Meet Dr. Christine Haney Douglass, the CASNR Honors Program Liaison.
Dr. Haney Douglass is an Assistant Professor of Practice within the College of Agricultural Science and Natural Resources. She has a passionate interest in how people interact with their environments and how the engagement between people and nature builds cultural, spiritual, societal, economic, political and emotional connections. She also is a proponent of learning by doing and enjoys connecting students to opportunities to learn through real-world experiences both domestically and abroad. Living and studying in other countries along with her husband and children, was a deeply formative experience and she encourages her students to take opportunities as they come, to not be afraid of risk and failure, and to make their own paths.
Dr. Haney Douglass has professional experience in municipal, state and federal government offices as well as being an educator for the past twenty-five years. She teaches both within the University Honors Program and the College of Agricultural Science and Natural Resources on topics ranging from environmental justice and public health to stakeholder engagement and community-based research. She has conducted research in New Zealand, Australia and Nebraska and is currently interested in understanding the connections between multi-generational agricultural producers and their lands. This interest stems from her degrees in Cultural Anthropology and Natural Resource Sciences as well as time spent looking at connections between indigenous communities and lands in Botswana, New Zealand and Australia.
A family of four children keep Dr. Haney Douglass busy outside of academic work and she sits on several Boards and Committees both for the University of Nebraska and within her small, rural community.
Dr. Haney Douglass's CV
Research Interests:
Cooperative Natural Resource Management; Co-creation of knowledge and experience; Community based research and development; Indigenous land rights; human rights; Cross-cultural resource management
Current, Proposed, and Recent Projects:
2023.Co-PI. Co-creating a Repository of Resilient Nebraska Farming and Ranching Strategies and Practices: Leveraging the Contextualized Wisdon of Local Ecological Knowledge
Through pilot study with families–including Tribal and those headed by women–in rural Nebraska communities, we propose to leverage team expertise in stakeholder engagement and archival research to innovate (a) the development and use of LEK-based resilience models employing a grassroots, grounded theory (GT) approach and (b) work with communities on the co-creation and digital dissemination of a publicly accessible repository of LEK-related oral histories and other data. Our GT approach collects data via iterative snowball sampling, adept at capturing the diversity inherent to communities, and long format ethnographic interviewing and collection of oral histories.
2023. Co-PI. Incorporating Experiential Learning into a Large -Enrollment Introductory STEM Course
The proposed IUSE project, Incorporating Experiential Learning into a Large-Enrollment Introductory STEM Course, will help meet these challenges. The overall goal of this project is to 1) refine pedagogical strategies to incorporate experiential learning (EL) and civic engagement learning in a large-enrollment STEM course and 2) evaluate the impact of these tools on students’ development of science literacy skills and science civic engagement. Research products will include: 1) expanded theoretical understanding of students’ conceptions of their ability to apply science knowledge and skills to civic engagement, 2) theoretical understanding of the relationship between students’ developing science civic engagement and the opportunity for experiential learning, 3) theoretical understanding of the ways in which SSI contexts interact with how students conceive of science civic engagement, and 4) evidence-based transportable teaching tools to implement EL in large introductory STEM classrooms.
2021. Project Member. National Science Foundation. CNH2-S: Long Term Perspectives on Water Security, Food Security, and Land Management Among Pastoralists Experiencing Change
The purpose of this project is to gain a systems perspective on pastoralist settlement impact within the Sibiloi National Park in Northwestern Kenya. Gaining a systems perspective of the issue will allow policy makers and NGOs to understand how the many environmental issues in the park connect with each other and how to find the root cause of the many problems of the park and its people. A central focus of the broader impacts component to this research is to develop K-12 educational materials where students will gain insight into commonalities between East African pastoralist systems and U.S. grazing systems. My role in this project is to oversee the development of these materials in concert with teachers throughout the state of Nebraska. I will consult with experts on the development of appropriate assessment metrics to evaluate the national and regional impacts of this research, education, and related extension programs.
2021. Co-PI. Internal Teaching and Learning grant. Incorporating Experiential Learning into CASNR’s Core Introductory Course, SCIL 101.
The goal of this project is to pilot the incorporation of a required experiential learning (EL) component into CASNR's Core Introductory course, SCIL 101: Science and Decision-Making for a Complex World. The course is required for all CASNR majors and serves about 600 students per year. Experiential learning components can be woven into the already existing final project in the course, when student groups select a food, energy, water or health issue and work through potential solutions to the problem. Adding an experiential learning component will allow students to apply their reasoning to a real-life scenario, further develop their ideas and perspectives, reflect on their learning, and increase their network for potential future career opportunities. If we achieve success, this work could represent the only, or one of the few, large-enrollment introductory science courses that requires experiential learning as part of its coursework; a novel course model that may garner national recognition for CASNR. Evaluated and revised project to address significant logistical challenges. Built network of community partners willing to host small groups of students engaged in experiential activities on-site. Developed training and educational materials for community partners, faculty, staff, and student Learning Assistants engaged in this course. Assessed outcomes and impact of the project through the collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from student experiences, student attitudes, and feedback from community partners and faculty. Completed application of this research and the assessment results will be implemented to improve program development and performance in agricultural activities including student use of science in decision making processes. Communicated results to interdisciplinary teams of administrators, stakeholders, and learners within CASNR and the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources (IANR).
2020. Co-PI. Internal Teaching and Learning grant. Understanding CASNR Undergraduate Students Technology Use for Collaboration in Classes.
During the Fall 2020 academic term, faculty across the United States had to adapt to changes due to the pandemic. Many of the faculty who had only taught in-person lectures, were now teaching, online courses or hybrid courses. They ability to have classroom discussions was limited. Due to these sudden changes, faculty incorporated many different types of technology to assist with collaboration with students as well as to assist with collaboration between students. While faculty may feel the technology was successful/unsuccessful regarding the facilitation of collaboration with and amongst students, it was important to understand the students’ perspective as well. We were interested in the types of technology students used to collaborate with their peers for course work, whether it was faculty led or student led usage, and whether the students felt the technology was useful or potentially hindering to their learning in the course. While we were gathering data from UNL CASNR undergraduate students, the information we gained is applicable to audiences outside of CASNR. We asked general technology use questions to identify technology that was useful and how this may have been impacted by the overall course teaching method. The information may help to inform faculty from various institutions on technology that students found most useful for learning and collaboration within various course teaching methods.