Achievement

Our IGERT has been institutionalized as the graduate Certificate on Humans and the Global Environment (CHANGE). The CHANGE capstone course requires Trainees and Associates to produce useful, collaborative research for an outside or on-campus client. This year CHANGE scholars produced original analytical work for two clients: the Aspinall Foundation (a conservation organization working to preserve endangered lemurs in Madagascar), and two separate reports for the Wisconsin Bioenergy Initiative. The report to Aspinall will help the organization more fully engage local communities in its lemur protection efforts. The WBI reports analyzed the water quality impacts of manure biogas production, and documented the barriers to developing and siting community biogas digesters. Producing these reports gave Trainees and Associates direct experience with interdisciplinary environmental research on real-world problems.