Melting glaciers are an icon of global climate change. But they affect groups of people differently, depending not just on place, but on race, indigeneity, and other social factors. Ice in the PNW (on Rainier, Cascades, Olympics, Hood) is crucial for farming, hydroelectricity, drinking water, recreation, spirituality, and identities. We will build on existing multidisciplinary strengths at the UO in humanities and natural sciences to create an Ice, Society, and Climate Justice Initiative that foregrounds climate justice to understand inequalities, power imbalances, and uneven vulnerabilities beneath melting glaciers. This is crucial for Indigenous communities living around all the PNW’s glacier-covered mountains, for BIPOC communities relegated to floodplains subject to increasing glacier landslides and outburst floods, and for Latinx farmworkers irrigating crops with glacier runoff. This Initiative tackled these human-ice-justice issues through diverse public events, research, mentorship of students, field trainings, lectures, and courses.

Projects

Field Workshops

Each year the Initiative will host a field-based course/workshop. Approximately 15 faculty and students who register for the course will participate in each workshop. These workshops will be held at a glacierized mountain in the Pacific Northwest (e.g., Mount Hood, Mount Rainier, North Cascades, Olympic Mountains) and focus on learning and engagement with experts and community members on glacier change, society, and climate justice.

Course Development Stipends

This Ice Initiative will also provide three course development stipends for instructors (faculty or advanced graduate students) to develop new UO courses on themes related to ice, society, and climate justice. The goal is to inspire more interdisciplinary courses that bring a humanities and environmental justice dimension to courses on ice, typically taught in the natural sciences. 

Undergraduate Student Research Awards

Undergraduate student research awards (two $4,000 stipends each summer) will be offered each summer for students to do humanities-based research on themes of ice, society, and climate justice.

Team