Grad Fellow Updates 04/03/2012
Summer is coming and many Grad Fellows have exciting news to share!
 Leah Zimmerman Leah will be spending her summer working as a Summer Fellow for the Erb Family Foundation in Detroit. Her main projects will be 1) working with local watershed councils to plan for future capacity building grants and 2) helping the foundation refine its land use and water conservation strategy focused on the city of Detroit. Add Comment Stewardship Meets Complexity Theory 03/19/2012
Written by Bethany K. Laursen, Au Sable Graduate Fellow, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Pacific Rim '04. Natural resources management is a usually a misnomer. What comes to your mind when you think of “managing” something? The Oxford Concise Dictionary of English Etymology traces the word back the Latin manidiare, to handle,from manus meaning hand. In the 16th through 18th centuries, it came to mean train, wield, conduct, control or do successfully. Sound familiar? While in popular culture, the professional world and academia, “management” has come to connote “success through prediction and control”, a growing body of activism and scholarship rejects that meaning because it’s actually impossible to achieve in what are now widely called complex, adaptive systems (CASs). CASs are organized yet unpredictable: they adaptively self-organize over time and exhibit properties that emerge from smaller scales in the system. Though examples of CASs abound in pots of boiling water, atomic physics, and cybernetics, it turns out that groups of interacting people and natural resources (called social-ecological systems or SESs for short) are a type of CAS in which we are embedded! And these are the types of systems Au Sable exists to steward. In fact, stewardship is the only ‘management’ term appropriate for complex, adaptive, multiple outcome systems, because it’s the only word that upholds: 1. Serving the best interests of the owner(s), who are the community members, and ultimately, God. 2. Considering the whole in an attempt to achieve the multiple interests of the owners. 3. Responsibility for what can be changed and none over what cannot. 4. Humility. In the academic world where I currently spend most of my time, I hear a lot of esoteric theories vetted about SESs and the “adaptive co-management” practice applied to them. But as Cal DeWitt evaluates these sorts of dialogues, there’s a voice missing; science and praxis are useless without ethics. There is an elephant in the natural resources room: why do we care about all this anyway? Stewardship has a useful and coherent answer. According to one helpful model of problem solving (the integral model), complex issues require some level of consensus on the (1) task, (2) process, (3) group values and (4) self-awareness of the problem solvers, while, I would add, being constrained by what’s possible and what’s not. Stewardship fills the bill. As briefly outlined above, this ethic describes values (the owner’s are primary), tasks (whatever accomplishes values, but only what can be changed), processes (that which accomplishes tasks in accord with values, requires considering the whole system), and self-awareness (humility), all of which are in accord with an unpredictable, uncontrollable, self-organizing and emergent complex adaptive system called Planet Earth. Wow! A tall order, but to the eyes of faith, is it any wonder that God has given us the rationale for living in the world He gave us? Still, one needn’t be a believer to embrace this idea. Stewardship provides an ethic both firm and flexible enough for Christians and non-Christians alike to apply. In contrast with the new “complexity sciences,” stewardship has developed deep wisdom through its long history of scholarship and activism stretching back to Eden. Indeed, while maintaining our core Truths, Christian creation care has much in common with other traditions of stewardship, such as those in Eastern and indigenous cultures. Together, they comprise the ethic needed in the natural resources conversation. When cast in the language of complex social-ecological systems, the scholarship and living demonstration of what it means to be a steward provide examples of the values, processes, tasks and self-awareness needed to achieve and adapt to multiple outcomes in these systems. The academic rubber is hitting the natural resources road, but in academia at least, there is no engine to keep us going. Perhaps Au Sable Graduate Fellows, like Esther, have been prepared “for such a time as this.” Winter Retreat- Reflection and Pictures 02/13/2012
A reflection on the retreat by Au Sable board member Ryan P. O’Connor- Snow We sit in a wide circle of chairs in the dining hall on the Au Sable campus, nestled in an aspen and white pine forest in northern Michigan. Snow is falling lightly outside, which we watch through the bank of wall to wall windows forming three sides of the large room. Rolf Bouma, coordinator of the Au Sable Graduate Fellows program, discusses the future of the program, designed to increase creation care literacy among Christian graduate students in the natural sciences and related fields. We are gathered here on the Au Sable Great Lakes campus from five major public universities across four states: 27 graduate students, coordinators, Au Sable staff and supporters to grow in understanding of stewardship, to grow in fellowship with one another, and be renewed at the start of this new year and semester. Snow thickly covers everything outside, capping the century-old white pine stumps and clinging densely to the pine boughs of the regenerating forest. It also covered the Manistee airport runway Friday afternoon, causing a canceled flight for the five of us from the Wisconsin contingent, who drove 8 hours by car instead, such was our desire to be here this weekend. Travel difficulties aside, the snow is beautiful, making this broken world appear pristine. Some theologians say Christ covers over us and our sinful nature like snow over the ground. Whether or not this is true in its seemingly simple sense, I will leave for scholars and theologians to debate. But as an ecologist, it is much more complex. Snow does indeed cover over us and everything else that happens to be outside and above ground, yet it also provides a natural insulating blanket for short-tailed weasel and porcupine dens on the banks of ponds and provides cover for mice and voles and the mink that chase after them through the sub-nivean environment, as silent tracks bear witness near campus. Throughout the winter, the tiny seeds of paper birch are swept across the slippery snowy surface by winds unhindered by summer foliage, an ideal setting for dispersal. Come spring, the snow will melt and infuse into the soil, recharging the shallow groundwater aquifers, perhaps partially refilling Louie’s Pond, only to be pulled out of the ground by tree roots, pumped into swelling buds and expanding leaves as the plants awake again, and be transpired back into the heavens. If Christ is snow-like, he does more than cover us. Like melting snow, he infuses himself into our lives, our studies, and our work, or desires to do so, if we let him, nourishing and watering our awakening souls. Isaiah 55:10-11 describes God’s word coming down like rain and snow and not returning to him without accomplishing the purpose for which he sent it. Yes, Christ is like snow, in its fullest ecological sense. We reflected this weekend, guided by Steven Bouma-Prediger, on the meanings of home and homelessness, not in the traditional sense, but in the spiritual, emotional, and psychological sense. Graduate school can be a lonely place, especially for Christians in the sciences at large public universities, and yet the Grad Fellows program and our gathering here brings fellowship and peace primordial of unity, and, though none of us reside here, a sense of place. As the snow falls, I am reminded of the continual re-creation and renewing of this earth through the seasons, and the final renewal promised in Revelation 21-22, the blanket of white a foreshadowing of the purity and brilliance of redemption realized. We are also reminded this weekend that through Christ all things were created, that in Christ all things hold together, and that all things are reconciled to himself (Colossians 1:15-20). If this is indeed true, and I believe it is, we must think more broadly about our Savior. In nature, the one thing holding all things together (as far as I am aware) is water, whether it is absorbed, imbibed, transpired, or swam through. What if Christ, our living water, was not just for the spiritually thirsty but was manifested in each hydrogen-bonded molecule of H2O? Christ is indeed our living water, blanketing creation now in snow, redeeming and restoring it come spring, and in the meantime, doing a great many other wonderful things to provide for us and all creation. The future of the Grad Fellows program is strong, I think, as I look at the encircled group of bright, talented, and passionate individuals across the room. These are the future leaders and stewards, the current leaders and stewards. Four former Fellows received faculty positions at colleges and universities over the past year alone. The number of Fellows has grown dramatically over the past year and the program has expanded onto new campuses and been rejuvenated on others. As warm embraces are shared and we prepare to disperse across the snowy landscape and return home, I cannot help but think we already are at home, here at Au Sable, and more broadly, here in this wonderfully created world, held together by Christ himself. Once again, Au Sable has been a place of rest for stressed and busy graduate students and for at least one working professional. We have found fellowship, peace, and Christ himself in this place, with each other, and in the silent beauty and ecology of fallen snow. Excerpt from “Remembering that it happened once”, a poem of the incarnation, by Wendell Berry …We stand with one hand on the door, Looking into another world That is this world, the pale daylight Coming just as before, our chores To do, the cattle all awake, Our own white frozen breath hanging In front of us; and we are here As we have never been before, Sighted as not before, our place Holy, although we knew it not. And some pictures-  Steven Bouma-Prediger led the group in three different sessions throughout the weekend.  We had wonderful meals together thanks to the Au Sable staff. Here Janet and Leah load up on some chips, cookies, and sandwiches.  We were blessed with a beautiful snowy weekend and were able to go on hikes, to cross-country ski, and to snow shoe throughout Au Sable's campus.  Broomball was a hit!  We had a wonderful time fellowshipping and learning together!  (National Geographic Magazine, August 2010) Congratulations to Ryan Bebej for achieving every scientist's dream and having his backside photographed (pictured above on left with hat and bag) for National Geographic magazine! National Geographic followed Ryan and the rest of University of Michigan professor Philip Gingerich's paleontology lab on their December trip to Egypt to uncover whale fossils strewn throughout the Wadi Al-Hitan (meaning "valley of whales"). As Ryan tells it: "After spending the first several years of my time as a Ph.D. student working in UM's Museum of Paleontology on whale fossils my advisor had collected over the years, I finally got my own chance to go to the "Valley of Whales" to help find, excavate, and collect new fossils. The location was absolutely breathtaking and certainly lived up to its name. I saw a large sampling of the thousands of whale fossils that UM teams have documented since my advisor began fieldwork there nearly three decades ago, and I participated in excavating several new specimens that expand our knowledge of the marine mammal fauna in this region during the late Eocene. This research will help to elucidate the details of the transition from the last semiaquatic whales to the first fully aquatic forms, further documenting arguably the best example of macroevolution in the fossil record." Now, for their August edition, National Geographic has released a full-length article accompanied by a generous number of pictures from the trip. The article goes into great detail about the enormous collection of fossil sea creatures found throughout Egypt's Wadi Al-Hitan and chronicles the history of discovering and uncovering the strange aquatic and terrestrial life histories of the ancient whales found there. In addition to being featured in National Geographic, Ryan now has the good fortune of being able to point to a terrific resource when confronted by family and friends with the question, "So what exactly do you study?" Welcome to our new webpage! 05/24/2010
 The idea of creating a place where Au Sable Graduate Fellows could connect across campuses, provide thought and insight on current events and topics in environmental stewardship, and broadcast meeting and events around campus more widely has been kicking around for some time now. For the past 8 years or so, we've coordinated an AGF retreat to the Au Sable Environmental Institutecampus in Mancelona, MI. Though this has been a great way to meet one another, engaged in good discussion, share meals, and enjoy the beauty of God's creation, it doesn't allow with a sustained space to discuss the intersections of our faith and our learning across campuses. It also doesn't allow us to meet past AGF members -- people who also share our commitments to the Christian faith and environmental stewardship (...not to mention having some professional experience!). So that's why we created this website. With the onset of social networking sites, blogs, forums, and ability to share media and documents, we found that we could create a multi-functional space for fellows past and present to share, discuss, and interact with one another. With a bit of creative tweaking, I think we've managed to do this. We've made a space here to broadcast news and information about AGF chapters across Universities, share AGF events within and between chapters, and connect past and present fellows (both vocationally and intellectually). Without further adieu, here is quick user guide to the features of our new website:
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