ABOUT US
MISSION
The objectives of the Sustainable Michigan Endowed Project (SMEP) are focused on research that supports sustainable development in Michigan. A major goal is to bring credibility and support to integrative efforts. The SMEP has an executive committee composed mainly of endowed chairs who have pledged to share viewpoints,
methodologies, projects, leadership, research agenda, and policy analysis so as to be catalysts for a portfolio of multidisciplinary research that will provide the foundation for healthier communities, economies, and ecosystems in Michigan. SMEP also is serving as a venue for coordination of other WKKF-MSU related projects
such as land use, consumer-responsive agriculture, community based food systems and production-ecology.The Committee sees SMEP as a vehicle for ongoing, long term sustainability discourse as well as related research in order to evolve and change the intellectual culture within MSU—and particularly CANR, provide a venue for ongoing scholarly reflection and critique, provide seed grants for research sustainability from a Michigan state-level perspective, and link findings and learning from state-level forum and research to the national, international and global perspectives.
WHERE WE FIT INTO MSUThe Sustainable Michigan Endowed Project is supported largely through resources from an endowment awarded to MSU from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation with supplemental support from the Office of the Provost. The Dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources administers this SMEP endowment. Dean Armstrong has asked Dr. Sandra Batie, the Elton R. Smith Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics, to lead the implementation of SMEP.
Eleven departments and six colleges serve as home to the faculty and staff of the Sustainable Michigan Endowed Project. The following are the affiliated departments at MSU, Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics; Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies; Department of Geography; Department of Animal Science; School of Journalism; Sociology; Crop and Soil Science; Food Science and Human Nutrition; Fisheries and Wildlife; Philosophy; Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and Economics. The six colleges that are affiliated with SMEP are Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies; Social Science; Communication Arts and Sciences; Natural Science; Arts and Letters and Veterinary Medicine. All affiliated faculty come from departments and programs across the university.
CONTACT USIf you have any questions or comments about the Sustainable Michigan Endowed Project, please feel free to contact us.
Sustainable Michigan Endowed Project
Attn: Mary Schulz
Michigan State University
Department of Agricultural Economics
212 Agriculture Hall
East Lansing, Michigan 48823-1039
Tel: (517) 355-2160
Fax: (517) 432-1800
E-mail: mail@smep.msu.edu
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEECommittee Login
Soji Adelajaadelaja@msu.edu
Soji Adelaja assumed the John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor in Land Policy and Director of the Land Policy Institute at Michigan State University in January 2004. Dr. Adelaja received his BS degree in agricultural mechanization from the Pennsylvania State University in 1978; dual master’s degrees in agricultural economics and in economics from West Virginia University in 1980 and 1982; and a Ph.D in economics from West Virginia University in 1985.
Dr. Adelaja is an eclectic scholar best known for his work in Agricultural Policy at the Urban Fringe, Land Use Policy, Economic Development of the Food Industry, and Emerging Issues in the Food Industry. By leading numerous programmatic teams, he has directed faculty expertise toward pressing issues facing industry and government. Many New Jersey programs can be traced to his research, including New Jersey’s $40 million Agricultural Economic Recovery and Development Initiative, Horse Park at Stone Tavern, right to Farm Legislation, Farmland Preservation Program, and Millennium Viability Initiative. Dr. Adelaja sits on the board of numerous organizations, has served on various state commissions, advisory committees and task forces, and served as special Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Agriculture.
Sandra S. Batiebatie@msu.edu
Sandra S. Batie came to Michigan State University in 1993 as the first holder of the Elton R. Smith Professorship in Food and Agricultural Policy. Dr. Batie was on the faculty of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University since 1973. She took two sabbatical leaves. The first was with the Conservation Foundation, where she studied and wrote about federal conservation policy. The second was with the National Governors’ Association, where she specialized in state policy with respect to rural development and groundwater management. She has actively served on commissions and boards that are related to her expertise, and is currently chair of the Board of Winrock.
Sandra Batie’s research area is the economics of agro-environmental policy. Recent research projects include implementation of agro-environmental water quality standards (TMDLs), the policy implications of the uncertain environmental impacts of biotechnology products, corporate environmental management strategies in the agricultural sector, and examining the influence of agricultural contractual arrangements on producer’s financial, and environmental performance. Dr. Batie does extension education, mainly with agencies and policy makers, and teaches a graduate environmental economics course.
David K. Beede
beede@msu.edu
David K. Beede is the C.E. Meadows Endowed Chair, in Dairy and Nutrient Management. As Chair, Dr. Beede performs and promotes scholarly research, extension and teaching in response to the needs of the Michigan diary industry. He supports and integrated contributions of the biological, physical, and economic disciplines for efficient and environmentally sustainable diary production.
Through research and extension efforts, he as developed and introduced effective new tools for the management and nutrition of transition dairy cows in Michigan and the U.S. His research provided major contributions to the National Research Council’s standards and model for mineral requirements for dairy cattle and unique aspects of dairy cattle nutrition. He provided key research to support the use of “mass balance” of P as the approach of choice for development and implementation of comprehensive nutrient management plans in Michigan.
Jim Detjen
detjen@msu.edu
Jim Detjen joined the Michigan State University (MSU) Journalism School faculty in January 1995 as the Knight Chair in Journalism, the nation's only endowed chair in environmental reporting. He is also the Director of MSU's Knight Center for Environmental Journalism and MSU's Environmental Journalism Program. Prior to joining MSU's faculty, he spent 21 years as a professional newspaper reporter and editor.
He has won more than 50 state, national and international awards for his reporting, including the George Polk Award, the National Headliner Award for investigative reporting, the Thomas Stokes Award for natural resources reporting (twice) and the Edward Meeman Award for environmental reporting (five times). His work has been nominated eight times for a Pulitzer Prize and he has been a finalist three times. In 1996 he received Columbia University's "distinguished achievement" award from its Graduate School of Journalism for his contributions to environmental journalism. In 1997 The Earth Times named Professor Detjen as one of the 100 most influential people on environmental and sustainable development issues in the world. In 1998 he was given the International Green Pen Award for his contributions to environmental journalism around the world. In 2002 he taught journalism courses at Nankai University in Tianjin, China as part of a Fulbright Scholarship. In 2006 he was given the Ralph Smuckler Award, MSU's highest international award, for his contributions to scholarship, teaching and outreach around the world.
He is the founding president of the U.S. Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) and from 1994 to 2000 served as the president of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ). He serves on the boards of directors of SEJ and IFEJ. He has a B.S. degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. where he was the managing editor of his college newspaper and a M.S. degree with honors from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has done additional academic work at Harvard University (business and public administration), the University of Washington at Seattle (environmental science) and the University of Maryland at College Park (Knight Fellow in biotechnology).
Thomas Dietztdietz@msu.edu
Thomas Dietz hold a B.G.S. from Kent State University and a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California, Davis. His is Professor of Sociology and Crop and Soil Science, Director of the Environmental Science and Policy Program and Associate Dean in the Colleges of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Natural Science and Social Sciences, all at Michigan State University.
Dr. Dietz is a National Associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association form the Advancement of Science. He is currently Chair of the U.S. National Research Council Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change and the Panel on Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making. He conducts research on the social psychology of environmental values and beliefs, the driving forces of global environmental change and the interplay between science and democracy in environmental policy.
Michael W. Hammmhamm@msu.edu
Michael Hamm is the C.S. Mott Professor of Sustainable Agriculture at Michigan State University. He received his Ph.D. in Nutrition at the University of Minnesota in 1979 and B.A. in Biology at Northwestern University in 1974.
Dr. Hamm’s current research and outreach is focused around community-based food systems and community food security. He also works to identify opportunities for farmers and consumers to link in socially/economically constructive ways. Within community food security his efforts are focused around insuring that all community residents obtaining a culturally acceptable, nutritional adequate diet through a sustainable food systems that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice. The C.S. Mott group he heads is focused on three main areas of activity: small and medium scale family farm viability; equal access by all members of a community to a healthy diet; and dispersing animals in the countryside.
Jack Liuliuji@msu.edu
Jianguo (Jack) Liu is the Rachel Carson Chair in Ecological Sustainability in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and Director of the new Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability. His research interests include conservation ecology, landscape ecology, human-environment interactions, and impacts of human population and activity on spatio-temporal dynamics of endangered species such as the giant panda in China. He is keenly interested in integrating ecology with socioeconomics as well as human demography and behavior for understanding and managing patterns, processes and sustainability of biodiversity and natural resources/ecosystem services across multiple temporal and spatial scales. At MSU, Dr. Liu teaches “Systems Modeling and Simulation” and “Frontiers in Landscape Ecology”.
Dr. Liu serves or has served on various committees and panels, including those of the National Academy of Sciences, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and World Wildlife Fund. He is currently serving as Assigning Editor of Conservation Biology and is on editorial boards of six other journals, such as Ecosystems, Ecological Modeling, Population and Environment, and Landscape and Urban Planning. In recognition of his efforts and achievements in research, teaching, and public service, Dr. Liu has been given a number of awards, including NSF's CAREER Award, Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellowship of the Ecological Society of America, Lilly Teaching Fellowship, and MSU’s Teacher-Scholar Award.
Patricia Norrisnorrisp@msu.edu
In January 2007, Patricia Norris became the first Gordon and Norma Guyer and Gary L. Seevers Chair in Natural Resource Conservation at Michigan State University. Pat is appointed jointly in the Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies and the Department of Agricultural Economics. She has extension, research and teaching responsibilities in the natural resource conservation area. Extension and research emphases include water resources and water use, natural resource accounting systems, and natural resource policy. Pat teaches a graduate course in public policy analysis, with special emphasis on natural resource policy. She has previously taught undergraduate and graduate level courses in natural resource economics, environmental economics, ecological economics, agricultural policy and environmental science.
Before joining the MSU faculty in 1996, Pat was an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Oklahoma State University. She received Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Agricultural Economics from Virginia Tech and a B.S. degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Georgia.
H. Christopher Petersonpeters17@msu.edu
H. Christopher Peterson is the Nowlin Chair of Consumer-Responsive Agriculture and Director of the MSU Product Center for Agriculture and Natural Resources. Dr. Peterson received his undergraduate degree in political science from Juniata College, and M.B.A. from Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, and his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Cornell University. His research focuses on agribusiness competitiveness, including value-added strategies, strategic management, management style and practice, and market assessment. He provides technical and consulting assistance to numerous agribusiness firms, commodity associations, and producers groups.
Dr. Peterson’s mission as the Homer Nowlin Chair of Consumer-Responsive Agriculture is to provide leadership in disciplinary and multi-disciplinary efforts focused on the business strategy, development and marketing of differentiated, consumer-oriented products based on agricultural goods management of agri-food firms wile providing both long-term vision and strategic assistance to Michigan’s agri-food firms in the context of global, consumer-driven markets.
Joan B. Roserosejo@msu.edu
Joan Rose is the Homer Nowlin Chair in Water Research at Michigan State University. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Arizona in 1985 focusing on environmental virology and the removal of viruses by full-scale drinking water treatment. She went on to do an AAAS Science and Engineering Fellowship in the Office of Water, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in Washington, D.C. There she wrote a key report on risk of waterborne Cryptosporidium and undertaking a quantitative risk assessment for Giardia, which became the basis of the policy in the Surface Water Treatment Rule.
Dr. Rose joined the College of Public Health at the University of South Florida in 1989, where she focused on wastewater impacts on coastal systems and then moved to the College of Marine Sciences at USF for 14 years before joining the faculty at Michigan State University.
Dr. Rose currently serves as the co-chair of the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council’s Water Science and Technology Board. Dr. Rose received the Athalie Richardson Irvin Clarke Prize in 2001 for significant contributions to water science and technology, from the National Water Research Institute recognized as one of only two international prizes for water research.
Mark Skidmore mskidmor@msu.edu
Mark Skidmore came to Michigan State University in 2007 in the position of Morris Chair in State and Local Government Finance and Policy. He holds joint appointments in agricultural economics and economics. He received his doctorate in economics from the University of Colorado in 1994, and his bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Washington in 1987. Before coming to Michigan State University, Skidmore served as department chair and founder/director of the Fiscal and Economic Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
Much of Skidmore’s research has focused on public sector economics and economic development. He has provided technical and consulting services on a range of issues related to economic development and government public finance and policy. Current research interests include state and local government tax policy, intergovernmental relations, the interrelationship between public sector decisions and economic activity, and the economics of natural disasters. His research has been funded by organizations such as the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the Urban Institute and the Fulbright Program. His articles have in appeared in journals such as Economic Inquiry, Economics Letters, Journal of Urban Economics, Kyklos, National Tax Journal, and Public Choice.
Paul B. Thompsonthomp649@msu.edu
Paul B. Thompson came to Michigan State in 2003 to become the first holder of the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics. Prior to joining MSU, he was at Texas A&M University from 1980 to 1997, and Purdue University from 1997 to 2003. He took two sabbatical leaves. The first was with USAID and Resources for the Future, where he studied the ethical foundations of U.S. foreign agricultural assistance, leading to the book The Ethics of Aid and Trade. The second was with the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University.
Paul Thompson’s research has covered the ethical dimensions of a broad range of issues associated with food and agriculture including food safety, animal welfare, intellectual property, sustainability, and the ethical significance of the family farm through history. He is currently President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology and Secretary of the International Society for Environmental Ethics. He has conducted a number of workshops on teaching ethical issues related to food and agricultural production, and has taught courses in the philosophy of social science, existential philosophy and American pragmatism.
James Tiedjetiedjej@msu.edu
James Tiedje is University Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, and of Crop and Soil Sciences, and is Director of the Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University. His research focuses on microbial ecology, physiology and diversity, especially regarding the nitrogen cycle, biodegradation of environmental pollutants and use of molecular methods to understand microbial community structure and function. His group has discovered several microbes that live by halorespiration on chlorinated solvents and is using genomics to better understand ecological functions, endemism and niche adaptation. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of Applied and Environmental Microbiology and Editor of Microbial and Molecular Biology Reviews. He has over 350 refereed papers including seven in Science and Nature. He shared the 1992 Finley Prize of UNESCO for research contributions in microbiology of international significance, is Fellow of the AAAS (The American Association for the Advancement of Science), the American Academy of Microbiology, and the Soil Science Society of America, and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He was President of the American Society for Microbiology in 2004-2005. He received his B.S. degree from Iowa State University and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University.
PROJECT STAFF
Mary Schulz - Program Coordinator, Visiting Specialist, Department of Agricultural Economicsschulzm2@msu.edu
Mary Schulz is a research specialist in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Michigan State University. Recent research/policy topics include consumer responsive agriculture, Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), agricultural biotechnology and the environment, and environmental and conservation policy. Prior to joining the Agricultural Economics faculty in 1997, Mary worked in Washington, D.C. in agricultural and environmental policy. From 1993-94, Mary was Congressman Nick Smith’s Legislative Assistant for agricultural and environmental issues. From 1994-1997, she was a lobbyist for the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies and the Crop Insurance Research Bureau.
Mary holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and a Master’s degree in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University.
Jan Urban-Lurain - Professional Facilitatorjanul@aol.com
Jan Urban-Lurain is the President of Spectra Data and Research. Jan is a group facilitator and organizational change practitioner with over twenty years experience in initiating and supporting planning, change, and transition in the workplace. During her government career, she pioneered collaborative efforts to design and implement a comprehensive workforce development system in the state of Michigan. Since 1991, Jan has consulted extensively with schools, universities, community and state task force and planning groups, boards and advisory groups, as well as teams in a variety of organizations seeking to develop new direction, leadership capacity, improved communications and collaboration.
Jan holds degrees in Social Work and Public Administration and has trained as a facilitator through University Associates, Michael Grinder Associates, ICA Canada, and the Dialogue Group. She is a member of the International Association of Facilitators and a certified user of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory.