Slade Laszewski received Miami University Graduate Students Achievement Award of Spring 2024

04/22/2024

Slade Laszewski, a current MA student at Miami University working with Dr. Shenyue Jia, recently received Miami Unviersity's Graduate Students Achievement Award of Spring 2024. This award is announced twice every academic year to recognize significant achievement in any research or creative activity by full or part-time graduate students making satisfactory progress in their degree program. Slade will receive $500 of professional development funds to attend conferences, trainings, and other opportunities valuable to continue building up his research portfolio at Miami University. Congratulations Slade!

Slade Laszewski and Dr. Shenyue Jia published their collaborative work on population increase during the past decade in California's wildland-urban interface (WUI)

03/11/2024

Slade Laszewski, a current MA student at Miami University working with Dr. Shenyue Jia, has recently published his first peer-reviewed journal article as the first author in Environmental Research Communications (ERC). This work is the fruit of a collaboration started at Chapman University (Orange, California) and Chapman's Grand Challenges Initiative (GCI).

In this work, Slade explored the spatial pattern of population change during the past decade inside California's WUI, a wildfire-prone region that is highly sensitive to human activities' disturbance to the ecosystem. His study found that 12.7% of CA's total population now resides in census tracts with significant population increases over the past decade, labeled as 'high-growth tracts.' The Bay Area and Southern California, encompassing 76% of all high-growth tracts in CA, witnessed the most substantial population increase along the WUI. House affordability was a significant driving force behind such change. Given the rapid growth and insufficient consideration of wildfire risk in the WUI, policymakers must take prompt action, ensuring adequate infrastructure and resources as more individuals relocate to areas with heightened wildfire risk.

An interactive story map of this work can be found here.

Dr. Shenyue Jia and Dr. Damon Scott received support from Miami University Humanities Center to design and conduct a Humanities Lab in Fall 2024 and Spring 2025

01/23/2024

Dr. Shenyue Jia and Dr. Damon have recently received financial support totaling $10,000 from the Humanities Center of Miami University to conduct a Humanities Lab teaching-scholarly project in Fall 2024 and Spring 2025.

Through a series of teaching and learning modules sequenced across two courses and a dedicated humanities lab, students and faculty will collaborate to co-produce a 3D digital model of a changing urban landscape built from a mix of historical documents, archival photographs, demographic datasets, property records, oral histories, and vintage maps. This 3D model, titled The San Francisco Waterfront Through Time, will be developed using ArcGIS software, stored in the Geospatial Analysis Center (GAC), updated on an ongoing basis by future students enrolled in Geographic Information Science (GIS) courses in the Department of Geography, and published online as a StoryMap.

Dr. Shenyue Jia attended SciComm Identities Project workshop at the University of Rhode Island

01/20/2024

Dr. Shenyue Jia has recently attended an in-person workshop held on the campus of the University of Rhode Island as a part of her SciComm Identities Project fellowship. During the weeklong training, Dr. Jia made strong connections with other fellows of this program and developed a deeper understanding of how identities can shape and play a big role in scientific communication. She plans to use knowledge and skills learned during the training to produce her first podcast on the topic "Water" along with other fellows.

Dr. Shenyue Jia's work in community science was featured in AGU TV

12/17/2023

Dr. Shenyue Jia was interviewed by AGU TV during this year's American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual meeting in San Francisco. AGU annual meeting is the world's largest geoscience academic and professional meeting, attracting about 25,000 attendees worldwide each year. During the interview with Laura Krantz, Shenyue talks about her most recent community science project, RiskAware, and the lessons learned from this untraditional scientific research experience.

You can now watch the interview from WebEdge Science's YouTube channel. Shenyue also shared the findings and lessons learned from this project in her presentation at AGU23.

Geography Department received the Miami University Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) Major Grant of 2024

11/21/2023

A proposal to upgrade Miami University's Geographic Information Science (GIS) Certificate program led by Dr. Shenyue Jia, Robbyn Abbit, and Dr. Sean Hudson at the Geography Department has successfully been funded by Miami University's CTE major grant of 2024. This grant of $3,000 will support efforts to ensure that Miami's GIS Certificate program serves the latest needs from the geospatial tech job market and research sector.

The newly developed modules in the GIS Certificate program will invite students at different levels to solve real-world problems by contributing to a new Ohio-centered data initiative through their coursework in both big and small ways. This project also aims to help students develop a mindset of building and maintaining their own project portfolio via GitHub and other tools. These efforts will offer much-needed training for students from the College of Arts and Science to help them become competitive in jobs in the tech industry, which often requires a well-maintained project portfolio to self-promote their technology proficiency and communication skills via data and data visualization. 

Dr. Shenyue Jia selected as 2024 Science Communication Identities Program Fellow

11/16/2023

Dr. Shenyue Jia has been selected as a 2024 Fellow of the Science Communication Identities Program (SCIP), a program launched by the University of Rhode Island (URI) Metcalf Institute, Michigan State University Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, and URI Science and Story Lab to prepare the next generation of science communicators from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds. The project, supported by a $2.8 million collaborative National Science Foundation grant, will address a significant gap in science communication research and training by centering the motivations, experiences, and priorities of racial and ethnic minority scientists.

Out of a competitive applicant pool, fourteen Fellows were selected to participate in this innovative science communication fellowship for pre-tenure faculty of color. The 2023 Fellowship will focus on water, and Fellows study issues that range from disaster management to irrigation management strategies. Dr. Shenyue Jia expects to connect with like-minded pre-tenure faculty and transfer what she will learn throughout this program to benefit her research on wildfire and the cascading effects of climate change, as well as her new teaching effort on BIO/GEO 266 Climate Science Communication in Spring 2024.

Dr. Shenyue Jia selected as AGU's Local Science Partner for 2024

10/13/2023

Dr. Shenyue Jia has been selected as the 2024 cohort of AGU's Local Science Partner, a program that focuses on informing and influencing policymaking via science communication and outreach work. This opportunity will enable Shenyue's continuation in science policy outreach work, which entailed at the beginning of this year as the 2023-2024 AGU Voices for Science Fellow.

AGU’s Local Science Partners program cements sciences’ place in decision-making and diversifies sciences’ Congressional champions by empowering selected AGU members to build trusting, long-lasting relationships with their federal legislators to advance the policy priorities of the AGU community. Our Partners receive skills-building training in key science policy and advocacy skills and work together with AGU’s science policy team to use their expertise to connect federal issues to their local communities and states.

Dr. Shenyue Jia will serve as the 2023-2024 Center for Analytics and Data Science (CADS) Faculty Fellow

09/26/2023

Dr. Shenyue Jia recently became the 2023-2024 Center for Analytics and Data Science (CADS) Faculty Fellow and will offer a boot camp centered around spatial data visualization and analysis using different tools in Spring 2024. As a faculty fellow of CADS, she looks forward to collaborating with other departments of Miami University on data analysis projects with a geospatial element.

The Center for Analytics and Data Science (CADS) is a university-wide initiative that develops problem solvers to turn data into insights and insights into action. CADS promotes education, collaboration, and innovation in analytics and data science across a multi-disciplinary group of students, faculty and organizational leaders. CADS aspires to be the hub for all things analytics and data science at Miami. Through CADS, students and faculty have an innovative and supportive environment to apply their knowledge of analytics, engage in research, and gain opportunities to further elevate their understanding.

Dr. Shenyue Jia will attend the 2023 Google Geo for Good Summit

08/08/2023

Dr. Shenyue Jia will attend this year's Google Geo for Good Summit from Oct 10-12 at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. She will have a chance to present her work with the CrisisReady team on building a platform to streamline the harvesting, analysis, visualization, and communication of real-time geolocation data during natural disasters worldwide.

The Summit is intended for nonprofit, academic, public sector, private sector, and Indigenous peoples and local communities who are using (or want to learn to use) our mapping tools (such as Google Earth, Earth Engine, Environmental Insights Explorer, and My Maps) for planetary sustainability and human resilience around the world.

Dr. Shenyue Jia will present at the Conference of Broadening Participation in Undergraduate Climate Education

07/06/2023

Dr. Shenyue Jia will present a paper entitled "More than GIS: Mapping the changing world with state-of-the-art technologies" during the Conference of Broadening Participation in Undergraduate Climate Education, which will be held from Sept 14-15, 2023 at Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California. 

Sponsored by Harvey Mudd College's Hixon Center for Climate and the Environment and the Office of Community and Civic Engagement, the conference will convene climate experts, teacher-scholars from other disciplines and community partners to discuss the future of climate education for undergraduates. The goal of this conference is to expand the number of faculty involved in climate education and for those already involved to deepen their understanding of and appreciation for the strengths that multiple perspectives bring to addressing the challenges of climate. Presentation materials will be uploaded to this website after the conference.

Dr. Shenyue Jia selected as the 2023-2024 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Voices for Science Fellow

05/03/2023

AGU Voices for Science is a program launched in 2018 that centers around training scientists to address the critical need for communicating the value and impact of Earth and space science to key decision-makers, journalists, and public audiences. The program recruits scientists to participate in one of two tracks: policy or communications. If you are interested in applying for this program, please stay tuned from AGU Voices for Science website. 

This year, Dr. Shenyue Jia was honored to be selected as the 2023-2024 cohort for Policy Track. She has participated in a two-day on-site training at AGU headquarters in Washington D.C. and completed her first Congressional visit and meeting in the Capital Hill.

Meet the 2023-2024 Policy Track cohort and Science Communications cohort!