Category: Education

University of Vermont president Tom Sullivan has been appointed to the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions. He will begin serving immediately and continue through August 31, 2021. 

The committee is an independent administrative body charged with deciding infractions cases involving NCAA member institutions, their employees and their student. Its membership includes volunteers from NCAA member institutions and conferences and individuals from the general public who have legal training.

“It’s a great honor to be asked by the NCAA to serve on the Committee on Infractions,” Sullivan said. “Working to ensure the fairness and integrity of collegiate athletics is of paramount importance. I look forward to contributing to the committee’s important work.”

The committee has the authority to address prehearing procedural matters, set and conduct hearings or reviews, find facts, conclude violations of NCAA legislation, prescribe appropriate penalties and monitor institutions on probation to ensure compliance with penalties and terms of probation, as well as conduct follow-up proceedings as may be necessary.

In July 2016, Sullivan was appointed vice chair of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division I Presidential Forum; his term expired in October 2018. He also has served as chair of the Board of Presidents of the America East Athletic Conference. Before becoming a law school faculty member and dean, Sullivan was a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. and a trial attorney with a large New York/Washington, D.C.  law firm.

Source: UVM News

A new study shows that privacy on social media is like second-hand smoke. It’s controlled by the people around you.

Individual choice has long been considered a bedrock principle of online privacy. If you don’t want to be on Facebook, you can leave or not sign up in the first place. Then your behavior will be your own private business, right?

The new study presents powerful evidence that the answer to that question is no.

The team of scientists, from the University of Vermont and the University of Adelaide, gathered more than thirty million public posts on Twitter from 13,905 users. With this data, they showed that information within the Twitter messages from 8 or 9 of a person’s contacts make it possible to predict that person’s later tweets as accurately as if they were looking directly at that person’s own Twitter feed.

The new study also shows that if a person leaves a social media platform—or never joined—the online posts and words of their friends still provide about 95% of the “potential predictive accuracy,” the scientists write, of a person’s future activities—even without any of that person’s data.

Looked at from the other direction, when you sign up for Facebook or another social media platform” you think you’re giving up your information, but you’re giving up your friends’ information too!” says University of Vermont mathematician James Bagrow who led the new research.

The study was published January 21 in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

Privacy matters

The research raises profound questions about the fundamental nature of privacy—and how, in a highly networked society, a person’s choices and identity are embedded in that network. The new study shows that, at least in theory, a company, government or other actor can accurately profile a person–think political party, favorite products, religious commitments—from their friends, even if they’ve never been on social media or delete their account.

“There’s no place to hide in a social network,” says Lewis Mitchell, a co-author on the new study who was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Vermont and is now senior lecturer in applied mathematics at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

How information moves on social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, has become a powerful factor in protest movements, national elections, and the rise and fall of commercial brands. Along the way, people on these platforms reveal massive amounts of information about themselves—and their friends.

However, scientists have not known if there is a fundamental limit to how much predictability is contained within this tidal wave of data. In the new study, the scientists used their analysis of Twitter writings to show that there is a mathematical upper limit on how much predictive information a social network can hold–but that it makes little difference if the person being profiled, or whose behavior is being predicted, is on or off that network when their friends are on the network.

“You alone don’t control your privacy on social media platforms,” says UVM professor Jim Bagrow, “Your friends have a say too.”

Source: UVM News

After a two-year hiatus, the Grossman School of Business’ premier student-run event, the Family Enterprise Case Competition, returned to the global stage on January 9 to 12. Students, coaches and judges from nearly 30 different countries descended upon a snowy Burlington to compete in FECC 2019.

In its sixth edition, this year’s competition was long awaited after construction/renovation of Ifshin and Kalkin halls postponed last year’s competition. FECC 2019 was Grossman’s largest yet, with 25 undergraduate and graduate teams, 52 judges and 49 Grossman students all working through real-world cases involving family businesses. After four days of presentations and competition, Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business from Canada and University of Adelaide from Australia took home first place for the undergraduate and graduate leagues, respectively.

FECC is unique in that it is the only case competition in the world that focuses on issues important to family businesses. “Surprisingly, family businesses form the large majority of business enterprises, yet they tend to be overlooked by most institutions, governments and even educators,” says Pramodita Sharma, a professor and Daniel Clarke Sanders Chair in Entrepreneurship and Family Business at the Grossman School of Business.

In fact, nearly 70 percent of U.S.-based businesses are family businesses. Despite the “mom-and-pop shop” misperception of family businesses, some of the world’s leading enterprises, including Nike, Wal-Mart, Samsung, Oracle, Volkswagen and Facebook, are family operated.

FECC senior lead coordinators Abby Collins ’19 and Doug Hirschhorn ’19 say that bringing the world’s top schools in family business together under one roof illuminates the nuances of how these businesses operate across the globe. “This competition and this event really facilitate a unique understanding of how different cultures view different scenarios in family business,” says Hirschhorn.

Collins points out that succession lines, for example, vary among cultures and countries. “In the United States, the person who takes over a family business might just be whoever is most important to the company or whoever is most devoted. Whereas in China, it’s just the firstborn son. But what happens when the firstborn son doesn’t want to take over?” she explains. These are the kinds of real-world issues that FECC explores in its cases.

Throughout the four days of FECC 2019, student teams were given multiple cases, prepared by judges in advance, and tasked with formulating their best recommendations for how a company or client might proceed. The teams then presented their ideas in a succinct and professional manner to panels of judges, who evaluated them on their analysis of the case, feasibility in their recommendation, creativity, time management and more.

This year’s judges spanned 12 different countries and dozens of industries, from politics to tech. Alumna Emily Bates ’15, an FECC senior lead coordinator during her time at the University of Vermont, returned to the competition in a new capacity this year as a judge. Now a project manager at Google, she says planning an event as large as FECC prepared her for her current professional role.

“FECC also gave me the ability to network with other students, coaches and judges from all around the world—folks that I still stay in contact with today,” she adds.

John Young, coach of Wilfrid Laurier University’s Lazaridis School of Business team from Canada, echoes Bates’ sentiment on the global community surrounding FECC. Young has attended each FECC since its inaugural competition in 2013, and likens the event to a homecoming in which he gets to work with the best the world has to offer in family business.

“It’s a phenomenal case competition, it’s the best organized one. I feel that—right from the start—they wanted it to be a classy product, and I believe they did that, right from the very first year,” says Young.

 

Video and photography by Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist.

Source: UVM News

It all started with a pair of children’s moccasins. Reuben Escorpizo, a clinical associate professor in the Department of Rehabilitation and Movement Science, first saw the pair of early 20th century shoes at a Fleming Museum workshop about incorporating art into classroom curricula.

He noticed how thin the soles were and considered how, where and when a child might have worn them. “I pictured a child who had a shoe that was comfortable, but less functional. I wondered how the child walked and moved around with less support, especially with uneven terrain at the time, and about the developmental effects on other joints of the body,” says Escorpizo, who is also a practicing physical therapist. 

Escorpizo realized he had inferred that information about the child just by observing the shoes and their shape, form and physical profile. That’s when he got the idea to challenge his Doctor of Physical Therapy students to do the same. With the support of fellow DPT faculty member Elizabeth Sargent, Escorpizo collaborated with the Fleming Museum to customize an exhibit comprising art and artifacts featuring the human body for his students to practice their clinical reasoning and observation skills, and test their knowledge of the movement system. A relatively new concept, the movement system encompasses multiple, interrelated systems of the body that interact to influence an individual’s movement.

Fleming Museum manager of collections and exhibitions Margaret Tamulonis pulled objects including a woman’s corset, shoes, and a sculpture of a leaning Buddha for the class to carefully examine and discuss. Students moved through the exhibit with a prompt to simply write their observations about the pieces and any discomfort or symptoms they thought the subjects displayed. Escorpizo’s goal for the experience was to have his class defend their observations through clinical reasoning, an essential skill required of physical therapists.

“Students have to be able to demonstrate clinical reasoning about what the best possible care for a patient might be, which ultimately results in sound clinical decision making. Once they go through and observe the body and consider movement systems—for example how muscle power inefficiency in the hip, reduced cardiovascular endurance and aging may affect a patient’s walking—then they’re not just assessing the patient using random examination techniques or grasping at every single thing without defensible reasoning,” explains Escorpizo. 

While at the museum, the class considered how the statue of Buddha leaning on its side could demonstrate a patient’s discomfort in the neck, the hands and wrists or even the feet. They observed a woman in a portrait with unique posture and discussed what physical trauma or injury, or habitual posture from childhood might have caused it.

“Is there a correct way of looking at it? Maybe not. The next step is talking to the patient or client. It’s all part of their clinical reasoning and how they would do that in real life as opposed to in a classroom with environmental constraints and standardized conditions of a client or patient,” says Escorpizo. As DPT students move through the curriculum, they build on the skills they practice in the museum when they begin to interact with patient simulations and real patients in clinics, rehabilitation centers and the community. 

For Tamulonis, who is no stranger to helping University of Vermont students enhance their studies through art, Escorpizo’s class wasn’t the average discipline she usually works with in the Fleming. She enjoyed listening to their discussions about the art from their discipline’s perspective and looks forward to working with Escorpizo and his students in the future.

“One of the joys of working with students from UVM is that they come in and they make observations about things that maybe I have not observed before. Having these fresh eyes and these bright minds working on objects is really exciting,” says Tamulonis.

“I certainly encourage anyone to come in and look at the artwork that we have here and really go with it in whatever direction they choose. We have over 25,000 objects, which I think of as 25,000 different research projects. There’s so much for students to work on.”

Source: UVM News

Anxiety and depression are surprisingly common among young children – as many as one in five kids suffer from one of them, starting as early as the preschool years. But it can be hard to detect these conditions, known as “internalizing disorders,” because the symptoms are so inward-facing that parents, teachers and doctors often fail to notice them.

The issue isn’t insignificant. If left untreated, children with internalizing disorders are at greater risk of substance abuse and suicide later in life.

“Because of the scale of the problem, this begs for a screening technology to identify kids early enough so they can be directed to the care they need,” says Ryan McGinnis, a biomedical engineer at the University of Vermont.

So McGinnis teamed up with Ellen McGinnis, a clinical psychologist at the University of Vermont, and colleagues in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan, Maria Muzik, Katherine Rosenblum and Kate Fitzgerald, to develop a tool that could help screen children for internalizing disorders to catch them early enough to be treated. The work was published on January 16 in the journal PLOS ONE.

The team used a “mood induction task,” a common research method designed to elicit specific behaviors and feelings such as anxiety. The researchers tested 63 children, some of whom were known to have internalizing disorders.

Children were led into a dimly lit room, while the facilitator gave scripted statements to build anticipation, such as “I have something to show you” and “Let’s be quiet so it doesn’t wake up.” At the back of the room was a covered terrarium, which the facilitator quickly uncovered, then pulled out a fake snake. The children were then reassured by the facilitator and allowed to play with the snake.

Normally, trained researchers would watch a video of the task and score the child’s behavior and speech during the task to diagnose internalizing disorders. In this work, the team used a wearable motion sensor to monitor a child’s movement, and a machine learning algorithm to analyze their movement to distinguish between children with anxiety or depression and those without. After processing the movement data, the algorithm identified differences in the way the two groups moved that could be used to separate them, identifying children with internalizing disorders with 81 percent accuracy – better than the standard parent questionnaire.

“The way that kids with internalizing disorders moved was different than those without,” says Ryan McGinnis.

The algorithm determined that movement during the first phase of the task, before the snake was revealed, was the most indicative of potential psychopathology. Children with internalizing disorders tended to turn away from the potential threat more than the control group. It also picked up on subtle variations in the way the children turned that helped distinguish between the two groups.

This lines up well with what was expected from psychological theory, says Ellen McGinnis. Children with internalizing disorders would be expected to show more anticipatory anxiety, and the turning-away behavior is the kind of thing that human observers would code as a negative reaction when scoring the video. The advantage is that the sensors and algorithm work much faster.

“Something that we usually do with weeks of training and months of coding can be done in a few minutes of processing with these instruments,” she says. The algorithm needs just 20 seconds of data from the anticipation phase to make its decision.

That opens the door to using technology like this to help screen large numbers of children to identify those that would benefit from further psychological help.

“Children with anxiety disorders need an increased level of psychological care and intervention. Our paper suggests that this instrumented mood induction task can help us identify those kids and get them to the services they need,” says Ellen McGinnis.

Failing to catch these conditions early can be a problem for kids as they grow up says Muzik. “If anxiety symptoms do not get detected early in life, they might develop into a full-blown anxiety and mood disorder,” she says, with subsequently increased risk for substance abuse and suicide.

If these conditions are caught early though, there are good treatments available, Muzik said. Early intervention is key because young children’s brains are extremely malleable and respond well to treatment.

The next step will be to refine the algorithm and develop additional tests to analyze voice data and other information that will allow the technology to distinguish between anxiety and depression. The ultimate goal is to develop a battery of assessments that could be used in schools or doctors’ offices to screen children as part of their routine developmental assessments.

Muzik says developments like this are exciting because psychiatry has been lagging behind other fields of medicine in its use of technology to aid diagnosis and treatment.  “It’s exciting to move the field along with technology,” she says. “We are on the verge of new developments.”

Source: UVM News

Benjamin Jealous, civil and human rights leader, former NAACP president and CEO, and 2018 Maryland gubernatorial candidate, will give the keynote speech during a week of activities, speeches and events commemorating Martin Luther King during the University of Vermont’s annual MLK Week.

All events except for Bassem Yousef at the Flynn Theatre are free and open to the public. 

Tickets are required for the Benjamin Jealous keynote speech, but they are free. They are available to the to the UVM community beginning January 14 at 8 a.m. and to the general public starting January 17 at 8 a.m. Tickets can be obtained online at tickets.uvm.edu or in person at the Dudley H. Davis Center Miller information desk (3^rd floor) during business hours. 

The events of MLK Week are as follows.

Thursday, January 17, 11-3, Dudley Davis Center, first floor

• MLK birthday party. A civil right walk-and-learn display with light refreshments.

Tuesday, January 22, 4-5:30, Ira Allen Chapel

• MLK Week keynote speech by Benjamin Jealous, civil and human rights leader, former NAACP president and CEO, 2018 Maryland gubernatorial candidate.

Free tickets are available online at tickets.uvm.edu or in person at the Dudley H. Davis Center Miller Information Desk (3^rd floor) during business hours.  Tickets are available to the general public starting January 17 at 8 a.m. and to the UVM community beginning January 14 at 8 a.m.

The event will also feature a special performance by American gospel recording artist and actor Angela “Missy” Billups.  Billups is a three-time award winner of the New York Tri-State McDonald’s Gospelfest and is the lead vocalist in the upcoming broadway musical Committed.

Wednesday, January 23, 5:30-7, Sullivan Classroom, Room 200, Larner Medical Education Center

• MLK Health Equity Lecture. Dr. Herman A. Taylor, Jr., professor of medicine and director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine, will give a speech titled “Risk, Race and Resilience: Three Dimensions of Health Disparities”

Thursday, January 24, 7 p.m., UVM Interfaith Center on UVM’s Redstone campus

• Lift Every Voice: Celebrating Our Creativity and Commitment. A celebration of love, resilience, and resistance as a diverse group of artists share their creative responses to oppression and injustice through the spoken word, movement and more. 

Friday, January 25, 8 p.m, Flynn Center for the Performing Arts

• Bassem Youssef, Egyptian comedian, writer, producer, surgeon, physician, media critic, and television host, will perform “The Joke Is Mightier than the Sword.” ($10 tickets are available to UVM students, faculty and staff presenting UVM ID at the Flynn Tix Regional Box Office lobby window. One discounted ticket each per student; two per faculty and staff)

The events in MLK Week are organized by UVM’s Office of the Vice President for Human Resources, Diversity and Multicultural Affairs in collaboration with UVM president Tom Sullivan, the Department of Student Life, the Larner College of Medicine and the Interfaith Center. For more information, visit www.uvm.edu/hrdma/mlk.

Source: UVM News

Depending on the day, Emily Zahran could be in court for hours or just briefly for a client’s appearance before a judge. She could visit defendants in jail or she could submit requests to keep them safe and comfortable while they await trial. On her way home from work, she might stop for dinner in bustling Dupont Circle or look up and see the President’s Marine One helicopter overhead. She does all this while earning 15 credits as a sophomore, interning for a criminal defense attorney in Washington, D.C.

Thanks to the College of Arts and Science’s partnership with the Washington Center: Academic Internship program, Zahran is able to trade Green Mountain views for Capitol Hill sightings for an entire semester. The program is designed to house CAS students and place them in nearly full-time internships throughout D.C. Zahran and her classmates work Mondays through Thursdays, take a class related to their majors on Fridays and explore the city and beyond on the weekends. In between, they participate in networking receptions and other events.

“This program really stuck out to me because I knew that I wanted to intern in law. Where else is better to do that than in D.C?” says Zahran, who has her sights set on becoming an attorney.

Fulltime Insight

Zahran assists an independent court-appointed attorney in a small firm through her internship.  “It’s almost like I’m the right-hand man. Anything that he’s doing or needs help with, I’m right there for it. I get to see everything that he’s doing and even what other attorneys in court are doing,” she says.

Having a front row seat to the criminal justice system in action provides Zahran insight not only into what kind of law she wants to pursue—criminal law, she’s decided—but also into issues that she might one day work to address. Many of the clients she helps defend are charged with drug- or gun-related crimes; however, she points out that there’s a blurry line between the two.

“Here in D.C., the defendants usually have a gun for protection because they’re from areas with high crime. Usually they don’t want to use it and they carry it because they just never know [what could happen],” she explains. “But when they get caught with drugs and then their gun is found in a search, then it’s not only the drugs. Now it’s also the gun, which they have for protection. That’s something I want to study more.”

Prison and jail security is another issue the internship has illuminated for her. Zahran says it’s not uncommon for fights to break out in the jails, which prompts her to file a secure location request for her clients.

“I think it’s important to help people and fight for people who can’t fight for themselves. I think no matter what you’ve done, what people say you’ve done, what you’ve done in the past—no matter what it is—I think everyone deserves a right to be free of that accusation or pay for what they’ve done in an appropriate, non-excessive way,” she says.

Immersive Experience

That deeper understanding, first-hand insight and career clarity is at the core of what the program aims to provide students like Zahran. Campus liaison Sophia Trigg, who oversees the Washington Center program as well as UVM’s similar Boston-based Semester in the City program, says the biggest benefit students receive is getting a truly immersive experience without sacrificing academic standing or credits.

“The students are essentially entering the work force. They’ve got to take public transportation to get there on time, they really get into it and work on projects with their colleagues because they’re there for so many hours,” she says, adding that it’s an opportunity for students to try out their majors in the real world, as well.

For Zahran, who plans to go to law school, testing the waters was paramount in her decision to spend the semester in D.C. “Knowing how much work, money and time law school takes, I wanted to see what being an attorney was really like. I’m not just learning about the job, I’m physically doing it,” she says.

Source: UVM News

Biology professor Lori Stevens spends a lot of time wearing a lab coat as she sleuths out DNA sequences found in the gut of the reduviid bug, often called the “kissing bug,” which is responsible for the spread of Chagas disease, an affliction that affects 8-10 million people in Latin America. Almost as often, she’s wearing a t-shirt in the hot Guatemalan sun, helping rural villagers who are most vulnerable to the disease learn to retrofit their homes against the insect. 

Chagas is a parasitic disease caused by the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi which is transmitted by the kissing bugs.

The insect lies low during the day and emerges at night. Kissing bugs infected with T. cruzi transmit the parasite to humans by piercing the skin—often near areas like the eyes, nose or mouth—and then defecating near the wound. The parasite, present in the feces, enters the host’s bloodstream through an opening in the skin when the person scratches the itchy bite. The parasite can also be passed from mother to fetus, or through contaminated blood or even contaminated food.

Stevens says the disease often isn’t detected because the short-term symptoms—fever, swelling, aches and fatigue—resemble so many other common ailments. Those afflicted often go into remission, only to have the symptoms emerge later. Drugs are available to treat Chagas, but if the disease isn’t diagnosed early, heart disease and serious digestive problems can develop.

“Medication does a pretty good job in acute cases, but it has side effects, and drugs aren’t really an option for people who are at the chronic stage,” Stevens explains. “It’s hard to get people into treatment and one-third of patients have cardio-vascular complications by the time they are diagnosed.”

In the Field

Part of Stevens’ fascination with Chagas is that while it is so widespread, it is also entirely preventable. 

“Poverty is a marker for the disease,” she says. Chagas is prevalent in rural villages where homes are made of mud bricks, with dirt floors. The kissing bugs have plenty of nooks and crannies in which to hide. 

Stevens and members of the research team Chagas EcoHealth have learned that education, prevention and access to early health care are important tools to stop the disease from spreading. 

Early attempts to build new cinderblock homes in rural villages achieved only partial success because families tended to move their livestock into the new buildings and continue to live in their established homes. Chagas EcoHealth works with communities to develop methods that are culturally relevant to residents while reducing exposure to the bugs.

Community members receive training provided by EcoHealth with funding from a variety of sources including the US National Institutes of Health, the Canadian International Development Research Centre and the World Health Organization-Pan American Health Organization improve the dwellings by plastering the exterior and interior walls and pouring concrete floors to eliminate places where kissing bugs like to hide. 

“It’s a more holistic approach,” Stevens says. “Chemical spraying by itself is not a sustainable long-term solution. We try to make the homes more resistant to the bugs using mostly local materials. The families who are physically able do the work on their home. Volunteers will help with a house of someone who’s not capable of doing it themselves.”

EcoHealth has many collaborators including researchers at UVM, Loyola University in New Orleans and San Carlos University in Guatemala. Stevens, UVM evolutionary biologist Sara Helms Cahan and engineer Donna Rizzo of the UVM Engineering School have contributed to the program, along with medical entomologist Carlota Monroy and geneticist Sergio Melgar of Guatemala and molecular parasitologist Patricia Dorn of Loyola and undergraduates at each institution.

Stevens says the different perspectives provided by each member of the group is a great asset in advancing both research and on-the-ground collaboration. The trust andmespirit de corpsthat has developed between the participants—Stevens has been involved with the group since 2006—allows them to draw on each other’s strengths and resources. 

The collaborative model mirrors another program Stevens is involved with at UVM: the new Quantitative and Evolutionary STEM Training (QuEST) graduate program. QuEST trains doctoral students to solve environmental and global health problems that draws on UVM faculty in biology, plant and soil sciences, math, computer science, engineering, and molecular and biomedical sciences. 

“It illustrates how groups of people from different backgrounds can bring new perspectives to the table, and offer more creative solutions,” says Stevens. “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”

In the Lab 

Stevens is also interested in the biology of how Chagas is transmitted. She’s the principal investigator for a National Science Foundation grant that is unravelling the mysteries of which parasites kissing bugs carry—and who or what they’re biting. 

The grant funded a recent paper published this fall in the Journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases authored by Rubenstein School graduate student Lucia Orantes. Helms Cahan was co-advisor and senior author of the paper titled Uncovering vector, parasite, blood meal and microbiome patterns from mixed-DNA specimens of the Chagas disease vector Triatomadimidiata. 

Orantes, Helms Cahan and colleagues extracted DNA from the legs and abdomens of 32 kissing bugs from Central America. By filtering out sequences common to both body parts, they discovered the insects had taken blood meals from humans and other animals, including chickens, dogs, and ducks. They also discovered  two different strains of the T. cruzi parasite.

Knowing where the bugs originate and what animals they are feeding on can help the researchers identify bug colonies that could be contained or destroyed. Even more promising, genetic technology harnessed by the team could identify particular bacteria that produce antiparasitic compounds. Kissing bugs ingesting the microbes could act as a “Trojan Horse” to kill off the harmful T. cruzi, leaving the rest of bug intact.

Previous research shows that during the spring, kissing bugs can quickly re-infest areas that have been chemically sprayed. But spraying is a short-term environmentally compromised method. 

“This is a nice study because it focuses on the a potentially powerful tool that could pinpoint closely related individual bugs and identify which house they came from,” said Stevens. “Having these thousands of genetic markers gives you a high resolution picture.” 

 

Source: UVM News

Trees are a hallmark of vibrant neighborhoods. So why did nearly one-quarter of eligible residents in Detroit, Michigan, turn down free street trees? That’s the mystery University of Vermont researcher Christine Carmichael solves in one of the first studies to explore opposition to city tree planting programs.

As cities from New York to L.A. embark on major tree planting initiatives, the research helps to explain why more than 1,800 of 7,425 eligible Detroit residents – roughly 25% – submitted “no-tree requests” between 2011 and 2014 alone.

“This research shows how local government actions can cause residents to reject environmental efforts – in this case, street trees – that would otherwise be in people’s interests,” says Carmichael, a postdoctoral researcher at UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment and Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. 

The study was published January 7 by Society and Natural Resources journal.

Carmichael found that the opposition in Detroit resulted primarily from negative past experiences with street trees, particularly in low-income neighborhoods grappling with blight from vacant properties. In 2014 alone, the city had an estimated 20,000 dead or hazardous trees, following the contraction of Detroit’s once-massive tree maintenance program from budget cuts and population decline.

For many long-term residents, wariness of the new trees was driven by past experiences of caring for vacant properties in their neighborhood. They believed responsibility for maintaining the trees would eventually fall to them. “Even though it’s city property, we’re gonna end up having to care for it and raking leaves and God knows whatever else we might have to do,” said one woman interviewed for the study.

Carmichael also found that skepticism of the program was tied to wider distrust of the city government and outside groups in parts of Detroit. As a result, residents wanted greater decision-making power in selecting which trees to plant in particular locations, adds Carmichael who completed the three-year study for her PhD with co-author Maureen McDonough of Michigan State University.

Greening Detroit

Urban greening projects offer health benefits to residents, from improved air quality to decreased crime, and seek to boost the typically lower amount of tree cover in low-income neighborhoods, Carmichael says. 

For these reasons, many cities have launched major tree planting initiatives in recent years, including MillionTreesNYC, Grow Boston Greener, The Chicago Tree Initiative, and The Greening of Detroit.

To avoid past mistakes in the city’s tree planting and maintenance approach, staff at The Greening of Detroit, a non-profit contracted by the city to plant trees, selected tree species that could survive in urban environments and guaranteed maintenance of trees for three years after planting. 

However, the group relied primarily on educating residents about the benefits of trees and their program, which failed to address people’s concerns. “By not giving residents a say in the tree planting program, they were re-creating the same conflicts that had been happening in the city for a long time,” says Carmichael. 

Carmichael says simple steps, such as allowing residents a choice over which kind of tree will be planted in front of their home, can reduce tensions. Investing more effort in follow-up communication with residents who receive trees would also help to ensure that trees are cared for, and residents do not feel overburdened with tree maintenance.

One man interviewed for the study said, “I’ve left several messages. My tree was planted last August. My wife loved it. I was told that they would come back out and either water it or fertilize it. Haven’t seen anyone. So, I’ve been doing the best that I can. Where do I go from here?”

Lessons for non-profits

Monica Tabares of The Greening of Detroit says that increased spending by the City of Detroit’s forestry department, as well as a change in the organization’s leadership, has led the group to focus more on community engagement.

Since Carmichael presented her findings to The Greening of Detroit, the organization has instituted community engagement training for the youth they hire to water street trees and interact with residents. “As a result of our refined focus, [our program] has brought thousands of residents together to not only plant trees, but gain a greater understanding of the benefits of trees in their communities,” says Tabares.

Carmichael’s study is gaining attention from city planners across North America hoping to learn Detroit’s lessons. Local governments and non-profits in Austin, Denver, Indianapolis, Sacramento, Toronto and Vermont have reached out for help implementing her research.

The study also offers lessons for how non-profits and donors measure successful outcomes, Carmichael says.

With limited resources and watchful donors, some non-profits often focus on narrow outcomes — such as the number of trees planted per year – without also prioritizing deeper community engagement, which might slow the immediate work of planting trees, but create more a sustainable outcome.

“We need to broaden the measurable outcomes that we can gauge success by,” says Carmichael. “Healthy urban forests cannot be measured just by the number of trees planted. We also have to capture who is involved, and how that involvement affects the well-being of people and trees in the long-term.”

Source: UVM News