Project Highlights
Place Studies scholars and partners actively collaborate, analyze, create, and uplift as we (re)imagine and understand human-environment interactions and communities historically, in the present, and in potential futures.
Projects highlighted here demonstrate a range of interdisciplinary approaches, public outreach, and ways that students are actively engaging with place-based story telling while impacting how we approach environmental and sustainability challenges.
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Project Highlight: Milton–Planted in Place
In collaboration with T.I.M.E. (The Improved Milton Experience), the Place Studies Program coordinated with four courses in History, Biology, Environmental Studies, and Management to develop a historical and botanical exhibit for the Milton Municipal Museum. Students coordinated activities to accompany the museum opening for Earth Day weekend in 2023.
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Project Highlight: The Emil Kubek Project
Named in honor of of Father Emil Kubek (1857-1940), a resident of Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, an amateur agronomist, accomplished lexicographer, beloved priest, and prolific writer of journalism, poetry, short stories, and the first Carpatho-Rusyn novel Marko Šoltys, Emil Kubek Project is a scholarly resource dedicated to researching and publishing the history of the Slavic and…
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Project Highlight: Milton Murals–“Local Stories, Global Messages”
Bucknell students interviewed artist Pamela J. Snyder about her four public murals in Milton, PA, bringing the historic buildings’ industrial history to life on their still-standing walls.
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Project Highlight: Coal Region Air Quality
Air quality is an under-studied social and environmental issue in the lower anthracite coal region. This project seeks to understand the region’s air quality through both scientific measurements and qualitative lived experiences. By combining the science with the social to inform community outreach and K-12 education, this project advances key issues in environmental justice.
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Project Highlight: Shaping Shamokin’s Pearl Street Brownfield Into a Community Asset
Foraging Friends partnered with the Place Studies program to conduct an initial site assessment of an abandoned industrial lot in Shamokin’s 5th Ward, including soil sampling and archival research, and sought to understand local perspectives on reuse through community surveys and conversations.
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Project Highlight: Ready, Set, Fit!
With more than two dozen walking trails, Ready, Set, Fit! is a free app that combines the health and wellness features of your smart phone with the power of Google maps to provide themed and informational content for specific places. The app currently has a variety of paths in central Pennsylvania and is expanding.