Grad-Awards

Recipients of the Spring 2025 Excellence in Graduate Teaching – Teaching Assistant Award

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 14:05:59 +0000

Recipients of the Spring 2025 Excellence in Graduate Teaching – Teaching Assistant Award Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/21/2025 - 08:05

Recipients of the Excellence in Graduate Teaching – Teaching Assistant Award: Hayes Hart-Thompson, Emma Loizeaux, and Fedor Popov.

To reward good teaching practice and encourage graduates to develop teaching skills.

The recipients are:

Hayes Hart-Thompson

Emma Loizeaux

Fedor Popov

To reward good teaching practice and encourage graduates to develop teaching skills.

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Recipients of the Spring 2025 Adam Kolff Memorial Research Award For MA Students

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 14:02:40 +0000

Recipients of the Spring 2025 Adam Kolff Memorial Research Award For MA Students Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/21/2025 - 08:02

Spring 2025 Recipients of the Adam Kolff Memorial Research Award For MA Students: Hayes Hart-Thompson and Theo Kuhn

The Adam Kolff Memorial Research Awards are meant to enhance research opportunities for MA students in Geography. This award is named after a former MA student.

The recipients are:

Hayes Hart-Thompson

Theo Kuhn

The Adam Kolff Memorial Research Awards are meant to enhance research opportunities for MA students in Geography. This award is named after a former MA student.

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Recipients of the Spring 2025 Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award For PhD Students

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 13:57:17 +0000

Recipients of the Spring 2025 Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award For PhD Students Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/21/2025 - 07:57

Spring 2025 Recipients of the Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award For PhD Students: Drolma Gadou, Guiye Li, Zhe Lin, Lars Schwaebe, and Jiacheng Zhou.

The Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Awards are meant to enhance travel and research opportunities for PhD students in Geography. This award is named after a former PhD student.

The Spring 2025 Recipients are:

The Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Awards are meant to enhance travel and research opportunities for PhD students in Geography. This award is named after a former PhD student.

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Recipients of the Spring 2025 James A. and Jeanne B. DeSana Conference Travel Award

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 13:47:11 +0000

Recipients of the Spring 2025 James A. and Jeanne B. DeSana Conference Travel Award Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/21/2025 - 07:47

Recipients of the Spring 2025 James A. and Jeanne B. DeSana Conference Travel Award: Alek Berg, Ethan Carr, Xiaoling Chen, Drolma Gadou, Fan Li, Sherrie Liu, Luca Palasti, Chris Picard, Holly Roth, Mallory Sagehorn, Nic Tarasewicz, Lauren Thomas, and Zhongying Wang

This award, made possible by an anonymous donor, is to be used to “support graduate student research.” To honor the donor’s wishes, the Department makes this award late in the Spring semester so that it can be used for conference travel through the end of Fall 2025.

Spring 2025 Recipients:

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Recipients of the Spring 2025 John Pitlick Field Research Award

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:37:13 +0000

Recipients of the Spring 2025 John Pitlick Field Research Award Gabriela Rocha Sales Fri, 04/18/2025 - 15:37

Spring 2025 Pitlick Award Recipients: Annika Hirmke, Prakriti Mukerjee, Esmee Mulder, Holly Roth, Anshul Sharma, Nic Tarasewicz, and Rahila Yilangai

This award will be used to provide support to graduate students for field research in the Geography Department at the University of Colorado, 51�Թ��. Funds will be used to cover field research-related expenses, including, but not limited to travel to and from the field area, reimbursable living expenses while in the field, costs associated with workshops, or specialized training courses, field equipment, and other costs associated with carrying out the field research.

Spring 2025 Recipients:

This award will be used to provide support to graduate students for field research in the Geography Department at the University of Colorado, 51�Թ��.

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Recipient of the Spring 2025 Gilbert F. White Doctoral Fellowship in Geography Award

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 20:45:50 +0000

Recipient of the Spring 2025 Gilbert F. White Doctoral Fellowship in Geography Award Gabriela Rocha Sales Fri, 04/18/2025 - 14:45

Shelby Ross is the recipient of the Spring 2025 Gilbert F. White Doctoral Fellowship in Geography Award.

The Gilbert F. White Doctoral Fellowship in Geography is for Doctoral students in their last year of dissertation writing.

Shelby Ross is the winner of the Spring 2025 Gilbert F. White Doctoral Fellowship in Geography Award.

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Sarah Posner Receives NSF HEGS-DDRI Award

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 16:53:17 +0000

Sarah Posner Receives NSF HEGS-DDRI Award Gabriela Rocha Sales Fri, 02/28/2025 - 09:53

Sarah Posner was awarded the NSF Human-Environment and Geographical Sciences Program - Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Award (HEGS-DDRI) for her project, 'The Role of Local Institutions in Managing Pastoralists' Natural Resources and Related Conflict in Northern Kenya’.

Project Overview

This project investigates the role of local institutions, both formal and informal, in managing natural resources and related conflict among pastoralists. Local institutions are key for pastoralist societies in arid rangelands operating in an environment of a weak state where inter-communal conflict is endemic and often disruptive to livelihoods. Isiolo County, located in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) of Northern Kenya, is an ideal region to investigate natural resource management due to its ecological, cultural, and ethnic diversity. The county hosts four prominent pastoralist societies, the Samburu, Turkana, Borana, and Somali with varying institutional arrangements (formal, informal, and hybridized) to manage natural resources including water and pasture. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, utilizing primary quantitative survey data and qualitative interviews and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) to locate, measure, and predict the social outcomes of local institutions (cooperative or conflictual) across these four pastoralist communities in Isiolo county, Kenya. Results from the study can be generalized to other arid rangelands across East Africa and pastoralist contexts to improve natural resource management and violence prevention.

Intellectual Merit

By studying individuals’ perceptions of their institutional environments, we can better understand how natural resources are managed and how related conflict and cooperation dynamics evolve. This is especially pertinent in regions where governmental and traditional natural resource governance rules and norms overlap and at times, conflict. Despite numerous studies on national-level and formal local-level institutions, few studies investigate both formal and informal institutions and their relation to low-level, intercommunal conflict across multiple pastoralist societies. There is conflicting evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa on whether these institutions exacerbate or mitigate tensions between competing groups, with effectiveness varying across institutional contexts. By integrating methodological approaches and theoretical insights from environmental security, political ecology, and common property literature, this study advances scholarly literature in Geography and Development Studies on the social outcomes of local institutions managing natural resources during a time of accelerating environmental and climatic change.

Broader Impacts

Despite pastoralists having developed institutions to manage water and grazing resources among and between groups, armed conflict in the form of inter-communal cattle raiding persists in the arid rangelands. The IPCC warns that climate change may exacerbate these dynamics as, “there is increasing evidence linking increased temperatures and drought to conflict risk in Africa (high confidence),” particularly in populations that depend on agriculture or are politically excluded (IPCC 2022, p. 9).” By investigating the role of both formal and informal institutions utilized by a range of pastoralist groups operating in a marginalized region far from the locus of power in the Kenyan state, this study will inform local level peacebuilding efforts and resource management policies. The study also enhances local research capacity by training and hiring a team of local research assistants and enumerators which will ensure high-quality data collection through sophisticated survey methods and sharpen the co-PI’s fieldwork skills in the process of completion of the dissertation. By building local capacity, this research not only strengthens academic infrastructure but also promotes knowledge exchange that can improve natural resource management practices and policies.

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Kate Little Receives the Injury and Violence Prevention Student Research Award from the Colorado School of Public Health

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Fri, 03 Jan 2025 21:53:25 +0000

Kate Little Receives the Injury and Violence Prevention Student Research Award from the Colorado School of Public Health Gabriela Rocha Sales Fri, 01/03/2025 - 14:53

Kate Little has received the Injury and Violence Prevention Student Research Award from the Colorado School of Public Health for her project Understanding Drivers of Firearm Access Among Colorado American Indian Youth: Opportunities for School-Level Prevention.

Project Background: American Indian and Alaska Native youth have a high risk for death by firearm suicide and tend to have quick access to firearms in Colorado. Firearm access is the most easily modifiable risk factor to prevent a firearm suicide death. The high lethality of firearms and short time window between suicide ideation and action require that researchers develop a nuanced understanding of the individual and ecological characteristics of youth with firearm access, as these factors may be directly associated with risk of death by firearm. Understanding how youth acquire firearms and who has access, and the characteristics their schools access can inform school-based firearm suicide prevention strategies.

Project Design: The research project will use multilevel modelling techniques to understand how individual and school-level characteristics that are associated with individual firearm access among Native American and Alaska Native High School Students in Colorado, and how those characteristics differ from students of other identities.

Kate is pursuing a Master's degree in Geography at the 51�Թ�� and is a Research Analyst at the Injury and Violence Prevention Center. Her work uses GIS and statistical methods to better understand firearm harms among youth and adults and how they vary geographically. This award will support her work in investigating the contexts of the schools in which Indigenous Colorado youth gain access to firearms. She is passionate about effectively communicating research to the affected communities and hopes that this award will help prevent firearm injuries and deaths among Indigenous Colorado youth.

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Viviana Huiliñir-Curio Receives Wenner-Gren Fellowship for her Dissertation Research in Wallmapu/Chile

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 22:21:30 +0000

Viviana Huiliñir-Curio Receives Wenner-Gren Fellowship for her Dissertation Research in Wallmapu/Chile Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/09/2024 - 15:21

Viviana Huiliñir-Curio

Viviana is a Mapuche scholar from Southern Chile and a graduate student in the Geography doctoral program at CU-51�Թ��. In her previous work in Chile, Viviana has been exploring the production of landscapes through various forms of Mapuche mobilities in the Andes borderlands in the context of colonialism, nation-state formations, commodification, and extractivism. Her areas of interest are at the intersection of cultural geography, political ecology, and critical Indigenous studies.

The Wenner-Gren Foundation supports doctoral research on anthropological knowledge, integrating two or more subfields. This dissertation fieldwork grant will fund a one-year-long fieldwork in Chile for her dissertation project called: “Green Borders: Protected Areas and Mapuche Mobilities in the Southern Andes in Wallmapu.” Her dissertation project explores the intersections between mobility, conservation, and dispossession from an Indigenous perspective, focusing on the role of national parks in transforming the Mapuche territory in the Andes borderlands.

"This doctoral program has been crucial in acquiring more theoretical and methodological perspectives for my dissertation project, especially in expanding my own perspectives about Indigenous geographies. Another important point for my personal and academic development is that the Geography department groups grad students worldwide, creating an international and cross-cultural environment. This has been very positive for connecting with grad students from different backgrounds, exchanging points of view, and building a respectful community. Therefore, the PhD has been a very enriching experience in many ways."

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Shelby Ross Receives the BIE Science Post Graduate Scholarship Fund 2024-2025 provided by the Native Forward Scholars Fund

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 22:06:42 +0000

Shelby Ross Receives the BIE Science Post Graduate Scholarship Fund 2024-2025 provided by the Native Forward Scholars Fund Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/09/2024 - 15:06

Shelby Ross

Aŋpétu Wašté' Mitákuyepi (Good Day Relatives),

My name is Shelby Ross, my Lakota name is Wanahca Oblaye Ska Win (White Prairie Flower Woman). I’m currently a Ph.D. candidate within the Geography Department at the 51�Թ��. I am an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota. I am a former Gate’s Millennium Scholar (2009-2018), which I utilized to earn a B.S. in Natural Science with an emphasis in Conservation Biology from my local Tribal College Oglala Lakota College and a M.S. in Environmental Science and Engineering from the Institute of Environmental Health at the Oregon Health & Science University. After earning my master’s degree, I returned home and began working for the Oglala Sioux Tribe (OST) Natural Resource

s Regulatory Agency in Pine Ridge, SD. It was during this time that I have observed the extreme weather events happening across my home reservation, which seemed to be occurring more often. In my position at the Natural Resources office, I had access to the OST Tribal climate adaptation plan and was asked to analyze the plan looking for gaps. During this time, I observed limited information about the potential impacts of climate change on the health disparities that persist within our reservation communities. Since this observation, I have been dedicated to becoming an expert around the topic of climate change and Native American health in efforts to help our leaders prepare our people and next generations for the projected impacts of climate change for the Northern Great Plains region not only on human health but also on environmental/ecological health, which are intricately related.

I am a member of the 2020 Tribal Climate Leaders Program inaugural cohort, funded by the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center in partnership with the Cooperative Institute of Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), 51�Թ��, and the Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance. My research interests include Traditional Ecological Knowledge or Indigenous Knowledge, climate change and health, and Native American health. I am currently at the stage of conducting data analysis and writing my dissertation. My dissertation, Climate change impacts on the Native American Health in the Northern Great Plains Region, was designed with a mixed methods approach to better understand how extreme weather events (EWE) induced by climate change are impacting Native American health in the Northern Great Plains region. I also aimed to investigate and assess the healthcare needs of the population of Native American individuals who have been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes during EWE. It was important to me to develop my dissertation research through an Indigenous Knowledge of Health or Indigenous Health lens, which includes understanding how climate change may be impacting the physical, mental, and spiritual/cultural health for Native Americans in the region. In early stages of my program, I conducted interviews of elders on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation with an aim to understand what changes they have experienced over their lifetime on the topics of EWEs, the availability in ecological resources like traditional plants and wildlife, and health impacts caused by EWEs. The analysis of these interviews will be one chapter of my dissertation.

These interviews were then influential in designing my Extreme Weather impacts on Native American Health in the N. Great Plains survey. I distributed the survey to Native Americans (ages 18 and up) across the Northern Great Plains to investigate any variances in impacts felt (infrastructure, healthcare access, and cultural practices access) by Native Americans in this region due to EWEs. I am now analyzing the results from this survey with an eye towards evaluating how EWEs have affected infrastructure, healthcare access, and cultural practices access differentially by location, gender, age, education, employment status, health status (Type 2 Diabetes vs. non-Type 2 Diabetes), and reservation residency status.

I chose this mixed method (interviews and surveys) approach because I believe it is the best option for conducting research with Native American communities. Interviews and surveys allow me to center Native American voices as the experts of their experiences and provide a space for them to express their climate concerns.

As I continue my career as a Native American researcher who is an expert in climate change and Native American Health, my goal is to begin to provide practical climate action projects that can help minimalize the felt impacts of climate change for my home Tribal community and possibly continuing to extend my efforts to all Tribal communities in the Northern Great Plains region. The projects I want to continue to pursue are more community involved projects, emergency response systems that are designed in alignment with the needs of Tribal members in the region and are inclusive to health-related issues, and alternative energy sourcing. I also have a goal to provide a space that builds capacity in Native American climate change research led by Native Americans by becoming a professor and to do my part in educating the next generations of Native Americans in climate change adaptation as much as possible.

Description of the BIE scholarship (from the website):

“The purpose of the BIE Science Post Graduate Scholarship Fund program is to provide financial assistance to eligible American Indian and Alaska Native undergraduate, graduate, and professional students pursuing degrees full-time at an accredited institution in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields (i.e., Medical and Life Sciences; Engineering; Physical Sciences; Chemistry; Natural Resources/Conservation; Mathematics and Computational Sciences; Earth, Environmental, and Agriculture/Animal Sciences; Technology; Computer Sciences; Architectural Sciences; Public Health; Psychology; etc.). This opportunity is a need-based award.”

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