Thursday, November 9
11:00 - 12:15
LSC Terrace Room
Join us to learn how CLAS members are researching, teaching, and making creative works that address our warming world.
Trevor Carter
Trevor Carter is a PhD candidate in Integrative Biology. He works in Brian Buma's lab and previously earned an MS in Botany from the University of Wyoming with undergraduate degrees in environmental science and forest management from the University of Nevada Reno. Carter’s dissertation research offers a systems biology approach to understand the carbon dynamics in the pacific coastal temperate rainforest. He is the recipient of a 2023 Graduate Student Excellence in Research Award from CLAS and has published in Journal of Ecology, Landscape Ecology, Ecosphere, and Journal of Vegetative Science.
Michelle Comstock
Michelle Comstock is an Associate Professor of English, Associate Chair of English, and Interim Associate Dean of Diversity, Outreach, and Initiatives for the College of . Her current research interests include the influence of sound (and audio) on climate change discourse and the larger function of aurality on the composing process. She has also published research on gender and technology, digital community networks, and the privatization of education. Her current book in process with Mary Hocks is Composing Resonance: Culture and Collaboration in Sonic Practices (Parlour Press).
Molly Kugel
Molly Kugel is the author of Groundcover (Tolsun, 2022), the chapbook, The Forest of the Suburbs (Five Oaks, 2015) and has a forthcoming chapbook, sky, lotus, dust : poems of Rachel Carson (dancing girl press, 2023). Her poems have appeared most recently or are forthcoming in Bennington Review, Calyx, Mid-American Review, Cider Press Review, Josephine Quarterly, and Plant-Human Quarterly. She recently completed a PhD at the University of Denver and is the Ecology Editor for Cordella Magazine.
Elizabeth “Libby” Pansing
Elizabeth “Libby” Pansing is an alumna who earned her PhD and master’s in Integrative Biology at CU Denver. She develops and implements research initiatives to improve restoration and climate-smart forestry initiatives, provides insight into adaptive forest management strategies, and evaluates forest ecosystem response to climate change and other disturbance agents including wildfire. Pansing is a quantitative ecologist with a background in forestry and alpine plant community ecology and has studied Rocky Mountain ecosystems for over a decade, focusing on conifer regeneration, post-fire community recovery and demographic modeling.
Ivan Ramirez
Ivan Ramírez is an Assistant Professor CTT in Health & Behavioral Science and a geographer whose research focuses on the intersections of climate change, global and urban health, disasters, and community engagement. An advocate for equity and social justice, he explores how communities interact with the many facets of climate and how those interactions influence the health and social vulnerability of populations and places. Ivan’s publications appear in venues such as Weather, Climate & Society, EcoHealth, International Journal of Disaster Risk Science, and Behavioral Medicine.
Diana Tomback
Diana Tomback is a Professor of Integrative Biology. Her groundbreaking studies of Clark’s nutcracker and its interaction with white pines led to her 1994 election as Fellow of the American Ornithologists’ Union. Tomback was lead organizer and editor of the highly influential Whitebark Pine Communities: Ecology and Restoration (Island Press, 2001). In 2001, Tomback and several colleagues started The Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation, a non-profit based in Missoula. Montana. As WPEF’s volunteer Director, Diana leads the organization in its whitebark pine ecosystems restoration and in educating the public and resource management agencies about the importance of this pine.