By Rayna Sherbinow and Dwight Brady

The pristine yet rugged shoreline of Lake Superior may seem invincible, but climate change and over-development could radically alter its present state. Preparing for these forces of nature and human activity is the main thrust of a project headed up by three NMU professors. 

Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation, Jes Thompson (College of Business), Scott Jordan (Outdoor Recreation)  and Sarah Mittlefehldt (EEGS) have launched a program to help members of the coastal community offer input and plan for equity and adaptability while maintaining a sustainable and resilient shoreline along Lake Superior.

Part of this project involved three workshops about past sustainability issues, current concerns and ideas for the future. Seventy stakeholders from the community participated in the workshops and represented various interests and concerns about lakeshore sustainability. “We had a lot of diverse perspectives,” Thompson said. “We had people who were really conservative and we had people who were really liberal, and it really didn’t matter because we all know that we have to work together to live alongside this common resource.”

Ultimately, Thompson hopes these forums will lead coastal communities in the U.P. to define their own identity and develop planning codes that will ensure sustainability and resiliency in the face of climate change and migration to the north.

The workshops took an interdisciplinary approach to lakeshore sustainability. Specifically, they explored the connection among the ecosystem’s health and the community’s well being in terms of commerce and development. At the end of the workshop series, the team put together a digital magazine that documented the results of the session and highlighted the interdisciplinary research from each professor. Thompson focused on business development. Mittlefehldt focused on environmental sustainability, and Jordan’s primary concern was tourism.

Mittlefehldt contributed historical research to the project. She looked at local responses to sustainability issues over the years. “I spent some time in some of the regional archives looking at different planning efforts in the past to see how people have been planning for coastal development before people started talking about climate change,” Mittlefehldt said.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Upper Peninsula saw a movement toward industrialization. People made use of resources in and around Lake Superior and its shoreline as they traveled, transported goods and built towns and cities. The local industrialization efforts were a form of coastal development, and undoubtedly required communication and planning from everyone involved. 

“Although many of our goals and concerns may have changed over the years, communication, planning and building a healthy local economy are still important parts of the sustainability conversation,” said Dr. Mittlefehldt. 

After establishing what can be learned from the past, CoPe (Coastlines and People) shifted its focus to the present. Jordan was interested in the current relationship among the lakeshore, tourism and outdoor recreation. “The lakeshore is creating outdoor recreation,” Jordan said. “Climate change is kind of part of that.”

Jordan explained that as the northern climate warms, people are less inclined to move south for outdoor activities. Instead, there is increasing use of Lake Superior’s shoreline for recreation. “That creates some sense of place issues,” Jordan said. “It creates some economic issues, good and bad.” 

An example of tourism’s impact can be seen from the 1.2 million people who visited Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore during a global pandemic in 2020. This shattered the previous record of 858,000 set in 2019. Workshop participants from Munising and Grand Marais felt tourism could overwhelm their current infrastructure.

When talking about the present, the CoPe team learned which sustainability issues concerned stakeholders most. “We would get that information and then find experts associated with those topics and try to address those questions,” Dr. Jordan said.

Many stakeholders expressed concern over increased erosion and flooding, but they also wanted the shoreline to remain accessible to the public. After this discussion, the workshops considered how to protect the environment while also allowing future generations to enjoy it. 

Several local organizations contributed to the project, including the architecture firm Studio RAD. “They were critical because they brought a skillset that we don’t have, which is designing and creating pictures to help people visualize different futures for the shore,” Thompson said.

The workshops discussed multiple potential solutions, each accompanied by an illustration from Studio RAD. Participants discussed the pros and cons of every option. Some of their quotes were printed in the magazine alongside Studio RAD’s images and written descriptions of each idea.

In addition to teaching and interacting with community members, the professors found the workshops to be educational experiences for themselves. “The effects of climate change on Lake Superior and the south shore were much greater than I had known,” Jordan said.

According to the Environmental Law and Policy Center, daily temperatures in the Great Leakes Region increased 1.4 degrees between 1985 and 2016. The report also projects an increase of 5.7 – 9.8 degrees by the end of the 21st Century.

Mittlefehldt enjoyed working with a variety of people to address widespread sustainability issues. She says people often become isolated within their fields of expertise, so the workshops provided a valuable opportunity to break those barriers.

“Probably the best thing that came out of this was the collaboration between all the different entities, different levels of government, private sector, public sector,” Mittlefehldt said. “It was just a really great mix of people that kind of was what made the project successful.”

Thompson agrees. In retrospect, she sees more value in the experience. Due to the pandemic, she fears this opportunity may not arise again for quite some time.

“Having a workshop with 70 people with different perspectives, representing different stakeholders, that was such a gift,” Thompson said. “That was such a treat, and I now know we can’t do that on Zoom.”

Thompson says strong communities are those that can come together despite their differences to work towards a common goal. The importance of working together can be seen throughout the CoPe project. Jordan emphasizes this point as well.

“Involving local people in local decision making is important, and that takes this community ownership,” Jordan said. “So it’s not fair when just a few people from a community make decisions about their shoreline.”

The professors all hope that these workshops helped encourage discussions about sustainability. Mittlefehldt would like to establish a sustainability hub at NMU which would facilitate similar interdisciplinary work among faculty, staff, and community members. 

“I always enjoy working with people outside of my own disciplinary expertise, because I think that’s where we find real solutions to environmental challenges that we’re facing,” Mittlefehldt said.

Thompson wants to see the conversation about sustainability continue to grow and expand beyond the academic world. Ideally, she would like to see planning codes line up with the identity of these coastal communities.

She says the key to avoiding this is to be pracademic. The word is a portmanteau of ‘practitioner’  and ‘academic.’ It implies academic expertise and active participation in a field. In the case of sustainability, a pracademic would not only discuss problems and potential solutions, but also implement those solutions. 

“I think sometimes people assume research can’t be local, can’t be real,” Thompson said. Thompson hopes that CoPe will help prove those doubters wrong.

To view more images and read more information about the workshops and those involved, click here. A digital publication of the project’s findings can be found here. To learn more about the National Science Foundation, visit their website.

Two NMU professors have teamed up to create a course exploring the connection between the arts and sciences. Taimur Cleary is an associate professor of drawing and painting, and Jill Leonard is a professor of biology. On the surface, those two disciplines may seem wholly unrelated, but Leonard and Cleary have discovered a strong overlap between their respective fields.

Their work together began almost by accident. Leonard was contacted by The Grand Rapids Art Museum, who had commissioned artist Alexis Rockman to create some art based on the Great Lakes. Rockman was traveling to speak with knowledgeable scientists and learn more about the lakes.

“The origins of this class are, I don’t know, four or five years in the making from Jill asking me if I knew who Alexis Rockman was, and I did,” Cleary said. “He’s a really cool, very famous painter.”

Cleary and Leonard collaborated to host an event at which Rockman spoke to NMU students. The professors also contributed to A Dive Into the Great Lakes Cycle, a series of modules and interactive text that explores Rockman’s work from both scientific and artistic perspectives. This prompted the professors to discuss the overlap between arts and sciences, which sparked the idea for the class they are developing now. The course is an asynchronous, online general education class. The class will not only highlight the connections between art and science but also encourage students to apply what they learn about art and science to other fields.

“It’s really designed for any student,” Leonard said. “So you can be a science student, you can be an art student or you can be any other major on campus.” On the most basic level art and science are united by two concepts: Creativity and problem-solving. Leonard used herself and Cleary as an example.

“Whether he’s trying to paint something and figure out the best way to approach it and express what he wants, or I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with the ecology of my fish, in both cases we have to be creative and come up with new ideas and be open to new approaches,” Leonard said.

For Cleary, research is an important part of art, both in teaching and in his own work. “If you’re a professional and you care about what you do, you have a research practice,” Cleary said.

Leonard is quick to point out what may seem like a subversion of expectations.“If you didn’t notice, the artist just told you to do research and the scientist told you to be creative,” Leonard said.

Of course, the two professors see this as yet another example of how their respective disciplines intertwine. The course is the first of its kind to be offered at NMU. The title will be “INTT 222: Art Meets Science.” The asynchronous online format of the course works well for both professors.

“We did an online teaching fellowship over the summer to support making it an online class, so we got some good support there,” Cleary said. “The class doesn’t exist yet with students in it, but it’s coming into existence as an Educat shell.”

Once the course is underway in the summer, the professors are eager to see how students react and interact with the class. The class will place an emphasis on discussion, which is especially important given the course’s online format. Unlike classes that were forced to move online due to the pandemic, INTT 222 has the benefit of being built as an online course from the very beginning.

“It’s different than what we’re doing online now,” Leonard said. “It’s a designed online course, always intended to be that way.”

Without the pressure of suddenly adapting to the Internet, the course material can make use of the less time sensitive nature of online learning. “It’s the kind of thing where students can move at a little bit of a different pace and interact with each other in very different ways,” Leonard said.

In fact, the greatest challenge Leonard and Cleary faced when creating their class was finding the time to do it. Both professors have busy schedules. Teaching the course online is the most convenient option for both of them.

That said, Leonard and Cleary aren’t opposed to teaching the class in person. “Every once in a while I allow myself to daydream and believe that we’re teaching it in person because it would be even cooler to be able to teach it in person at some point,” Cleary said.

If and when that day will arrive remains to be seen. For now, Leonard and Cleary are looking forward to teaching the class together for the first time in the summer semester. There is some anticipation as they navigate uncharted waters. “The way students will interact, that’s the joy of it,” Cleary said. “That’s the experiment and the variable that I can never fully understand and just research and prepare for.” Leonard agrees. She is excited to see how students react to the course and interact with one another. “This is an experiment for me,” Leonard said. “I just want to see what happens with it and I hope it will be well received.”

More information about INTT 222: Art Meets Science can be found on Leonard’s website.