Environmental Decision Support Science Lab

By Amanda Speciale   Dr. Melissa Kenney is an invited participant to an off-the-record White House Roundtable on the Business Case for Climate Resilience held by the White House Council on Environmental Quality on November 28, 2016.   Kenney will join White House officials along with public, private, and nonprofit sector representatives at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC to share case studies that illustrate the various benefits of climate resilience investments and how to effectively communicate the…

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Dr. Kenney and Dr. Gerst will travel to Nashville for the INFORMS Annual Meeting, held from November 13-16. Dr. Kenney co-chairs the Decision Analysis Cluster, and she is also on the Decision Analysis Society Council.   Dr. Kenney will be chairing the session titled, “Environmental Decision Analysis” and co-chairing the “New Frontiers in Decision Analysis Practice and Theory” session. She will also present her talk titled, “The Process of Co-producing a Climate Indicators System.” In this talk, Dr. Kenney will…

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By Amanda Speciale   Dr. Melissa Kenney, Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center Assistant Research Professor and American Association for the Advancement of Science Leshner Leadership Institute Public Engagement Fellow, traveled with over 300 other attendees from several universities, agencies, and companies to northeastern Ohio for the Fourth Annual Kent State University Water and Land Symposium on October 5-6, 2016. She presented her formal talk titled, “Making Hard Environmental Restoration Decisions,” on the second day of the symposium.   The symposium aims…

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By Amanda Speciale   The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded six universities a total of $4.8 million in grant money to pursue research on the economic values of water quality. Dr. Melissa A. Kenney and Dr. Michael D. Gerst are collaborating with North Carolina State University and the RTI International on the project titled, “Estimating the Benefits of Stream Water Quality Improvements in Urbanizing Watersheds: An Ecological Production Function Approach”. This three-year project (April 1, 2016 – March 31, 2019)…

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By Dean Sproul American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Leshner Leadership Institute Public Engagement Fellow Dr. Melissa A. Kenney was the lead author in the guest editorial titled, “Engagement 2.0: increasing our collective impact,” published today in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The article emphasizes that ecologists at any career stage can benefit from participating in public engagement activities.   The authors describe “Engagement 2.0” as “a way to amplify our individual voices through collective, sustained…

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By Amanda Speciale   Dr. Melissa A. Kenney was recently featured in openDemocracy’s “Collaborating with Scientists for Climate Justice” article by Ellen Platts and Claire Sabel on September 21, 2016. Platts and Sabel investigate the social inequalities and human rights issues that have begun to emerge due to climate change, especially among discriminated and underprivileged communities, as well as “vulnerable populations”  in the United States.   Dr. Kenney explains in the article that “framing climate change as a human rights…

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By Dr. Melissa A. Kenney As much as you want to find a great research opportunity, the professor or project lead wants to find a great student to work on their project. Many of these projects are things that the professor has spent a great deal of time thinking about and scoping; thus, the kind of student that they want to find to work on their project is one that is smart and incredibly passionate about their research and their…

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