For communication
scholarship to be meaningful, I feel it must often go beyond the
academy to engage in constructive dialogue with diverse communities.
Such dialogue ensures scholarship is grounded in the needs and
particulars of current societal issues and increases the potential
transformative power of communication research. To attend to these
core goals, I engage in various public scholarship actions and outreaches, have founded communities devoted to public scholarship,
facilitate my students' creation and participation in public
scholarship, and
present with other academics on public scholarship.
Sample Actions:
• Workshop leader for Canadian and American whale watch boat naturalists preparing for summer tourist season in world's highest concentration of whale watch tourism. I present research-grounded observations and facilitate dialogue about successes, challenges, and strategies in framing engaging restorative messages about endangered whales and ecosystems. The Whale Museum, Friday Harbor, San Juan Island. 2011 & 2007.
• Conservation Voters of New Mexico (CVNM), The Wilderness Society, UNM Resource Center for Raza Planning, and Arts de Aztlan collaborative outreach project. Working with these advocacy organizations, this action research is dedicated to connecting seemingly disparate Hispanic communities by illuminating an existing but seldom heard ecocultural vernacular. The project is focused on helping communties write themselves back into the land and informing environmental organizations to better advocate for communities at the policy scale. 2008-present.
• Scholar spotlight radio interview on ecotourism, communication, and whales. Aired in New Zealand, and internationally via the internet. Fresh FM (99.4 FM, 95.4 FM, 88.4 FM) in Nelson, New Zealand. September 2007.
• Faculty consultant, Hablamos!, annual event of La Semilla Institute that engages UNM with local schools in environmental research projects in effort to collaboratively build community, innovative approaches to the environment, and cross-cultural and intergenerational awareness. 2007-2009.
Communities:
•
Founder and Director. Nature, Culture, and Public Scholarship Research
Collaborative, a transdisciplinary network of 55 faculty, graduate
students, and practitioners engaged in interdisciplinary and applied
critical cultural research approaches to human relations with
the environment. 2004-2007. Continues to exist at University of Washington.
•
Founding member, student chapter of The September Project, an
international project that on Sept. 11 annually involves public libraries and citizens in organizing free
public discussions, events, and actions. 2004.
Sample student facilitation:
• Lobo Gardens: A core faculty member in this student-staff-faculty collaborative movement to create community food gardens on campus and in the urban environment. Several of my courses engage students in this process. 2010-present.
• Professional Project Committee Member: UNM Community and Regional Planning Master’s students Michael Redondo (explored options for indigenous natural resource planning in Wounaan communities of eastern Panama. graduated 2010); Brendan Picker (created a facility plan for a nonprofit LGBTQ community center in Albuquerque. graduated 2011); Lora Roberts (developing a resource guide and toolkit for farm-to-table local food networks in New Mexico. 2010-present)
•
Thesis Adviser, Erin McGee in the UW Comparative History of Ideas
Program. Erin focused on theory and strategies of collectively run organizations and
collaboratively created a grocery buyers' co-up within her urban
neighborhood that had no grocery store. 2006.
•
"What is Your Meaning?" Facilitated UW
Communication students in
course concept-focused community activist events for day before presidential election.
Students organized interactive public chalk mural on key terms of
election and
march across campus with signs and
performance. Nov. 1, 2004.
Sample Publications & Presentations:
• Milstein, T. (in press). Survive, critique, and create: Guiding radical pedagogy and critical public scholarship with the discursive guideposts of ecopedagogy. Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy.
• Milstein, T. (2004, May). ‘You will use your ideas for great benefit:’ Public scholarship in the United States post-WTO and 9/11. Co-sponsored with theme sessions. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, New Orleans, LA.