Black owned businesses in the Knoxville area from 1896-1936

February 23, 2021

Black owned businesses in the Knoxville area from 1896-1936

Alumnus from UTK’s Geography Department Devyn Kelly recently completed a time lapse story map depicting the differing rates and dispersal of Black owned businesses in the Bristol, VA area from 1896-1936. This work was done for the Black in Appalachia Project to depict the historic and vibrant community of Black business in Bristol.

Her work is viewable here: https://tga.maps.arcgis.com/apps/StorytellingSwipe/index.html?appid=52e5c1e73b3c45c0ae712ec5d1fdc0bf

This map from the Black in Appalachia website, viewable here: https://t.co/XpiF7FpeXD?amp=1

Tran Receives Faculty Academic Outreach Research Award

February 4, 2021

Tran Receives Faculty Academic Outreach Research Award

Each year, Dean Theresa Lee and members of her cabinet, with help from department heads, recognize faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences for their excellence in teaching, research and creative activity, and lifetime achievements.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, however, we were unable to host the annual awards banquet in-person. Each faculty member received a plaque and congratulations from the dean. We posted a video to the college YouTube channel here, which features each faculty award winner.

Liem Tran, professor of geography, received a Faculty Academic Outreach Research Award from the College of Arts and Sciences. The award recognizes extraordinary contributions of faculty to the public that occur as an outgrowth of academic pursuits and are related to the university’s academic mission. It recognizes faculty whose research and creative activities advance knowledge through the pursuit of their scholarly interests while simultaneously addressing community problems and issues and benefiting the scholar, the discipline, the university, and society.

Tran conducts research built on creating strategic collaborative networks with government agencies, major research labs, and other community stakeholders and leveraging innovative geospatial analysis. A number of Tran’s measures and spatial models are widely used by the EPA across the US. Recently, he has collaborated with the EPA to develop the EnviroAtlas, an interactive web-based platform used by states, communities, and citizens that provides geospatial data, easy-to-use tools, and other resources related to ecosystem services, their chemical and nonchemical stressors, and human health. Tran has used his expertise in geospatial analysis to develop a series transmission models posted on the Tennessee State Data Center’s COVID-19 dashboard that estimates coronavirus reproduction rates and hotspots in the state.

Tran is also actively involved in meaningful public communication of science. For example, he has interacted with media to explain the metrics to measure the spread of COVID-19 and authored a policy brief in partnership with the Baker Center to educate the public on COVID-19 modeling and forecasts. Well before engaging in important research outreach to COVID-19, Tran had begun focusing state of the art geospatial technologies, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and web-based applications, to combat the opioid crisis.

“The award is very important not only to myself, but also to my students and colleagues who have been working diligently alongside with me in various research outreach activities,” Tran said. “It shows the commitment of faculty and students in the geography department to serve the great state of Tennessee and its people, especially during this difficult time due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Alderman Receives 2020 Lorayne W. Lester Award

February 4, 2021

Alderman Receives 2020 Lorayne W. Lester Award

Derek Alderman, professor and interim head of the Department of Geography, received the Lorayne W. Lester Award, which recognizes a faculty member or exempt staff member who has demonstrated outstanding service through research, outreach, and/or administrative, teaching, or advising services to the college, the state, our local community, or beyond.

Alderman joined the geography department in 2012 as head and worked hard to advertise and modernize the curriculum for undergraduates, which allowed the department to increase in size dramatically. During his five years as head, he also worked successfully to diversify the faculty and student population. During these years he was also elected president of the American Association of Geographers, after successfully serving as a chair of the association’s publications committee, the regional southeast councilor, and president of the southeast region.

Alderman’s research brings him many opportunities to inform the public about issues related to American Civil Rights movement and southern culture more broadly. Much of his work focuses on the histories, memory-work, commemorative activism, and place-making efforts of African Americans as they assert and claim civil rights, their right to belong with public spaces, and the power to remember the past and shape the American landscape on their own terms. In particular, his interests focus on critical place name studies and using cultural struggles over the naming and renaming of streets, schools, parks, and other public spaces as important lens for understanding the unresolved place of race, memory, and identity in America.

“I am grateful and humbled to receive the Lorayne Lester award from our college, which is filled with many inspiring servant-leaders,” Alderman said. “Since coming to UT in 2012, I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to work with others to grow and maintain departmental health, advocate for national professional organizations, and engage in public outreach and partnership building. Service, for me, is about being responsive to the needs and well-being of other people—to think and act beyond oneself. More than simply a category of annual evaluation, service is the lifeblood of the university and key to the ethics of care we owe to ourselves and wider communities.”

He is a devoted scholar-teacher who enjoys working and publishing with students, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He is also committed to conducting critical public scholarship that engages, informs, and helps the news media, government officials, community activists and organizations, and the broader citizenry. Most recently, Alderman has been involved in three major research efforts funded by NSF that involved researchers from universities across the country collecting and analyzing data related to the struggle for freedom from several different perspectives. He continues to serve beyond expectations by agreeing to step back into the role of interim head for geography this year when there was a last minute change within the unit leadership.

Former Geography Student Thrives As Educator With Help from Student Emergency Fund

January 8, 2021

Former Geography Student Thrives As Educator With Help from Student Emergency Fund

Source: https://news.utk.edu/2020/12/14/with-help-from-student-emergency-fund-graduate-thrives-as-educator

For David Leventhal, the coronavirus pandemic hit during an already challenging time. A nontraditional student, Leventhal returned to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to pursue a master’s degree in secondary education and teaching during midlife with a young child to support and a mortgage to pay.

Completing his master’s degree meant spending an entire year as an unpaid intern teaching at Gresham Middle School and Maryville High School. He applied for mortgage forbearance during that time, expecting to graduate with an offer of employment. However, the educational sector was completely upended when COVID-19 hit, and Leventhal’s prospects disappeared.

David Leventhal in graduation regalia stands next to his framed Master of Secondary Education degree.

At that point, UT’s Student Emergency Fund and Center for Career Development and Academic Exploration helped him navigate the situation to reach a positive outcome. He has since graduated, found full-time employment, and caught up with his mortgage.

“I really can’t underestimate how helpful and timely the emergency funding was, as well as the career development center,” Leventhal said. “The opportunities that I got were amazing. As disappointing and troubling as 2020 has been, it never ceases to amaze me how something good will happen that just keeps me going.”

Today Leventhal is a full-time social studies teacher with Tennessee Connections Academy, an entirely online public school available to students in Tennessee. His pay and benefits are on par with what he would earn in a brick-and-mortar school, and he’s able to teach from Knoxville. That is crucial for Leventhal because his daughter and her mother live locally.

Leventhal’s path to his current role has taken a number of turns. Originally from Atlanta, he completed his undergraduate degree in philosophy and religious studies at Appalachian State University in 2001. He came to UT and completed a master’s degree in history in 2007. After graduation, he operated a restaurant marketing and delivery business for five years before moving into the information technology sector. He’s also been a banjo and ukulele instructor and taught college-level history.

Now, as a high school teacher, Leventhal wants to bring all of those skills to bear in his social studies instruction. When he was a history student he spent time learning geographic information systems (GIS) because, he said, “as a history teacher, you can’t ignore geography. Everything happens at a time and place.”

GIS can be extremely versatile and allow for data to be overlayed onto maps. One project Leventhal worked on at UT involved correlating a dataset of blighted potato harvests and grain exports during the Irish Potato Famine with statistics on emigration to the United States.

“It was very clear the hardest-hit counties were in the western part of Ireland, and that’s where people emigrated from,” Leventhal said. “When you factor in the folk music and stringed instruments, a picture starts to emerge that connects to our life today.”

Leventhal would like to start a geography club at his school and potentially a GIS club. He wants the subject matter to be relevant to his students. With a bright future as an educator ahead of him, Leventhal reflects positively on the good fortune he has enjoyed during an extremely complicated time.

“My new work with a K–12 virtual public education academy has shown me how to grow as an educator and build my resume while also earning the same compensation as my brick-and-mortar colleagues,” Leventhal said. “I am forever indebted to the University of Tennessee, in more ways than I could ever quantify—and indeed it’s great to be a Tennessee Vol!”

CONTACT:

Gerhard Schneibel (865-974-9299, gschneib@utk.edu)

Faculty and Students Receive Awards

January 6, 2021

Faculty and Students Receive Awards

It may be a new year, but we still want to congratulate our faculty and students who received awards late in 2020.

First, Drs. Alderman and Tran were recently recognized by the College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Alderman received the Lorayne W. Lester Award. Named after former College of Arts and Science Dean from 1991 to 2002, Lorayne Lester, this award recognizes individuals for their exceptional service in community outreach or research across the university and community. Our very own Kurt Butefish was awarded this honor in 2018. Dr. Tran won a Faculty Award for Academic Outreach. This is given to faculty members whose research benefits the public, and contributes to larger university goals and missions.

UTK graduate students were presented with awards for their presentations during SEDAAG, which took place November 2020. PhD student Rabby won the Doctoral Student Paper contest for his work titled, “Exploring the effects of Mahalanobis distance-based absence data sampling method on the landslide susceptibility mapping.” Reagan won the Master’s Student Paper contest. Reagan’s work was titled, “Talking back: Louise Jefferson’s life and legacy of counter-mapping.” Alex, who graduated with his master’s degree Spring 2020, tied in the Southeast Geographer Cover Art Contest.

Congratulations to all recipients!

Allyship and Antiracism Work

September 17, 2020

Allyship and Antiracism Work

Image of Street Names Robert E Lee and Bedford Forest

As a college and institution of higher learning, it is our mission to promote intellectual inquiry and effective civic engagement within the context of respect for diversity. Our ability to educate is one tool for making change in the world. We can demand change in our community, but first, we have to educate our community on why that change is necessary.

One way we can educate our community is through the College Conversations: Allyship & Antiracism series, which features faculty members in the college whose research focuses on identifying racism, how to become an antiracist, and other topics related to allyship and antiracism.

Derek Alderman, professor and interim head of the UT geography department, presented Embattled Names, Racialized Memories, and Wounded Places, with colleague Gregg Ferguson, a community activist and educator, July 30.

As of late, we have seen growing calls from activists and communities to remove the names of racist historical figures from the names of streets, parks, schools, university campus buildings, and other spaces. Often lost on many members of the public, especially opponents to these changes, is the larger historical relationship between these valorized names and the physical, structural, and symbolic violence of white supremacy—realized both in the past and the present.

To put these ongoing struggles in context, Alderman discussed the power of commemorative place names and the complex role they play in the memory-work of antiracism and the politics of planning more socially just landscapes. Ferguson described her own efforts to rename a Stonewall Jackson Middle School and the results of her dissertation, which documented the harmful, wounding effects of white supremacist and Confederate names on students and teachers of color.

Watch the presentation online.

The College Conversations series is open to the public, but registration is required. Learn more about how to register and see a list of upcoming presentations.

Estimating Daily Rates of COVID Incidence in Tennessee

September 17, 2020

Estimating Daily Rates of COVID Incidence in Tennessee

The COVID-19 NOWcast is a model that estimates daily rates of COVID incidence for each of the 95 counties in Tennessee. Most counties are small and they were at risk of not receiving the same level of high-quality, near-real-time estimates and trends that the major cities in Tennessee were receiving. The NOWcast fills that need. It is currently being used by the Tennessee Department of Transportation and the University of Tennessee system office, and is integrated into the COVID-19 Tracking Dashboard developed by the Tennessee State Data Center, where it is often picked up by local news agencies.

The NOWcast emerged from GEOG 509 spring 2020, taught by Nicholas Nagle, which was covering Bayesian computing. Jesse Piburn, a PhD student in the Bredesen Data Science Center/ORNL, was taking the class and approached Nagle with the problem. They spent April, May, and June developing the model.

Fighting the Opioid Crisis with Geospatial Technologies

September 17, 2020

Fighting the Opioid Crisis with Geospatial Technologies

Opioid use disorder (OUD) is ravaging America, killing hundreds of thousands and affecting millions more. The impact of OUD is staggering in many other dimensions: higher healthcare costs, more drug-related crimes, reduced work productivity, more children in state custody, and infants born with symptoms of opioid withdrawal. When progress is made in one aspect, other issues emerge unpredictably.

A team of five UT geographers, Liem Tran (PI), Qiusheng Wu (co-PI), Nicholas Nagle (co-PI), Michael Camponovo (GIS expert), and Kurt Butefish (program coordinator, Tennessee Geographic Alliance), developed a project that uses cutting-edge geospatial technologies including Geographic Information Systems (GIS), spatial analysis tools, and web-based applications to combat the opioid crisis in a collaborative, proactive, and effective fashion. They are facilitating, enhancing, and integrating efforts among state and local governments, health and safety agencies, and community organizations in Tennessee to help our state put an end to this crisis.

The project, “Orchestrating the efforts to fight the opioid crisis in Tennessee with geospatial technologies,” began July 2020 and will wrap up May 2022. With a budget of approximately $50,000, the team will:

Gather and organize opioid-related data and information from disparate data sources into an integrated geodatabase, which can serve different stakeholders, such as government officials, community leaders, public health officials, human services, law enforcement, volunteers, the public, and researchers.
Develop tools with the capability to collect data in real time, such as overdose data, drug trafficking, etc.
Build GIS applications and map-based websites that communicate information and findings to a wide array of stakeholders.
Provide real-time, data-driven tools to inform decision makers effectively, such as present information on the state of the crisis, financial allocation based on communities, and progress of tactics so that swift decisions can be made in real time.
Develop tools with the capability to assist in deploying tactics and allocating resources. For example, authorities could quickly identify areas where activities are concentrated, current resources are located, and where to add additional services, such as clinics, medical services, drug drop-off boxes, etc.
Widely distribute information to educate and to assist the public and constituents in preventing further substance abuse.

The extended team of the project includes Laurie Meschke and Kristina Kintziger from the Department of Public Health, Jennifer Tourville from the UT College of Nursing, Kaitlin I. Singer with the UT System’s Office of Institutional Research, Tiffany Carpenter, UT System vice president for communications and marketing,

View the Webapp here.

Studying the Impact of Social Distancing on COVID-19 Morbidity

September 17, 2020

Studying the Impact of Social Distancing on COVID-19 Morbidity

Nicholas Nagle, associate professor of geography, and Liem Tran, professor of geography, are part of the UT Coronavirus-19 Outbreak Response Experts (CORE-19) studying the impact of social distancing on Covid-19 morbidity in the early months (up to May 31) of the pandemic.

Using county-level COVID-19 data and social distancing metrics from tracked mobile devices, they investigated how social distancing influences the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in a county between when the state and the county first enacted social distancing measures through May 31, 2020.

They created a mixed-effects negative binomial model to assess the association between social distancing and the change in the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases/100,000 people while controlling for covariates that might introduce bias to this relationship. Marginal effects at the means were also generated to further isolate the individual influence of social distancing on COVID-19 from other factors.

A 1% decrease in percentage of mobile devices leaving home between March-May 2020 corresponded with 5.8 fewer total confirmed COVID-19 cases/100,000 people in a county (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.46-72.6) from the mixed-effects negative binomial while marginal effects revealed that a 1% decrease in percentage of mobile devices leaving home between March-May 2020 led to 14.5 fewer total confirmed COVID-19 cases/100,000 people in a county (95% CI: 7.82, 21.16).

Social distancing plays a key role in keeping the number of COVID-19 cases low in counties across the US and should be encouraged until a COVID-19 vaccine becomes readily available.

The Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy published a policy brief, Understanding COVID-19 Models, in partnership with the Coronavirus-19 Outbreak Response Experts (CORE-19), July 1, 2020.

Daily outputs are used in the Tennessee State Data Center’s Covid-19 dashboard.

Engaging K-12 Students in Scientific Research

September 17, 2020

Engaging K-12 Students in Scientific Research

In 2018, under the leadership of Becky Trout Fryxel, associate professor of medical and veterinary entomology, a unique team of partners from the UT Departments of Plant Pathology, Geography, and Theory and Practice in Teacher Education, the Tennessee Geographic Alliance (TGA), and Brian Smith, a local middle school teacher, were successful in procuring a three-year grant from the US Department of Agriculture for the Medical Entomology & Geospatial Analyses: Bringing Innovation to Teacher Education & Surveillance Studies (MEGA:BITESS) project. It leverages medical entomology, geospatial techniques, and geographic pedagogies by providing professional development for grades 6-12 educators.

The project’s relevance to the East Tennessee community is its focus on La Crosse encephalitis, the leading pediatric arbovirus transmitted by mosquitoes in the continental United States. Independently, the fields of entomology and geospatial sciences are understaffed. When combined, the result is decreased surveillance and increased response times for pathogen detection, which puts human and animal health and food security at risk.

The project’s long-term goal is to develop an informed Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) teaching community that integrates inquiry-driven learning with community-needed service projects. To do this, the team developed a yearlong academy that includes three in-service workshops, classroom support for educator/student inquiry-driven surveillance programs, and student-developed educational material for the local community. The year-two cohort is currently implementing research protocols in their middle and high school classrooms.

Brian Smith at the white board — *Brian Smith, Jefferson Middle School teacher, presents during a teacher professional development workshop on geospatial technologies at Oak Ridge Associated Universities in 2019.*

Brian Smith (’05), a social studies and GIS teacher at Jefferson Middle School in Oak Ridge, is key to the success of the program. For almost a decade now, Smith has designed and facilitated geospatial technologies teacher professional development programs for the Tennessee Geographic Alliance. Many of these have been in partnership with the UT Department of Geography. His unique skillset combines an ever-expanding understanding of geospatial software, how it can effectively be used in the K-12 classroom, and an engaging teaching style that highlights equal parts pedagogy and patience.

The MEGA:BITESS project is unique because it directly engages students in authentic scientific research in the field. Students prepare and set ovitraps in locations around their school to collect data weekly using egg papers and datasheets, and then record that data in a Google form that can combine the ovitraps’ geographic location and physical surroundings. Since this data is provided for analysis by the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, students are excited about working with UT. It is also important to them since La Crosse encephalitis affects young people because they do not have the immune systems to fight off the disease, which is difficult to detect.

“In a very real way, students see this as a chance to make an impact in their community,” Smith said.

Smith assists Michael Camponovo, GIS outreach coordinator, in educating participating teachers how use and create geographic data with ArcGIS Online and GIS mapping applications like Survey123. He has also developed lessons for teachers to use to build their GIS skills they can share with their students.

“This is incredibly important since entomology and geospatial skills are not typically taught to preservice teachers; resulting in a critical need to increase the awareness of agricultural sciences and to develop students with the desire to pursue entomology and geospatial technologies as career pathways,” said Smith, who appreciates getting to work with Camponovo. “Not only does Mike lead the GIS skill sessions, he also brings in state and national leaders as speakers (Zoom and in-person) to demonstrate how GIS is used in a variety of STEAM-related fields.”

Smith credits the TGA with his growth as a teacher by providing leadership opportunities at regional geographic leadership institutes. Additionally, the two have recently worked together to provide teacher professional development using GIS, Google mapping tools, geographic themed inquiry-based learning, the Golden Age of Islam: (Human) Geography and Geometry Project, and the upcoming Mythical Cartography Workshop (2021) where participants will learn artistic techniques to share with their students to create hand-drawn maps.

“Working with the TGA has given me the opportunity to grow by learning and sharing with numerous geographers and teachers across the state.”

Department News

Black owned businesses in the Knoxville area from 1896-1936

Tran Receives Faculty Academic Outreach Research Award

Alderman Receives 2020 Lorayne W. Lester Award

Former Geography Student Thrives As Educator With Help from Student Emergency Fund

Faculty and Students Receive Awards

Allyship and Antiracism Work

Estimating Daily Rates of COVID Incidence in Tennessee

Fighting the Opioid Crisis with Geospatial Technologies

Studying the Impact of Social Distancing on COVID-19 Morbidity

Engaging K-12 Students in Scientific Research

Geographers Engage With The World