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Oregon State University Climate Change Research Oral History Collection, 2017-2018

By Chris Petersen

Collection Overview

Title: Oregon State University Climate Change Research Oral History Collection, 2017-2018

ID: OH 039

Primary Creator: Thorley, Elizabeth C.

Extent: 54.7 gigabytes. More info below.

Arrangement: The collection's interviews are arranged into a single series and organized chronologically.

Languages of Materials: English [eng]

Abstract

The Oregon State University Climate Change Research Oral History Collection contains twelve oral history interviews conducted with eleven OSU faculty members and one undergraduate student that focus primarily on scholarly research related to climate change and global warming. The sessions take on the form of life history interviews that trace a given narrator's entire professional life, with particular attention paid to academic work and attitudes concerning ecological topics. All of the collection's interviews have been contextualized and made available online through a dedicated web portal.

Scope and Content Notes

The Oregon State University Climate Change Research Oral History Collection consists of twelve interviews conducted between December 2017 and April 2018 with eleven OSU faculty members and one undergraduate student. Each of the individuals who contributed their perspectives to the collection has been closely involved with ecological and environmental topics as a component of their academic career. While the sessions generally follow the format of a life history interview, specific emphasis is placed upon each narrator's work and perspectives concerning global warming and other issues associated with climate change.

The tenure-track faculty who participated in the interviewing project hail from the following colleges at OSU: Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (4), Liberal Arts (2), Agricultural Sciences (1), Engineering (1), Forestry (1), and Public Health and Human Sciences (1). In addition, the collection includes one interview with OSU's Sustainability Officer and another interview with an undergraduate student majoring in Environmental Engineering.

The collection is entirely born digital. Each interview was collected using both a video camera and a digital audio recorder. The raw .MTS video files and .WAV audio files that were captured by this process are stored on the OSU Libraries preservation server and constitute the archival materials detailed in this finding aid. Audio derivatives (.MP3) have been created and are stored on the Special Collections and Archives Research Center's (SCARC) department share for local use, as are research materials that were generated in anticipation of each interview. Paper permissions forms signed by each participant are stored in the SCARC central files.

The full contents of this collection have been contextualized and made available through a dedicated web portal titled Voices of a Warming Planet. In addition to a biographical sketch and interview abstract written to help frame each session, the interviews released on this web portal have been segmented and indexed using the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer.

All of the interviews held in this collection were conducted and described by Elizabeth Thorley, an undergraduate senior studying Environmental Engineering at OSU. Her work was supported by a grant from the OSU Libraries and Press Undergraduate Internship Program.

Biographical / Historical Notes

Dominique Bachelet (b. 1957) is an associate professor in OSU's Department of Biological and Ecological Engineering. Bachelet came to Corvallis in 1988 to work as a qualitative ecologist with ManTech Environmental Technologies, Inc. She has been a member of the OSU faculty since 1989, during which time she has helped to develop vegetation and data basin models including the MC1 model, which simulates potential vegetation changes that might arise in different climate change scenarios.

Jeff Bethel (b. 1974) is an associate professor in the School of Biological and Population Health Sciences who has been at OSU since 2011. Bethel's research focus is the assessment of health risks associated with climate change, a portfolio that has included investigations of disaster preparedness as well as the impacts of heat stress on agricultural workers.

Hilary Boudet (b. 1979) is an assistant professor of Sociology within OSU's School of Public Policy. At OSU since 2012, Boudet has conducted a series of studies on community responses to global warming and has investigated, in particular, collective attitudes toward fracking and extreme weather events.

Peter Clark (b. 1956) is a Distinguished Professor of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. A member of the OSU faculty since 1988, Clark's areas of focus include glacial history and ice sheets, as well as paleoclimatology, sea level rise, and abrupt climate change.

Jason Hanauska (b. 1989) is an undergraduate student majoring in Environmental Engineering at OSU and an active member of Engineers Without Borders, a group through which he has pursued projects that seek to expand access to clean drinking water.

William Jaeger (b. 1954) is a professor of Applied Economics and has been a faculty member at OSU since 2001. Long interested in issues of development in impoverished nations, Jaeger has analyzed the economic aspects of the biofuel industry; water and land use; and environmental taxation policies during his tenure at Oregon State.

Beverly Law (b. 1955) is a professor of Global Change Biology and Terrestrial Systems Science within the OSU College of Forestry's Forest Ecosystems and Society department. Law earned her Ph.D. from OSU in 1993 and has been a member of the Oregon State faculty since 1995. During her career, Law has risen to the forefront of micrometeorology technology and has become a leader in developing national and international atmospheric monitoring networks, such as the AmeriFlux program.

Philip Mote (b. 1965) is the director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, which he has led since 2009, and is also an associate dean in the OSU College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. Since arriving at OSU, Mote has primarily focused on public outreach related to climate science. He has also conducted research on regional climate trends and has helped to promote interdisciplinary collaboration within the OSU community.

Peter Ruggiero (b. 1969) is a professor of Geology and Geophysics within the OSU College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, and has been a member of the OSU faculty since 2006. His primary research interest is coastal geomorphology and coastal hazards, through which he seeks to measure and interpret the impacts of climate change on coastal landscapes. He has also collaborated on interdisciplinary projects assisting coastal communities in the Pacific Northwest in their initiation of climate adaptation strategies.

Andreas Schmittner (b. 1966) is a professor in OSU's College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, his academic home since 2005. Schmittner studies the physics of oceans and atmospheres, as well as ocean ecology and biogeochemistry. He is also the author of an open source textbook titled Introduction to Climate Science and has engaged in a number of public outreach activities related to climate change.

Allen Thompson (b. 1969) is an associate professor of Philosophy in OSU's School of History, Philosophy and Religion. A member of the OSU faculty since 2011, Thompson has written on a number of topics within the field of environmental philosophy, wrestling in particular with issues of moral responsibility and social cost as they pertain to global warming.

Brandon Trelstad (b. 1979) is the sustainability officer at Oregon State University. Trelstad is also an OSU graduate who completed a double degree in Environmental Science and Political Science prior to a four-year stint as assistant to the OSU director of government relations. Trelstad helped to create the sustainability officer position at OSU and has served the university in this capacity since 2005.



Author: Chris Petersen

Administrative Information

More Extent Information: 12 sets of video and audio files

Statement on Access: This collection is open for research.

Related Materials:

Twenty sets of interviews described within the Oregon State University Sesquicentennial Oral History Collection (OH 26) focus on environmental sustainability as a primary theme. Other SCARC collections that include materials related to environmental health, environmental justice, and environmental protection include the Environmental Health Sciences Center Records (RG 155), the Annabelle E. Jaramillo Papers (MSS Jaramillo), and the Rockefeller Project Records (RG 161).

Climate change and global warming are topics of emphasis within the College of Science Videotapes (FV 084) and the Oregon Sea Grant Moving Images (FV 185). Materials related to both topics can also be found in the Oregon State University Memorabilia Collection (MSS MC), the John C. Ringle Papers (MSS Ringle), and the Denis P. Lavender Papers (MSS Lavender), among other collections.

Preferred Citation: Oregon State University Climate Change Research Oral History Collection (OH 39), Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Oregon State University Libraries.

Creators

Thorley, Elizabeth C.

People, Places, and Topics

Bachelet, Dominique.
Boudet, Hilary, 1979-
Clark, Peter U., 1956-
Climatic changes
Corvallis (Or.)
Environmental health--Research--Oregon--Corvallis.
Environmental justice--United States.
Environmental protection--Research--Oregon.
Global warming
History of Science
Jaeger, William K. (William Kenneth)
Law, Beverly E.
Mote, Philip W.
Ruggiero, Peter.
Schmittner, Andreas.
Sustainability.
Thompson, Allen, 1969-
University History

Forms of Material

Born digital.
Digital audio formats.
Oral histories (literary genre)


Box and Folder Listing

Series 1: Interviews, 2017-2018
All of the interviews held in this collection - including links to their online representation as contextualized digital objects - are itemized below.
Extent: 12 sets of video and audio files

Digital Folder 1: Dominique Bachelet, December 12, 2017
Link to Bachelet interview.
Extent: 1:01:31

Digital Folder 2: William Jaeger, December 13, 2017
Link to Jaeger interview.
Extent: 1:18:10

Digital Folder 3: Peter Ruggiero, December 14, 2017
Link to Ruggiero interview.
Extent: 1:11:35

Digital Folder 4: Peter Clark, December 15, 2017
Link to Clark interview.
Extent: 0:57:53

Digital Folder 5: Jeff Bethel, December 19, 2017
Link to Bethel interview.
Extent: 0:39:50

Digital Folder 6: Andreas Schmittner, December 21, 2017
Link to Schmittner interview.
Extent: 0:45:41

Digital Folder 7: Beverly Law, January 5, 2018
Link to Law interview.
Extent: 1:19:17

Digital Folder 8: Allen Thompson, January 10, 2018
Link to Thompson interview.
Extent: 1:28:48

Digital Folder 9: Jason Hanauska, March 22, 2018
Link to Hanauska interview.
Extent: 0:53:29

Digital Folder 10: Philip Mote, March 23, 2018
Link to Mote interview.
Extent: 1:06:31

Digital Folder 11: Brandon Trelstad, April 4, 2018
Link to Trelstad interview.
Extent: 1:11:34

Digital Folder 12: Hilary Boudet, April 9, 2018
Link to Boudet interview.
Extent: 1:01:00


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.