Dr. Michael Zavada is thrilled to be selected for the Morton Gneiss Professorship in Environmental Sciences at the University of Minnesota Morris, which began this fall.
“It’s an exciting prospect for me to do this, I’m jazzed up about it,” Zavada says.
Named for the three-and-a half-billion-year-old bedrock beneath Minnesota, the Morton Gneiss Professorship is the first professorship of its kind at UMN Morris. It was funded by anonymous alumni donors who had this to say about their wishes for the position: “We’ve become concerned about ecosystem interrelationships, climate change, and anthropologic extinctions. We hope that by helping to hire an environmental sciences professor at UMN Morris, some terribly brilliant person will make an innovation or discover a complex relationship in nature that meaningfully mitigates climate change or helps humanity adapt to change.”
Zavada admires the donors’ long-term thinking and their willingness to fund this position. “The donors support a position and a discipline that is important to the future and the quality of our existence,” says Zavada. “That says a lot about the donors and the university.”
He also admires the fact that environmental science is a key part of what UMN Morris does. “Environmental issues are becoming increasingly more important and critical to maintaining our quality of life,” says Zavada. “It’s about bringing …groups of people together to work for the public good… that’s one of the things that this position inspires.”
Peh Ng, acting vice chancellor for academic affairs and dean, says this position will provide opportunities “to lead one of the nation's premier environmental science programs at a public liberal arts college, to lead new initiatives in curriculum development and research opportunities for the environmental science faculty and students, and to create partnerships with UMN Morris and its surrounding communities on projects related to the environment.”
Zavada was drawn to the position for several reasons, one of which was the liberal arts education. With a degree in Slavic languages and culture, he notes that he’s always been an advocate for liberal arts. His career as a biology professor led him to larger universities but he found that he missed the liberal arts education and atmosphere. He recalls his many years teaching at Providence College. “I loved the liberal arts environment.” Having most recently worked as a dean, a chair of geosciences, and a professor of biology and geosciences at the University of Texas Permian Basin, he wanted to return to a liberal arts campus.
Zavada also saw the Morton Gneiss professorship as a chance to “get back to what I originally got into higher education for—to work with students, to have that camaraderie among the faculty, to talk freely with colleagues and students, allowing students and faculty to freely brainstorm about solutions to some of our most pressing issues as a society and as a species without worrying about boundaries.”
The size of the campus at UMN Morris and its academic divisions promotes people working together and communicating with one another more easily, something he felt was missing at previous universities. “[T]he small size presents an opportunity for faculty to establish high quality professional relationships in the formal and informal academic environment with students to deliver an exclusive private school educational experience at a public liberal arts institution.”
While his focus will be on enhancing the environmental science program at UMN Morris, Zavada recognizes the importance of being a point person for the interdisciplinary program. This is one of the many aspects of the position he looks forward to because of the supportive connections between disciplines here. “That’s what’s good about this university.”
The university itself is another reason Zavada was drawn to this professorship. He likes that there’s a strong emphasis on experiential learning—and that it’s one of the main components of earning a degree here. He considers research as a way for students to connect their theoretical knowledge with practical application. Being able to do that allows students to apply what they’ve learned without being obligated to pursue that particular field of research. “Having students critically think about a subject [is] really important. It helps them apply what they know …to something practical… to understand something better… and to continually evaluate and revise their understanding as an uncertain future unfolds, ready to meet unknown challenges,” says Zavada.
Much of this position centers around conducting research with student participation. Next year, he plans to take environmental science students to Puno, Peru, to work with graduate students at the university there, where they will study water quality, mining operations, agriculture operations, fisheries, and range management. He wants to invite and encourage environmental studies students to go as well. “Environmental studies is absolutely necessary to making the practical application of environmental science successful to ameliorating the environmental crisis,” says Zavada. “Environmental studies attacks the issue from a sociological, political, cultural, anthropological, and policy perspective. Public buy-in is essential to solving our environmental problems.”
He hopes that some students will do environmental studies projects on what the local opinions are and what issues exist for the indigenous people in the Andes. “Issues of sustainability, food security, and human rights are currently responsible for Peru’s political instability and unrest,” says Zavada. He’s optimistic that students can learn more about the issues indigenous peoples are experiencing in South America, especially in comparison to the North American indigenous experience.
While the professorship allows some funding for the study abroad research project, he acknowledges that he will need to seek additional funding. As a Fulbright specialist award recipient, he will be able to spend a month in Peru ahead of the student trip to prepare, while helping the Universidad Nacional del Altiplano develop its environmental science program.
The research trip is a way students can get involved in environmental issues. “It is important that students get the sense that changing the world is possible, even if you are at a rural university like UMN Morris. Size doesn’t matter in education, just a willingness to learn and the energy to do so. I think it was Margret Mead that said, ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.’ This is especially true if you are armed with education, says Zavada. “The institution doesn’t impart that on you, you impart that on the institution.”
While here, Zavada will be collaborating with others on campus and in the community to address environmental stewardship and sustainability. He hopes that what he can do in this new role will have a positive impact. “Any place I’ve gone I’ve wanted to make it a better place than when I arrived. I’m excited about doing that—and I have a specific amount of time so there’s some urgency to it… I think it’s important that I keep it moving.”
Suffice it to say that Zavada loves all aspects of this professorship, but what really stood out to him? The name. “Somebody was so selfless [to] name [it] after a …metamorphic rock symbolic of how we … must metamorphose into better people and better environmental stewards. A rock just one billion years younger than the earth itself and came into existence at about the time that life began on the planet. The name drips with symbolism and, if nothing else, is the neatest thing ever,” says Zavada.