Sustainability has been the focus of my research and community engagement. I am at UM-Flint and since my original training is in fisheries, my students and I have focused on the Flint River. The Flint River is undergoing a major renovation/naturalization project including removal of a century-old dam, and the river itself has an undeserved reputation. My students and I have collected data on fish and macroinvertebrate populations, habitat, water chemsitry and environmental contaminants. We have baseline data which we will compare to data once the naturalization is complete to understand changes and how they may relate to changes due to the naturalization. We have completed a watershed report card for the Flint River as well as neighboring rivers with more urban land use and those with less urban land use. We have created Flint River coloring books in English and Spanish that we give away free in the Flint community.

Another project I am working on is bring the idea of community solar to the Flint community. I am working with others who are community-based leaders in Flint as well as other UM-Flint faculty, faculty from Kettering University and a Ph.D. student from UM-Ann Arbor to engage the Flint community on the idea of solar. We hope to make progress in connecting house of worship leaders and a non-profit organization to bring solar to Flint. We also are working with folks working toward changing the legislation in Michigan to make community solar much more of a possibility.