Between September 2010 and April 2011, I had the pleasure of working for the Climate Consortium for Research Action and Integration. In my position, I researched what mitigation and adaptation measures that Ontario municipalities are implementing to address climate change, identified the gaps, and recommended what roles CC-RAI could play in meeting their needs in the future. At the same time, I reviewed what other organizations are doing to support municipalities in their climate efforts to determine how CC-RAI could differentiate its support from other institutions. Later on, I wrote case studies on successful GTA municipal climate change initiatives in order to inform other Ontario communities about best practices and help them adopt similar programs.

Through this work experience with CC-RAI and its work with Knowledge Mobilization (KMb) learned about SSHRC funded summer internship opportunities with GTA regional municipalities pertaining to climate change policy making. My work experience with CC-RAI gave me the knowledge and practical skills to be seriously considered for two of the five positions and be offered an internship with Toronto and Region Conservation.

As a Climate Change Research intern, I am helping to organize the Ontario Regional Climate Change Consortium’s “Dialogue with Stakeholders” workshop and move this consortium forward, researching and writing a compendium of adaptation tools and frameworks for municipalities and the public sector with two colleagues, helping to coordinate the Climate Literacy and Interdisciplinary Collaboration Working Groups at CC-RAI, and writing blogs and case studies on climate change initiatives and research.

About the Graduate Student: Susan Chalmers is originally from Vancouver. She completed her BA in Political Science and Environmental Studies from the University of Victoria in December 2008. She is currently pursuing her Master’s Degree in Environmental Studies at York University. Her research interests relate to climate change policy-making and climate justice generally. For her thesis, Susan will compare the adaptation measures being implemented by a coastal community in Canada to one in the Caribbean.

Tags: CC-RAI, Graduate Assistant, Internships, Knowledge Mobilization, SSHRC, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA), York University

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 at 3:20 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.