The Kennedy Center for International Studies and the Global Environmental Studies program are excited to announce the launch of a new initiative on BYU campus: the Stewardship Lab.
The lab provides a place for members of the BYU community to work on projects and research related to stewardship—both environmental and otherwise—of the world around us. “The fundamental basis of it is that we want to help people and we want to help the planet,” says Stewardship Lab Coordinator Allison Asay. “We want to make sure that we acknowledge the relationship between the spiritual, the natural, the social, and the built environment, because all of those things are connected.” The lab, she explains, is designed to foster and support interdisciplinary research related to preserving the planet and preserving cultures and people. “Those things are so connected,” she says. “You can't help one without helping the other. And you can't hurt one without hurting the other.”
Though the lab is sponsored by the Kennedy Center and the Global Environmental Studies (GES) program is its academic home, Asay wants to be sure students and faculty understand that the lab is a resource for anyone on campus. “It’s important to me that people don’t think they have to be part of GES to participate,” she says. “We have faculty leaders from Civil Engineering and from the Business School and from Humanities; we have people doing projects in the lab right now from Linguistics and Biology; we’re in touch with GES affiliates all across campus. This is a university-level initiative.”
The idea for the lab has been around for a long time, says George Handley, faculty coordinator of the GES program. “The idea for the lab was first suggested by Rob Christensen at the Romney Institute and Andrew South in Civil and Construction Engineering. They envisioned a hub on campus for interdisciplinary research on stewardship, and after a number of years of sponsoring conversations on the topic across campus, they worked closely with GES and the Kennedy Center to find a home here. GES is proud to sponsor the lab and to open the space to interested students and faculty who want to explore new and more effective ways to tackle environmental problems with interdisciplinary rigor.”
Julia Morgan, an Interdisciplinary Humanities major and GES and Environmental Science minor, says, “The lab represents years of working with BYU administration to prioritize sustainability and the environment on campus! Many students and faculty have advocated for more resources for years before us without an actual office, and I feel so lucky that we get to have a physical space where more projects can take place.”
A Two-pronged Approach
There are two major components of the lab. The first is a physical space, located in the South Campus Office Building, where students and faculty can meet to work on projects. The lab’s tables, seating, whiteboards, and big screen TVs foster discussion and collaboration; Asay says that one group currently uses a TV in the space to hold remote meetings with collaborators in Ecuador.
Because projects at the lab are all interdisciplinary, the lab space provides a place for people from many different departments to come together. “It makes it so it's not one department hosting and everyone else visiting," Asay says. "Everyone can come here and then we're all on the same level. We're all understanding that this is the stewardship space. And we're all working towards the same goal.”
Those interested in scheduling use of the space can reach out to Asay.
The second part of the lab’s purpose is to be an informational resource. “We want to be a hub for people to go to if they want to know about what's going on around campus,” says Asay. “The main purpose of this lab is to promote interdisciplinary stewardship research, and so we want to make sure we know who cares about what on campus, so that if someone comes and says, ‘I have this project idea; I need someone from food sciences,’ we can say ‘I know exactly who you can talk to.‘”
Asay can also provide support for projects by helping group members coordinate, informing them about available grants, and helping to get the word out through the Stewardship Lab website (which will be officially launched in November to coincide with the For the Benefit of the World conference). “It's really about supporting projects: helping people create them and helping people make sure that they are visible and known,” says Asay. “That was a big part of the idea for the Stewardship Lab: that there's all these people doing this all across campus. But they don't know about each other. And there also hasn’t been a place where people can go ‘I wonder what BYU is doing about taking care of people and the planet’ and look this all up on one centralized place.”
Making a Difference
Though the lab only opened a few weeks ago, it’s already in use. The main project at present involves the Waorani tribe, an Indigenous people in Ecuador. As development and growth forced them into contact with the rest of the world, the Waorani found their culture beginning to fade as many of their young people moved away to find work.
So, Asay explains, they reached out to BYU: “They asked for help building a cabin or a facility where they can do ecotourism, present their culture to the world, and make their own money on their own terms while preserving their culture for their kids. That way the kids don't need to go off to factories where they can lose their culture; they can stay home, if they want to, and use their culture as a way to interact with the world.” The project has involved linguists, who are focusing on Waorani language and culture; civil engineers, who are designing the structure in line with the tribe’s traditional style of building; and biologists, who are studying the impact the project will have on the local environment.
“It's full stewardship because it's about helping these people, preserving their culture, preserving the environment, and allowing people to learn more about each other,” Asay says.
Projects like these can enhance a student’s learning experience in a way classroom instruction can’t match, and those already working with the lab hope students (along with faculty) will want to get involved. Lucy Harper, a Biodiversity and Conservation major who’s already used the lab space to host a meeting about sustainability, says that in the future, she hopes that “students will get involved through mentored research with professors, projects assigned in their classes, or honor theses to solve problems that they are passionate about regarding environmental stewardship.”
Morgan advises, “I think other students who are excited about sustainability should start by joining the GES club, and they can hear about projects going on from us. It's a pretty new space, so there's not much to get involved in yet, but there most definitely will be. I hope students have the chance to attend an activity or work on a project there—not necessarily because the room itself is special, but because the people who are involved with the Stewardship Lab are intelligent, kind, and truly care.”
Working Together
Handley explains the mission of the lab this way: “We hope to stimulate new research, highlight and celebrate ongoing research, and build teams of researchers who seek to tackle some of the world's most pressing environmental problems, all in the spirit of working ‘for the benefit of the world.’”
Harper sees the lab as “incredibly important”: “Humans interact with and depend on the natural world, so if we want to prosper as a society, we have to be conscious about our impacts. I believe that the two great commandments have a say in this, too. As we can for the environment, we're caring for our neighbor because we share a common home.”
Asay also sees a spiritual component in what the lab is doing. “We want to do a gospel-centered stewardship,” she says. “I recently read 4th Nephi, where, right after Jesus Christ came, they lived in a community where they took care of each other. We want to embrace that idea that no one's better than anyone else, and that we need to take care of each other. And I think that this lab helps do that without focusing too much on one thing, by recognizing everything is so connected.”
And it's that unity, that cooperation, that interdisciplinary approach that will help projects at the Stewardship Lab succeed. “We really want to make sure that everyone's working together,” Asay says. “The lab doesn't just belong to Environmental Science majors. It doesn't just belong to Civil Engineering majors. Everyone needs to work together if we actually want to create change.”