大象传媒

Over the past five years, she was a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she researched the local geochemistry of the Chicago River, and explored the role of art in environmental knowledge production and science education.

While Dr. Rosengard has had experiences supporting research and field work on a global scale, she is eager to use her time at 大象传媒 to understand what it means to conduct research at a more local scale, learn from the communities around us, and contribute to a curriculum for urban environmental science within the School.

What are your research interests?

As a scientist, I am interested in exploring the mechanisms behind carbon cycling in rivers and oceans using tools like isotope chemistry and satellite imagery. Several of my past research projects have focused on the flow of organic carbon through large carbon hotspots like the Amazon River Basin and Southern Ocean, as well as in upwelling zones off the Pacific Northwest coast and in small, highly urbanized systems like the Chicago River. Simultaneously, as someone who increasingly engages with undergraduate students and collaborates with local environmental organizations everywhere that I live, I believe that everyone should have access to the process of creating and using environmental knowledge. To that end, in more recent years, my research interests have expanded as I started thinking about how the arts could enhance undergraduate environmental science education and citizen science. I have a few ongoing projects, mostly with undergraduate students from Chicago (but would love to expand with students here!), that explore how objects that double as art forms and science tools can expand public engagement in environmental science.

What would you like students to know about you?

I would like students to know that learning is never complete. I decided to focus on undergraduate teaching as a career because I hope to continue learning via my students. Each classroom enables a unique interaction between its members, providing a rich space for students and their educators to come up with solutions to climate and environmental problems that do not exist anywhere else. The best aspect of teaching is being part of that process!

What do you do in your spare time?

I used to enjoy skating, painting watercolor images, running, biking and swimming, but in all honesty all that I do in my spare time now is raise my wild toddler and two cats!  Get back to me in a few years :)

Who is a(n environmental) scientist you look up to and what's great about them?

I really look up to Dr. Max Liboiron. I admire how they manage their research group, work with communities in ocean science research, and serve the broader academic and non-academic community through their writing. Importantly, I have always viewed justice to be at the core of climate change, and Dr. Liboiron's writing about environmental justice through works like Pollution is Colonialism has been particularly expansive to my development as an undergraduate educator. Because I'm particularly passionate in exploring the role of citizen and/or community-driven science in environmental research, Dr. Liboiron has provided me with a vocabulary and means to do that work as a scholar in academia. 

What is your favourite science fact? (or something you think is cool)

I think the equation E=mc^2, expressing how mass can convert to energy and vice versa at the atomic scale, is so cool! There are many ways to understand this equation and I admit that I'm still refining the way that I understand it and teach it to students in my isotope chemistry classes. It is interesting to me that most people have heard of the equation, to the effect that, according to my academic-historian-of-science-friend, we can see many examples of the equation making it into popular culture, music, and art over the last century. But, this equation, E=mc^2, is compelling to me because it explains the energy output of stars, such a key source of power in our solar systems and galaxies. It likewise explains the destructive force behind the atomic bomb, a technology that has altered the entire Earth, both geologically and socially. It is both powerful and daunting to think about how the minute scale connects to global or universal scales - this equation does that for me.