BY MONIQUE DUBOS

How can we build long-term capacity to produce sustainable solutions and resilient institutions? How can we foster innovation in engagement and cross-disciplinary collaboration in universities? Carissa Schively Slotterback, IonE resident fellow and associate professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, addressed these questions during the April 24 Frontiers in the Environment seminar, "University-Community Collaboration to Advance Sustainability."

BY FRED ROSE

Over spring break, it's not unusual to go south to get some sun, but I took it to an extreme. I spent the week a few miles north of the equator, in Kampala, Uganda, teaching Makerere University students about social entrepreneurship.

This course at Makerere University is part of the USAID-sponsored RESPOND program, in which the University of Minnesota is playing a major role. RESPOND is creating capacity to strengthen outbreak response for emerging infectious diseases from humans, domestic animals and wildlife.

BY MONIQUE DUBOS

Imagine living in a region where your livelihood depended on the frequent flooding of your property.  David Lipset has lived with and chronicled the lives of people who make such a location their home. He shared how a population of roughly 3,000 in the Murik Lakes region of Papua New Guinea is being effected by rising sea levels at the March 6 Frontiers in the Environment seminar, "A Mangrove Lagoon in the Time of Climate Change: The Politics, Science and Culture of an Intertidal Environment in Papua New Guinea."

Writing term papers, doing problem sets ... it's easy for college students to wonder whether what they do really matters. But members of 10 University of Minnesota classes last fall had no question at all about the relevance of their work. Inaugural participants in the University's new Resilient Communities Project, they spent their semester helping solve very real sustainability challenges for the city of Minnetonka.

German tradition says eating herring at midnight on Dec. 31 brings good fortune for the year to come. Is herring part of your New Year's celebration? If not, here's your big chance!

Lake Superior's lake herring, also known as cisco or inland tullibee, are an environmental success story. Once supplying up to 19 million pounds of commercial catch per year, lake herring populations plummeted in the 1960s and '70s due to overfishing, habitat loss and the introduction of rainbow smelt.