- Good evening, everyone.
Thanks so much for joining us tonight.
We are thrilled to be able to share a little bit tonight
about the work that our undergraduates are able to do
while they're with us in the course
of their four years at UVM.
Tonight, we're gonna hear from a couple of students
and their professors
about different kinds of research
that undergraduates can participate in,
and two pretty distinct areas
of research that happened on campus.
I've been at UVM for 19 years now.
I'm a professor of Art History
and I'm also an associate dean
in the College of Arts and Sciences.
I've worked closely with students
and involved them in my own research for years.
In fact, I rely on my students both
in terms of the kind of research questions
and how I frame them,
but actually carrying out some of the research that I do.
And in fact,
we'll be hearing from a student of mine tonight
who is both my research assistant this semester
and is participating in a larger research project
that I'm engaged with at UVM
with an important community partner.
We'll also be hearing from another student
and professor cohort who will talk
about an exciting environmental-based project.
The environment is a big part of who we are at UVM
and our students are very much engaged
in the research questions around
how to save our earth,
environmental activism, the impact of racism,
on racism, and in the environment,
and those intersections among many other questions,
which they engage in,
both in the College of Arts and Sciences
and through our partners across the university.
So, you know, it may seem early on in a student's career
if they are a first year student right now at UVM,
they may only be in their seventh week of classes
and just really try and get settled into everything.
But, you know, it's important to know
that there are many resources available
to help students both locate a faculty member to work with,
but also many others who have resources on campus
that help support students in their research as they grow
into the scholars that we wish them
to become a post-graduation and help tackle some
of these major problems that we're facing in the world.
So, some of the supports are of course our faculty
who are incredible teacher scholars
and engage directly with our students in their projects
as we'll be hearing about.
But, there's also some research support offices
on campus that have funding that allow some further support
for our students particularly to do research projects
over the summer.
And in fact,
the two projects we'll hear about tonight are such types
of funded projects that students can apply for,
have the guidance of a faculty member,
have some financial resources
to get their work and, you know,
make progress on their work if not finish it.
So, the UVM's FOUR office
is one of those major resources for undergraduate students.
We love acronyms that UVM
and the FOUR office represents.
One of those offices that deals specifically
with supporting student research at the undergraduate level.
We have other sorts of supports available
for our grad students.
So, FOUR is very much focused on the opportunities available
for our undergraduate students.
But enough for me, I think.
I think much more interesting to hear
from our first professor and student cohort.
I'm gonna introduce you to Professor Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne
who will be talking about his role on campus
and the kind of support he offers for students
through the work he does for students across the university.
And especially talk about a project
that his student, Isabella, worked on,
and Isabella will join us to talk about that as well.
So, over to you, Jarlath.
- Great, wonderful,
and thank you, Kelley and good evening.
It's great to be with all of you.
So, my name is Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne.
I'm the director of the Spatial Analysis Laboratory at UVM.
And when you think of Spatial Analysis Lab,
you can think of things like you see on the screen here,
like drones and we do all sorts of projects related
to mapping and monitoring our earth from above.
And so, I pull students from across campus
from all different majors
and we work on these challenging projects that help
to address these really serious environmental issues
facing our planet.
One of the exciting things we have is our drone team.
And you see me pictured here
with some of our staff and students.
Just to give you an idea,
we were the first group in the nation
to use drone technology to respond
to a train derailment here in Vermont,
a number of years ago.
And we worked throughout the nation
with government agencies,
environmental groups using drone technology
to help do everything from respond to disasters,
to inspect our aging infrastructure,
such as our railroad bridges.
We also do a tremendous amount of work
around tree canopy assessments,
and we're helping communities deal
with some of the most important and life-threatening issues,
which will affect us as a species in the coming years
and that's climate change due to both global environment.
And then also,
the oppressing heat we've seen in the summer,
which is exasperated by the amount of impervious surfaces.
And so, communities throughout the world
and throughout the United States are really struggling
on how they deal with these rising temperatures
and the impact that it's having on their populations.
And so, many communities have turned
towards their green infrastructure.
I'm really proud that our team of faculty, staff,
and students here at the University of Vermont did some
of the foundational research and the mapping
to help New York City decide that they had the room
to plant a million trees.
And these trees are major investments for these cities.
New York City spends over $3,000
when they put a street tree and like you see here,
former Mayor Bloomberg vaunting with big bird.
And what our team does
is we use advanced sensing technologies,
such as LiDAR,
short for light detection and ranging.
If you're familiar with New York City,
this is Central Park looking towards Columbus Circle there.
And this generates this wonderful three dimensional map.
And so, we can see through the shatters
and pick up every single tree on the landscape.
And then we use our GIS
or geographic information system software to do the very,
very detailed mapping to help them,
not only account the tree canopy they have right now,
but how that has changed over time.
And then we do advanced analytics
to help them understand how that relates to factors,
whether it be the land use of who owns the trees
or some of the sociodemographic issues.
And we're really thrilled to have Isabella
as one of our undergraduate research assistants
who's doing some important work,
and working with the City of Louisville and a nonprofit,
there TreesLouisville to dive into these data
to help this community chart a greener future.
So Isabella, turn it over to you.
- That's great.
Thank you so much, Jarlath.
And thank you, Kelley.
I'm Isabella.
I am a senior here at UVM.
Environmental Studies major and minors in French
and Green Building Design.
So, I am part of Honors College,
which when I was a freshmen,
set me up to do an Honors Thesis.
So, I'm gonna try to talk about my research process
over the past year or year and a half
or so in a somewhat chronological order,
though it's definitely not been linear.
So, I'm super excited about my topic.
As Jarlath mentioned,
I'm looking into urban tree canopy and gentrification issues
in Louisville, and I'll get more into it in a bit.
So, next slide.
Oh, okay.
There we go.
So, I wanted to talk about how I landed on a topic.
So, last year in my Landscape Design class,
we learned about the Highline Park,
which is somewhere I've frequented many times
over the past 10 years since it was implemented.
And the case study that we looked at actually inspired me
to look into tree canopy.
So basically what happened,
it was implemented about 10 years ago
as an urban redevelopment greening project.
And what happened is that it was a beautiful park
and attracted so many tourists
that really raised the land values
and led to gentrification.
So, it made me really interested in this relationship
in urban spaces between equity and access to green space.
And so from there,
I started thinking about just urban planning and tree canopy
and slowly got into this topic of tree canopy.
Next slide.
So from there, I kind of...
I started to connect with faculty
and I spoke to a professor I had at the time
and he pointed me to Jarlath because Jarlath works
at the Spatial Analysis Lab.
He works on these massive tree canopy assessments,
and he's an expert in the field.
So, when I spoke with Jarlath,
he so graciously gave me great ideas,
welcomed me in and from there,
kind of helped me refine my topic
and gave me this great opportunity
to work with this really recent 2019 tree canopy data
from Louisville.
So, that all happened over the course of several months.
And then in the spring of this past year,
I applied to the FOUR office for summer research funding,
something I was made aware of in the environmental program,
but I applied and it was great.
I got an award from the Gund Institute,
so that allowed me to spend my summer looking
into this data and getting familiar with it.
And I knew all the while that I had the whole rest
of the year to keep going
and pursue the whole Honors Thesis.
But, it was just a really nice opportunity
to just have that time to explore the data
and get more specific on my topic
and just be more exposed to the whole field
and soak it all up.
So, that was the funding aspect of it, the backside.
So, now I am in the process of starting my thesis.
I guess I can talk about my more specific topic.
So again, I'm using the really recent tree canopy data
that Jarlath and his team
at the Spatial Analysis Lab collected and organized.
And so, I'm interested in looking at equity.
So, I'm pulling data from the Census Bureau
that is demographic data,
and I'm gonna compare it to existing tree canopy data.
So, on this screen,
the big green map is the distribution
of existing trees in Louisville.
So, darker green, more trees.
On the right side,
we have a few different maps
about whether you're below the poverty level,
medium income distribution,
and a non-weight population distribution.
So, my plan is to compare these maps,
do a statistical analysis,
and we're gonna look at which demographic
has the strongest indicator.
Next slide.
And so, to state this research is kind of situated
in really big issue that a lot of urban areas
and cities are losing tree canopy.
So, as Jarlath mentioned,
this research can really help cities work
to stop that trend and to keep the trend going up
instead of going down.
So, I'm interested in that portion of it.
And then also,
on the right hand side,
there's a map,
a redlining map and how it relates to tree canopy.
So, that's where my interest
of gentrification comes in on how historical land use
is still impacting the distribution of urban trees today.
So, that is a summary of my topic,
and a few things I will say just
about the summer research I did
and where I am now is that I've learned
that anyone can do research and it's super rewarding
if you're passionate and excited about the topic.
So, I was happy the way that I stumbled upon this topic,
and it came together really nicely.
And every step along the way has been so much more rewarding
because I've been really interested
and supported by faculty.
And so, that is my next thing,
it's just reaching out to faculty
and making connections has been so enriching for me.
And just every time I talked to a faculty member,
they always have something to offer
and it's just been really great to form those connections.
So, that is my project.
I can wrap it up there and thank you so much.
- Thank you so much.
How fascinating, and I have to say it ties in perfectly
with the project that Eliza,
my student, is gonna tell us about in just a moment.
One thing that struck me as I was listening
to Isabella that is important to understand
about how we teach and how we develop these skills
at UVM is that, you know,
the Honors College has one pathway.
There are many other pathways to get
to doing this sort of more sophisticated level of a research
as you're hearing about tonight.
But, we really focus in our classes
from the intro level all the way
to when our students are ready to graduate
and, you know,
work on big projects like the ones you're hearing
about is we...
You know, faculty are really trying
to teach our students the critical pieces of,
you know, how to do research,
how to read sources carefully,
how to locate dependable,
well constructed research,
and how to emulate that in their own research
and writing skills.
And that's what enables them to be ready
to take on these kinds of projects.
Isabella also mentioned talking to faculty and truly,
if there's one thing I can should really emphasize
to the parents that may be tuning in is that,
you know, to really try to get your student to go
and talk to their faculty,
and faculty are always more than happy
to talk about their research.
It is where we find our passion in addition to teaching.
And so, there's plenty of that we're happy
to share about that.
And sometimes, that's how we make the connections
that lead to a research project for the student to work on,
which is always super exciting.
So, I'm gonna turn over the camera
and mic to my student, Eliza Callahan.
Eliza has been a student of mine.
Oh dear, certainly since she was a sophomore
and was in an Italian Renaissance class that I teach.
Italian Renaissance and Spanish Renaissance
are actually where my specific areas of expertise are in,
but I also teach Museum Studies classes.
And you know,
where I believe strongly in the kind of professional
development that we need to provide our students
as they go on in the Arts and Humanities in particular,
where that kind of training is critical,
but not always the norm in an undergraduate setting.
So, Eliza has taken some other classes with me as well,
including the Museum Studies seminar
that I taught last fall.
And from that group of incredible students
to this research project that came forward
through our partners at the library on campus,
I selected a few students to work on that,
that showed a special skills in terms of their research,
critical visual analytical skills.
And Eliza was certainly one of those students.
So, Eliza has started working on this project in the spring
and then really picked up steam on it over the summer
when she was granted a research grant
through the FOUR office that the Simon Foundation grant
that allowed her to focus on that.
And then she continues to work on that project.
And that is what she will tell you about.
So, I'm gonna pass over to Eliza.
- Hi, everyone.
I'm Eliza.
I am a senior at UVM,
majoring in Art History,
and I have minors in French and Museum Studies.
And yeah, like Kelley has said,
I've been taking Art History classes since my freshman year.
And I was able to kind of take what I've been learning
in all my classes and participate in this research,
which has been very rewarding for me.
So, what we have been working on for the past,
I started in,
I guess now it's last fall with this project or last spring.
It's been awhile on this project,
but I have been working on it for a semester
and then through the summer,
and I'm gonna continue working on it probably
until I graduate 'cause there is a lot of work to do.
But, we are working
on the McCrory Gallery of Multicultural Art,
which is located on the first floor of the UVM,
Howe Library, which is the library on campus here.
And our work has been
to kind of give it,
kind of like new life.
This gallery has...
The art has been donated in,
I believe ninth,
the 1990s by Professor H. Lawrence McCrory,
who was at the time,
one of the only African-American professors at UVM.
And he donated a lot of artworks that he had in possession
to the UVM library.
And it's on view in the library,
but it hasn't been updated since it's, you know,
its first exhibition,
which was in the 1990s.
So, we have to kind of give it
like some new relevance
in what it kind of talks about.
So, there's...
The artwork is all by artists of color
and underrepresented artists,
which we don't see often,
but it's great that we have all this work.
So, we have me and another student
who is a sophomore this year.
I've been working
on kind of coming up with new exhibition ideas
and new ways to like represent this artwork
in a more updated fashion.
A lot of the wall labels are pretty dated
and don't really give enough, you know,
information about the paintings,
about the artist.
So, we've been working on rewriting all of the wall texts,
and writing artist's biographies
that will be displayed once this new rehang is,
you know, underway.
So this, these are some images
of the H. Lawrence McCrory Gallery,
which you can go visit.
It's on the first floor of the library.
It is over to the side.
There are like some tables where students do work,
but it's often overlooked I think,
because in part,
because it's in the library.
You know, that's the study space.
People are kind of focused on their own work and stuff,
but also, I think,
because the artwork just kind of blends in with the walls.
So, a lot of our work
that we are trying to do
for the gallery is to refresh it,
and to kind of make people notice that it's there.
Here are some of the works that are in the collection.
I think there's a total of like 25 works,
but yeah, part of the new exhibition
is a theme.
We're gonna go with something that talks
about environmental racism
and how the connection
to land is influenced by tradition,
culture, race, and how all of that is represented
in the art that we have here.
And we think that UVM is a great place to do that
because of, you know,
our general UVM has a general sense of interest
in sustainability and environmental issues.
So, we think that this exhibition theme
will be pretty accessible.
But, I think that that's the end of my slides.
I'm gonna stop sharing my content.
But yeah, just to reiterate what Kelley said
in the beginning,
I was able to take her class,
her Museum Studies class in my,
I guess junior year now it's a year ago.
And it's been really rewarding to be able to work
on some like tangible, you know,
work that's within my field of interests.
That's also on campus,
which I think is really important
because it's gonna be accessible to people,
to students, and faculty,
and staff, and also to visitors of UVM.
And they can get a sense of,
you know, why do we have this artwork?
You know, where's it from?
Why is it important that we show it in an updated way?
And yeah, I've really enjoyed my time working on it so far.
- All right.
Thank you so much, Eliza.
So, I really appreciate what Eliza was saying
about the project.
I think she's being quite modest about the works that's gone
into making it come to such a closer reality
with being rehung.
Hopefully next semester,
the project that the students worked
on involved a complete overhaul
of a totally neglected space and of work,
much of which was in storage.
And this group of students really had to rebuild,
think through how outdated the texts were,
and how outdated the display was,
and figure out a theme as Eliza has talked about.
And this is,
as Eliza was saying,
so important as we think about the intersections
between race, ecology,
the place of UVM changes
in the demographics
of the Burlington Community,
and how we may engage in more responsible ways
with the community that's around us.
So, this has been a really important project
that will culminate in a very new look for the gallery,
but also new ways to do that kind of outreach
with local schools and other partners
around the Burlington area.
And Eliza has just done amazing work on that,
which I'm very grateful for.
Eliza also is helping me this semester
as a research assistant.
And, you know,
I rely on her help
to do the kind of pragmatic
time-saving kind of stuff
like getting books for me from the library,
but also for helping me
with the variety of research projects
that I have going on right now,
including, you know,
a project on public monuments in the United States
that have been deemed problematic,
or working on a collection of art that in the 17th century
and 18th century was moved from Italy to Spain
and then dispersed.
So, the various areas that I'm interested in,
I brought her on board with,
and because of her language knowledge,
and because of her skills as a researcher
and writer that she's developed over her four years here,
I can rely on her as a partner in this research
that I'm working on.
And certainly, I'm grateful for that support,
but I do think, you know,
it's a way that not only do I connect with my students,
but I help them understand what you can do with art history
in terms of the research in the future,
what new fields we have,
and what opportunities there are out there,
which is I think really critical.
So tonight, you've heard both
from areas of environmental studies,
and in art,
and art history.
Research happens in every area of our college,
the arts, the humanities,
social sciences, and the natural sciences.
There are opportunities for undergraduates
in all of these areas.
You can check out the FOUR website
that has information about Fellowships and Opportunities
and Undergraduate Research,
which is what FOUR stands for,
but it also has examples
of undergraduate research projects.
But, encourage your students to make those connections,
you know, when they are telling you,
which I hope they do about how excited they are
about a class they're in,
or if they've got that great professor,
that's just really gotten them excited
about a topic and they start thinking
about other connections and other classes they've made.
They need to go talk to their professor
and share that enthusiasm and see ways
that they can connect with that professor,
work on their own research project
with a professor's guidance,
or participate on that professor's research,
which can be an incredibly
engaging intellectual growing moment
for your student.
And, you know,
certainly it is one of the great joys of teaching,
to see students as they produce this kind of level
of research and then go on to do great things
out in the world in grad school or in their careers,
which is amazing to watch.
Truly a true joy.
So, I am ready to wrap things up
and just really am grateful that you were able to join us.
Please reach out to me in any,
if I can be helpful in any way and connecting your student.
I will also say
that I advise the independently design majors and minors,
which is another pathway
that students can really create their own way forward
in their area of interest
and research is a key piece of that.
And I'm happy to talk to your student
about what those options are like as well.
And a lot of that information can be found
on the College of Arts and Sciences website as well.
So, thanks everyone so much.
We appreciate your attendance and attention.
And I wanna thank the folks on our side
who participated and gave their time this evening
to be with us as well.
So, thanks so much.
Be in touch.
Bye.