE and the annual meetings of the Society of Conservation Biology (North America) and the Ecological Society of America in panel discussions and workshops focusing on use of big data sets and tools to solve conservation biology and biodiversity/ecosystem restoration problems. He will bring these research and educational tools back to Loyola for Spring 2020. Dr. Hood is seeking team members to participate in his Citizen Science Bat Monitoring Program. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Dr. Hood at chood@loyno.edu. More details available here.
Frank Jordan, professor of biological sciences, and students Dahlia Martinez ‘20 and Tori Rodrigues '22 co-authored a paper on the discovery of non-native swamp eels in Bayou St. John, New Orleans.
Joel MacClellan, assistant professor of philosophy teaches courses such as Environmental Ethics and the Philosophy of Science at Loyola. His recent research is in the ethics of conservation biology, and his recent talks include an argument that wild animals’ have limited privacy rights which can be violated through documentary filmmaking, zoo cameras, wildlife tracking, etc., and the view that an animal rights perspective is compatible with invasive species management.
Christopher Schaberg, Dorothy Harrell Brown Distinguished Professor of English, published “Infant Ecology” at Terrain this summer. You can read it here.
This summer, Aimée Thomas, Assistant Professor of Biology, along with Bob Thomas, Loyola Distinguished Scholar Chair in Environmental Communication, design faculty member Daniela Marx, College of Music and Media Dean Kern Maass, and six Loyola students (Vairleen Einstein ‘22, Anna Kay Sitzman ‘22, Abby Trahant ‘21, Sofia Hill ‘21, Brooke Larkins ‘21, and Marcela Thaler ‘21) hosted a week-long design virtual academy combining science and design for interested local high school teachers and students. The "Living with Water" theme focused on learning about the formation of southeast Louisiana, the founding of New Orleans, the history of gray infrastructure, and creating the best tools for educating the community about sustainably embracing water. We are in the process of creating a website to host all of the information, so stay tuned for details in the future. Thanks to Entergy, AT&T and LEEC for funding this work.
Robert A. Thomas, Loyola Distinguished Scholar Chair in Environmental Communication, is serving on the Jesuits' Care of our Common Home Commission and participating in an international discussion on “Ecology and COVID-19” hosted by EcoJesuit Global. Bob also shared an opinion piece entitled "Louisiana Needs a New Spirit in the Chemical Industry", on ecojesuit.com. He is a co-author of an in-press paper in Zootaxa titled, “A new species of Thamnodynastes Wagler, 1830 from western Amazonia, and additional morphological data for the Thamnodynastes pallidus group (Serpentes, Dipsadidae, Tachymenini)."