Monday, October 14, 2019, 2:00pm to 5:00pm

Jim Embry (Lexington resident, ee360 Community Fellow, and founder of the Sustainable Communities Network) and Olivia Aguilar (Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Denison University) will guide participants through a walk of downtown Lexington visiting gardens and cultural heritage sites attending to issues of justice and sustainability. Local practitioners and researchers will join us along the way to encourage thoughtful dialogue around what it means to do research for and towards justice and sustainability. The workshop will culminate in a facilitated discussion that asks participants to identify the multiple ways and contexts in which we can attend to issues of justice and sustainability in EE research. This optional event requires separate registration.

Monday, October 14, 2019, 7:00pm to 9:00pm

Join in on a casual evening of food, fun, and conversation focused on EE research at Zim’s Café, a local favorite with a menu inspired by the bounty from Kentucky farms. Diners will include the Research Symposium co-chairs, featured panelists, and many other colleagues, friends, and mentors. This optional event requires separate registration.

Tuesday, October 15, 2019, 9:30am to 10:30am

Oren Pizmony-Levy is an Associate Professor in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology and the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Indiana University in 2013. He grew up in Eilat, Israel and attended Tel-Aviv University for BA and MA degrees. Prior to graduate school in the US, Oren worked in the Education Department of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (NGO) and served as the research coordinator at the Israeli Gay Youth Organization. Oren’s research interests center on analysis of educational movements such as: accountability (i.e., international assessment of student achievement), environmental and sustainability education, and sexuality education. He examines these cases in a comparative or cross-national research design using quantitative and qualitative methods, and social network analysis. Oren is co-leading the Teachers College Initiative for Sustainable Futures, which champions access to education that promotes learning, awareness, attitudes, and the skills needed to work individually and collectively in order to achieve a sustainable, regenerating world.

Wednesday, October 16, 2019, 9:15am to 10:15am

Nicole Ardoin, PhD, and the scholars in her Stanford Social Ecology Lab group, research opportunities to engage individuals and communities in sustained pro-environmental practices over time. They consider the role of connection to place and environmental learning in everyday life in sparking, supporting, and maintaining those practices. Nicole has a joint appointment in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Graduate School of Education. She is the inaugural Emmett Family Faculty Scholar in the School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences and the Sykes Family Director of the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER). On campus, she is an advisor the Haas Center for Public Service, the Jasper Ridge Biological Station, and the John Gardner Center for Youth and their Communities. Off campus, Nicole is an Associate Editor of "Environmental Education Research," and a consulting editor for the "Journal of Environmental Education and Children, Youth, and Environments." She is a trustee of the George B. Storer Foundation and an advisor to the Blue Sky Funders Forum, the North American Association for Environmental Education, NatureBridge, Project Learning Tree, the Student Conservation Association, and Teton Science Schools. Nicole has a PhD in Social Ecology from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Wednesday, October 16, 2019, 2:45pm to 4:50pm

Carolyn Finney, PhD, is a storyteller, author and a cultural geographer. She explores how issues of difference impact participation in decision-making processes designed to address environmental issues. More broadly she likes to trouble our theoretical and methodological edges that shape knowledge production and determine whose knowledge counts. Along with public speaking, writing, consulting and teaching, Carolyn has held faculty positions at Wellesley College, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Kentucky. She is currently an independent scholar and in September will begin as Franklin Environmental Center Residency and Environmental Studies Professor of Practice at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont. She has been a Fulbright Scholar, a Canon National Parks Science Scholar and received a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Environmental Studies. She has served on the U.S. National Parks Advisory Board for eight years, which assists the National Park Service in engaging in relations of reciprocity with diverse communities. Carolyn has been interviewed by media outlets including NPR, Sierra Club, Boston Globe, and National Geographic, and has written op-eds for "Outside Magazine" and "Newsweek." Her first book, "Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors" was released in 2014 (UNC Press). The aim of her work is to develop greater cultural competency within environmental organizations and institutions, challenge media outlets on their representation of difference, and increase awareness of how privilege shapes who gets to speak to environmental issues and determine policy and action.