Real Fiction

Real Fiction is an exhibition concerned with art and architectural histories, nostalgia and personal memory. The work is not about a yearning for a nostalgic retreat. Rather, it confronts and presents a loss, induced by a culture whose primary values, morals and ethical standards lie within the narrow constraints of tradition. I hope to persuade the viewer to contemplate how he or she has been affected by tradition's claustrophobic parameters through a critique of the utopian vision resurrected as idealized modernist art and architecture. My intentions behind the constructions entitled Narrow Sites, Illuminating the Interior, Divide and Conquer and Space is at aPremium are to create situations which illustrate and engage our awareness of the modernist parameters in which socially coded structures are founded. Space is at a Premium addresses both a nostalgia through representation within canvas ovals and an immediate, physical, confrontation with modernist structure. Steel rectangles, labeled with rusty modernist insignia, the stripe, hang in Mondrian-like formation while others rest upon the floor. The ovals, which connote portraiture within the early twentieth century, contain various voyeuristic views into a past where person and structure interface. These images are scattered throughout the steel structure and are painted using a variety of perspectives which hang in accordance with the viewer's implied eye level. As the steel pieces extend from wall to floor the viewer replaces the painted ovals thus becoming the subject connected with the relic structure. Throughout the exhibition I hope to instill an awareness of modernist structure, the ways in which the viewer has been affected by this structure's social expectations and nostalgia. The work considers how the "good ole days" have erected the fictionalized truths which have enveloped our culture. &nbsp;</p

Collaborative Governance Under the Endangered Species Act: An Empirical Analysis of Protective Regulations

Recent conservation and administrative law scholarship emphasizes the need for potential legal adversaries to work together. Stakeholders and regulators can pool their political capital, money, property, expertise, and legal leverage to achieve more than could be accomplished through mere mechanical implementation of statutory commands. Most commentators associate collaboration with programs promoting fuzzy objectives to engage the public and advisory groups. The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is a polarizing statute that imposes seemingly uncompromising mandates. But this Article demonstrates that the ESA actually provides rich opportunities for collaborative governance. In exploring this underappreciated success story, we document how conservation collaboration adapts otherwise strict, generic prohibitions to the recovery needs of individual species on the brink of extinction. We identify conditions under which collaboration arises. This Article examines the nearly two hundred ESA protective regulations that tailor federal restrictions to the ecological and social circumstances of particular extinction threats. Our original empirical study explores how the rules manifest collaborative governance, as well as the extent to which they foster imperiled species recovery. We focus on provisions in which parties agree to constrain activities in exchange for limited statutory liability. Almost threequarters of the protective regulations substitute practice-based limitations for difficult-to-detect, proximate-effect prohibitions. Our results show that collaborative governance transforms the ESA from a statute prohibiting certain outcomes (such as harm or jeopardy to a species) to a regulatory program implementing collaboratively crafted best practices, along the lines of pollution-control statutes. Paradoxically, this shift may improve the prospect for species recovery, even with regulations that are less stringent than the standard statutory prohibitions. This insight allows us to recommend mechanisms for constructing better regulations and suggest avenues for future research

State Imperiled Species Legislation

State wildlife conservation programs are essential to accomplishing the national goal of extinction prevention. By virtue of their constitutional powers, their expertise, and their on-the-ground personnel, states could—in theory—accomplish far more than the federal agencies directly responsible for implementing the Endangered Species Act (ESA). States plausibly argue that they can catalyze collaborative conservation that brings together key stakeholders to improve conditions for imperiled species. Bills to revise the ESA seek to delegate greater authority to states. We evaluated states’ imperiled species legislation to determine their legal capacity to employ the key regulatory tools that prompt collaborative conservation. All but four states possess statutory programs to identify species on the brink of extinction. Most of them include both animals protected under the ESA and wildlife imperiled just within the boundaries of the state. Thirty-four states legislate imperiled plant protection programs. States generally fail to prohibit habitat impairment by private parties, lack permit programs to minimize incidental harms to species and spur habitat conservation, and do not restrict state agency actions that undermine species recovery. Compared to the key regulatory programs of the ESA that prompt stakeholders to collaborate on conservation, state laws—in general—reflect a more permissive attitude. Though state laws, in the aggregate, only weakly support cooperative federalism, some state legislative provisions are very strong. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin even go beyond the ESA in their protective measures. Major funding increases to pay for conservation measures could overcome weak agency regulatory authority, but prospects for a spending spree are dim. Therefore, some state legislative reform will be necessary to implement stronger cooperative federalism under the ESA

A novel approach for practitioners in training: A blended-learning seminar combining experts, students and practitioners

A joint student and professional practitioner seminar used distance technology to allow remote experts to present to, and remote practitioners to participate in, a university-based learning experience. Participants were professional practitioners from the US Fish and Wildlife Service who were mandated to receive training and on-campus graduate students in environmentally focused programs who were enrolled for credit. Seminars providing training in high-demand or cutting-edge topics may be especially valuable to practitioners outside the university in business, agency, or organization positions, if they can attend as distance learners. Such classes create opportunities to bring students and professionals together to interact with expert presenters, who may present from distant locations. Presenters model expert thinking for students and engage them in discussions in which they practice such thinking. Students gain additional insight into their field of practice by observing interactions between practitioners and presenters, as well as by working directly with practitioners, in discussions and, potentially, in assignments. As a result, at little cost to any participant, students are engaged in authentic learning that is not regularly available in a classroom setting and practitioners gain access to a series of experts as well as access to student views and, potentially, student work. Instructors must relinquish considerable control of some aspects of the learning environment, but as mediators can increase the value-added aspects of sharing the class with professionals. Professional programs seeking to prepare students for professional practice often combine both more traditional classroom learning and experiential learning during thesis preparation, service learning or internships. Seminars such at this provide a valuable addition to this mix