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Noel Healy
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Jessica Debski and Joe McGuire Salem State geography undergraduates recently won the David Frost award for best paper at the New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographical (NESTVAL) Association Annual Meeting at the University of New Hampshire. Their paper entitled, “A Conceptual Framework for Fossil Fuel Divestment in United States Universities” analyzes the recent trend of fossil fuel divestment which is spreading across university campuses worldwide. The project, which is supervised by the geography department’s Dr. Noel Healy was offered to be submitted for a chance to be published in the NESTVAL Journal by the judging committee.
Jessica Debski expressed delight on receiving the award stating, “we have been working on this project with Dr. Healy since the summer. It was a great opportunity to present our work among to faculty and graduate students from all over New England”. Joe McGuire, who just recently secured an internship at the Centre for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University, explained while he was delighted with the award he is “looking forward to working on expansion of the project over the coming year.” The students will now go on to Chicago in April 2015 to present their paper to the Association of American Geographer’s annual meeting. Here they will compete against fellow students from all across the globe.
Speaking on the project and award Dr. Healy expressed extreme delight to see two extremely bright and dedicated students get rewarded for their hand work over the last few months. Dr. Healy said the project itself is novel and timely, “the fossil fuel divestment movement has grown faster than any previous divestment campaign—including those targeting South African apartheid and tobacco”. He also commended the qualities of the broader Salem State student body – “During the year Jessica and Joe also worked with researchers from Queen’s University Belfast, Dr. Marcos Luna and myself on the project, “Climate Change Adaptation of the North Shore: Developing a Citizen Scientist Approach to Planning”. Joe and Jessica were just two out of 22 other Salem State undergraduates who volunteered as research assistants--gathering data from Gloucester to Scituate”.
This NESTVAL award is one of many awards won by recent geography students and highlights some of the great work, which is been done at both undergraduate and graduate levels.