SENR Speaker Series Welcomes MS Lightning Talks

The School of Environment and Natural Resources Speaker Series welcomes MS students, who will present Lightning Talks.

Sophia Roberts
Title: "We find a way to move forward": Exploring teachers’ ecological agency in environmental education 
Abstract:  Environmental education is a vital tool for strengthening environmental literacy, fostering environmental leadership, and providing opportunities for collective environmental action. However, implementing environmental education in school contexts is often constrained by administrative approval processes, limited time due to curricular demands, lack of material resources, and uneven levels of institutional support. In such conditions, teacher agency is critical as it enables educators to adapt practices to their students’ needs and local contexts and pursue meaningful learning opportunities despite challenges. Branching from a larger qualitative study of an environmental educator professional learning community, this case study explores how two middle school teachers navigate their context as they practice environmental education. Drawing on Priestly, Biesta, and Robinson’s (2011) ecological agency framework, I analyzed teachers’ agency across temporal, cultural, structural, and material dimensions. Two rounds of semi-structured interviews were analyzed using abductive thematic coding and then triangulated with artifacts, such as teacher field notebooks and planning documents. Findings highlight the ways ecological agency is shaped by past experiences, present conditions, and future goals while navigating constraints and opportunities. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of teachers’ ecological agency in implementing environmental education and offers insights into how professional learning communities can expand educators’ agentic capacities. 

Cami Vanderwolf
Title: Investigating the urban ecology of a recolonizing river otter population in the Greater Chicago Metropolitan Area
Abstract: Urbanization alters ecological processes and can have profound effects on wildlife populations. Despite increasing contact with urban environments, the responses and adaptations of North American river otters (Lontra canadensis) to highly urbanized landscapes remain poorly understood. Historically, river otters avoided urban habitats; however, they are increasingly recolonizing areas with high human presence across the United States, including the Greater Chicago Metropolitan Area. River otters were first documented in this region in 2015 and have since been monitored using a combination of camera trapping, radio telemetry, and hair snaring. This study integrates landscape-level and species-oriented approaches across a ten-year period to examine the distribution, habitat use, connectivity, and diet of a newly recolonized urban river otter population. As river otter populations continue to recover and expand into human-modified landscapes, understanding patterns of space use and resource selection is critical for assessing urban ecosystem dynamics, including disease risk and environmental health, and for informing effective conservation and management strategies.

Maliha Muhtasim
Title: County-level variations among Midwestern farmers in the adoption of conservation agriculture: The role of macrostructures and individual farm and farmer attributes
Abstract: Conventional intensive agricultural systems in the U.S. are widely recognized to generate complex environmental impacts, which in turn can lead to stagnant or declining economic productivity. Conservation agriculture, defined by crop rotation, cover cropping, and reduced tillage practices, is recommended to address the environmental and economic challenges in agriculture. Adoption rates of conservation agriculture differ across the Midwest and understanding what drives conservation behavior among farmers has been a major focus of past literature. Studies have identified individual characteristics, such as value orientation or education, as well as farm attributes such as farm size or tenure, as powerful variables that shape conservation behavior. However, a gap remains in our understanding of how these individual attributes interact with broader decision contexts that include macro-level factors (e.g., natural, socio-economic, political, and institutional conditions). Using an integrated dataset with responses from over 2,500 farmers across five Midwestern states and a multi-level modeling approach, I will (a) quantify county-level variation in adoption scores, (b) test the influence of contextual macro-level factors on average adoption rates, (c) assess the extent to which individual-level predictors vary in their effects across counties, and (d) examine cross-level interactions to illustrate whether structural conditions moderate individual behavioral drivers. The findings will contribute to a more systems-oriented understanding of conservation behavior. By identifying which macrostructures promote or constrain individual drivers, this study will support the design of more context-sensitive agricultural and conservation interventions.

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