Colgate Expands Relationship With Adirondack Research Consortium
Colgate University is expanding its long history of involvement with research in the Adirondacks in a new collaboration with the Adirondack Research Consortium (ARC).
Colgate Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies Emerita Ellen Percy Kraly and Joseph Henderson ’03, an associate professor of social sciences in the environment and society department at Paul Smith’s College, are the new co-editors of the Adirondack Journal of Environmental Studies (AJES). Colgate’s Office of Information Technology Services will host the online platform for the journal, and the Environmental Studies Program will serve as the journal’s academic partner.
The AJES is an interdisciplinary journal that expands understanding of Adirondacks ecology and environmental issues and informs policy — it is a project of the ARC, a network of scholars involved with research in the Adirondacks. Both AJES and ARC are 30 years old and have previously been hosted by Union College and editor Doug Klein, Kenneth B. Sharpe Professor of economics emeritus at Union.
The late Bruce Selleck ’71, professor of geology at Colgate, co-edited one edition of the AJES and was a member of the ARC. When Selleck passed away in 2017, Kraly stepped in as a representative of Colgate on the ARC board. After Klein stepped down, Kraly assumed that role as well and approached Henderson — who counted Selleck among his mentors — with the opportunity to serve as co-editor.
“Paul Smith’s has been a very generous host of the consortium,” Kraly says. “It’s an important institution within the Adirondacks in terms of scholarship, creativity, and education. And it’s great that Joe is a Colgate alumnus.”
The decision was easy for Henderson. “Because Bruce was my adviser, and because we shared these connections to the Adirondacks, I’ve always seen some of this work as carrying on his legacy and making sure that there’s a capacity for environmental and social research in and on the Adirondacks.”
Kraly is no stranger to running a journal — from 2011 to 2014, she served as editor-in-chief of the International Migration Review, one of the world’s leading and longest-running migration journals, and she continues to serve on the editorial board. Similarly, Henderson is an editor of many publications, including Environmental Education Research, a top environmental education journal with more than a half-million annual reads and articles cited over 1,000 times each year.
The AJES is special, though. Because the Adirondacks are so unique, both ecologically and politically, the area is of heightened interest, and the AJES addresses that interest in its pages.
“Ecologically speaking, the Adirondacks are a huge carbon sink,” Henderson says. “They have a ton of fresh water. They have a lot of really rare species. It’s an amazing vacation area and tourist area, and it’s going to be one of the most stable areas going forward in terms of climate change.”
According to Kraly, Adirondack-region environmental policy is a model with global significance, given its attempts to simultaneously preserve local communities and the environment. “This 6-million-acre region is protected by the New York State Constitution to be maintained ‘forever wild’ for the people of New York State,” Kraly said. “That's radical.”
According to Kraly, the AJES is also noteworthy because it is “transdisciplinary, which involves understanding that we need to ground our knowledge production within communities involved in whatever issue we’re studying,” she says. “The Adirondack Research Consortium wants to make the knowledge available to — and grounded in — the region.”
Along the way, the AJES and its interdisciplinary approach to environmental analysis aligns with the values of Colgate’s liberal arts education, its commitment to student research, and its Third-Century intention to deepen the rigor of its academic programs.
“I would love to involve environmental studies students, creative writing students, writing and rhetoric students who might be interested in the preparation of manuscripts,” Kraly said.
The Environmental Studies Program is equally excited about the collaboration. “Faculty and students in the Environmental Studies Program have a long history of engaging with Adirondack communities and landscapes,” says Mike Loranty, program director and professor of geography. “This partnership provides new opportunities for us to further engage and share our scholarship with the Adirondack research community. We are especially grateful to Professor Kraly for working to make this happen.”