Lindie Martin is acting locally but thinking globally. She has been awarded funds from the university to work this summer as a researcher on the World Wide Views on Biodiversity project, a program affiliated with the United Nations with which the UMass Science, Technology and Society Initiative is involved. Martin is one of only eight rising seniors to receive a stipend through a UMass Public Service Endowment grant to participate this summer in the Commonwealth Honors College’s Community Research Engagement program, which is made possible through the office of the vice chancellor for research and engagement.
The team that Martin will work with this summer is coordinating a day-long discussion to be held in September at the Museum of Science in Boston, where people from across Massachusetts will discuss regional biodiversity issues and related public policy topics. Massachusetts is home to one of 45 sites across the globe participating in the World Wide Views project by convening a day of citizen dialogue on September 15. Results of the conversations in Boston and the other 44 sessions taking place that day will be presented to U.N. delegates who work on biodiversity issues, thereby helping to shape the agenda and deliberations of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity in India this October.
Martin is majoring in environmental science and minoring in natural resource economics, with a concentration in environmental policy. She has been accepted into the new accelerated Master of Public Policy (MPP) program at the Center for Public Policy and Administration (CPPA), which gives her the opportunity to double-count some coursework and earn her graduate degree one year after finishing her bachelor’s. But CPPA is already a home of sorts to Martin; she was a work-study student here during the 2011-2012 academic year.
Her job this summer will be to determine how to recruit and select participants for the September day of dialogue so that the 100 Massachusetts residents chosen will proportionally represent the commonwealth racially, socioeconomically, politically and geographically. Gretchen Gano, the project’s co-director, will mentor Martin. Among the skills she will learn are designing an effective research model and social science data collection. Gano is a lecturer at CPPA and a doctoral candidate in Arizona State University’s Human Dimensions of Science and Technology program.
Martin already has substantial experience in the realms of biodiversity, environmental policy and community engagement. She has worked on a native species restoration project with a land trust in western Massachusetts; served as a mentor for elementary school girls exploring science beyond the classroom; and worked at the Fund for the Public Interest, canvassing communities in support of proposed Massachusetts recycling legislation.
“The chance to work on the World Wide Views project has inspired me to go more in-depth with this kind of citizen engagement in science-related policymaking,” Martin said.
She will meet periodically with other participants in the Community Research Engagement program for seminars and training in community-based research. Martin will also present her research study proposal aims and hypotheses to the group, and will present her study findings to students and faculty at summer’s end.
In addition to Gano and Martin, the team planning for the September day of discussions includes David Sittenfeld, the other project co-director, who manages the Forum Program at the Museum of Science in Boston, and Maria Delfin Auza, a master’s candidate at CPPA.
The Science, Technology and Society Initiative is a CPPA-affiliated endeavor that conducts multidisciplinary research on the intersection of science and technology with today’s social, political and economic issues.