From the Director, Fall 2024: Bringing University Faculty & Students into the Region
- Details
I came to the WRC from academia. As an assistant professor of landscape architecture and graduate program coordinator at Mississippi State University I engaged with communities to explore planning and design solutions for their benefit, and for students to get real world, direct community engagement experience. The students also brought new eyes to what were often lingering problems and could engage with communities in ways that transcended entrenched fault lines of opinion. As a faculty member I applied my research and community service to regional, state, and local needs. Among these projects was collaboration on the development of Firewise guidance to help communities plan for wildland fire mitigation, the creation of introductory materials for towns about planning, zoning and manufactured homes, and examining planning for a freight hub. That experience, and my experience as a student, has led me to engage faculty and students in the Windham Region, as well as Vermont as a whole, because I’ve seen the difference it can make.
Over the last year we brought in a Norwich University hydrology class to explore modeling of flood flows on the Rock River in Newfane, a UMass-Amherst senior landscape architecture capstone studio to explore connectivity among communities and the West River in the Route 30/West River corridor, and UMass-Amherst faculty, graduate students and undergraduates in conjunction with the American Institute of Architects Communities by Design program to conduct a housing study and three-day, four-town housing planning charrette in Jamaica, Londonderry, Weston and Winhall. I submitted a proposal to the UVM Leahy Institute for Rural Partnerships through which the university is engaging students to create a statewide map of where public wastewater systems exist. Thus far the students have put in more than 1,500 hours to create a map that will help inform where wastewater-dependent development can happen in the state (as well as what gaps in information exist). This, when overlaid with the zoning atlas and flood models also being developed by UVM, will create a picture (likely an alarming one) of how flood-adaptive we are and need to become. We’re working on more projects for the coming year, and it’s my intent to expand this outreach to additional colleges and universities.
It is my goal to build regular engagement in the region through service learning as well as faculty research agendas, and to harness the research capacity of universities to help us explore very practical questions and issues to inform plans and actions here at the WRC and among the towns we serve. As Wendell Berry wrote, “The significance and ultimately the quality of the work we do is determined by our understanding of the story in which we are taking part.” Research can help us understand our story. It is also my hope that by bringing students into the Region, not only will we see this place through their new eyes, but that they might see themselves one day making a home here.
