Living in Salt Lake City, many University of Utah students and faculty share a concern for the health of the Great Salt Lake. In the Honors College, a tight-knit community of students and faculty are pursuing solutions for the lake’s delicate ecosystem through a Praxis Lab titled America’s Inland Sea: Impacts of a Shrinking Great Salt Lake.
What are Praxis Labs?
Every year, the Honors College offers several Praxis Labs, which are two-semester, project-based courses that each focus on rising issues, timely topics, or prominent cultural shifts. Within these seminar-based classes, students are able to take a deep dive into pressing social issues, discuss the present and future implications, and collaborate in groups to find creative solutions.
America’s Inland Sea
America’s Inland Sea was led by Dr. Kevin Perry and Dr. Molly Blakowski. Perry, known to some as the “Dust Doctor,” has been researching lakebed dust and its impacts on air quality, the climate, and human health for the last three decades. Blakowski works for the US Geological Survey, specializing in watersheds and dust. The two work in tandem alongside various guest speakers to develop their 13 students’ understanding of the Great Salt Lake (GSL) and why it is shrinking.
Within their first semester, Dr. Perry and Dr. Blakowski challenged their students to understand the issue from multiple interdisciplinary angles. “For a lot of the students, [the dust] is one of the things that drove them into the class, because that’s what they had heard about,” Perry says. “We did ecology, we did economics, we did cultural significance, we did air quality impacts—it was a two-week module that focused in on the dust, so they’d have a better understanding.”
Students also enhanced their learning through engaging with GSL experts and hands-on experiments. “Guest speakers visited our class from the Great Salt Lake Institute, Utah Geological Survey, U.S. Geological Survey, the National Audubon Society… Among the most memorable guest speakers were Dr. Bonnie Baxter and Jaimi Butler, who shared insights not only from their research but also from their creative outreach work,” students wrote in their final report.
Taking their learning another step beyond the classroom environment, Perry and Blakowski organized a camping trip at the lake in the early fall. Perry talks about the excursion fondly: “That was a really nice bonding experience. We got to learn about the geology of Antelope Island and the lake. We got to talk about some of the biology that’s going on out there, take
some nice hikes, do some sightseeing, and tell stories around a campfire about the history of Great Salt Lake.”
Community Project: Ramsar Convention’s Designation
After concluding their first semester, each student proposed and voted on a collaborative project for the spring. The winning proposal was to assemble and submit an application for the Ramsar Convention’s designation of the Great Salt Lake’s wetlands. Ramsar is an intergovernmental treaty that protects wetlands and guides the usage of their resources.
The Ramsar application process is complex and time-consuming. Students were required to:
- Obtain permission letters from the landowners
- Designate an exact physical boundary
- Acquire letters of support from local agencies and a member of the legislature
- Complete Ramsar’s criteria sheet, a plan for management, and descriptions of the area’s ecology.
Through this project, the cohort has gained experience in a variety of areas including: practical workforce skills like document version control, effective and accurate usage of sources, and communication with authority figures. However, aside from the skills needed to complete the work, the students have been individually motivated by the projects’ positive impact for the community. “I’d say our Ramsar project is deeply meaningful to me. It’s a project that has ‘weight’ to it, and something I feel we can all be proud of once the semester is concluded,” said Ethan, one of the co-managers for the project.
Highlights & Lasting Impacts
At the end of the year, the cohort had the opportunity to present their findings at the Honors Student Showcase, an annual event to highlight the accomplishments of Honors students throughout the year. Within their presentation, they were able to continue spreading awareness of these pressing issues as well as describe the Ramsar application process that has the opportunity to be approved in the upcoming year.
Through their research, collaboration, and strong motivation, these committed honors students sought to find a solution to protect the Great Salt Lake, and with the political administration’s support, they will be able to make the first step towards that goal. Perry explains, “There are no wetlands on the list of important wetlands in the entire Intermountain West, which seems like a travesty, considering how important Great Salt Lake wetlands are.”
The full report is now available! Click on this link to view the full report. Learn more about Praxis Labs here.
Want to support Praxis Labs? Contact Janette Schimpf at j.schimpf@honors.utah.edu.
Aspen Delis & McKenna Hall | Journalism Interns, University of Utah Honors College