Congratulations to Dr. Claudia Radel and Dr. Tammy Rittenour!  Drs. Radel and Rittenour are only two of three women in the past ten years to be awarded the NSF CAREER award at Utah State University.  Dr. Lisa Berreau was awarded the grant in 2001 for her work on "Bioinorganic Chemistry of Nitrogen/Sulfur Ligands Possessing Internal Hydrogen Bond Donors.”  NSF CAREER awards are given to outstanding junior faculty who demonstrate their research has the potential to have an impact in their fields.  In particular, CAREER awards support the early career development of those who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century.

Dr. Radel received the NSF CAREER award for her work, International Labor Migration and the Environment.  Labor migration across international borders continues to grow and is an increasingly important livelihood strategy for households around the world. Radel, a human geographer, will explore the role of gender, and specific and varying gendered migration patterns, in shaping the impacts of international labor migration on land use. The project also will analyze what role local environmental change plays as a driver of current patterns of labor migration. Over a five-year period, Radel and her team will conduct research in southern Mexico, highland Guatemala and northern Nicaragua. Findings will facilitate positive outcomes in human and environmental well-being in the contemporary interconnected world.

Dr. Radel joined USU in 2005, after receiving her PhD in Geography form Clark University.  Her research explores the changing nature of natural resource-based livelihood strategies for individuals, households, and communities in the rural global south.  She is interested particularly in how gender ideologies and practices both shape and are changed by these strategies. Her research also examines the gendered nature of resource access, control, and decision-making.  Current projects include (1) research on gender, conservation, and agriculture in communities surrounding Mexico's Calakmul Biosphere Reserve; (2) research on gendered labor out-migration and its relationship to environmental change in southern Mexico; and (3) research with pastoral women's savings and credit cooperatives in southern Ethiopia.

Dr. Rittenour received the NSF CAREER award for her work, Looking at Layers of the Past to Determine the Future.  Southern Utah’s landscape is dramatic and tells many stories of the past. Arroyos, or deep, flat-bottomed channels with steep walls of sediment, show an interesting slice of history that may help USU NSF CAREER funded researcher Rittenour determine the future. Between periods of rapid incision, arroyos appear to follow prolonged aggradation or “filling” periods. The question is: What’s driving these cycles of rapid entrenchment followed by slower rates of sedimentation and infilling? Rittenour is developing a detailed and well-dated stratigraphic record of past cut-fill cycles at six adjoining semi-arid drainages in southern Utah using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and radiocarbon dating.

Dr. Rittenour is an Assistant Professor in the Geology Department at USU.  She received her B.A. in Geology and Biology from the University of Minnesota-Morris, M.S. in Geosciences from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Ph.D. in Geosciences from the University of Nebraska.  She uses tools such as geomorphology, sedimentology and dendrochronology to understand landscape response to past climate change.  Her current research projects include reconstructing droughts in northern Utah using tree-ring records, investigating the timing and style of past glacial advances in the Olympic Mountains in Washington and Southern Alps in New Zealand, studying river response to climate and sea level change in Corsica, France, and reconstructing sand dune records of aridity and drought in Idaho and Utah.  A significant part of my research involves the application and development of a relatively new sediment dating technique called optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating and is the Director of the USU Luminescence Laboratory, one of only a few luminescence labs in the US.