2024: The Year in Review
Dear Friends of the Bill Lane Center,
Over the past year, our intellectual pursuits propelled us far and wide across the American West. The Lane Center's Sophomore College cohort travelled all along the Pacific Coast; the geographic focus of our annual Rural West Conference took us through the changing rural Southwest; our media fellow followed the lives of an Alaskan Native community in the remote wetlands bordering the Bering Sea; and our interns moved into the offices and field sites of important western organizations. Each of these places, with their unique landscapes, cultures, and challenges, provided Lane Center affiliates ample opportunity to engage with stakeholders who care deeply about the future of the region.
In their attempts to understand just what the future of the West might look like, our students undertook immersive courses of study and robust research projects. Among other activities, they toured California’s only operating nuclear power plant, snorkeled in Kāne‘ohe Bay, Hawaiʻi to monitor coral health, and accompanied a BurnBot to the Stanford Dish to learn about new technology for creating fuel breaks on fire-prone lands. Questions that arose along the way invited serious academic investigations: How is the West adapting to water scarcity? Transitioning to a zero-emissions future? Understanding the intersection between religious beliefs and political decision-making? In all these undertakings, an inspiring throughline emerged as an unintended but welcome theme for 2024: resilience.
There is no hiding from the mounting social, environmental and political challenges confronting the region – and the entire country – today. Nonetheless, Westerners are finding ways to persevere even as some communities face devastatingly high suicide rates, depletion of natural resources, and inequities that can leave the most vulnerable behind. As we close out 2024, we are proud to reflect on another year of impactful work that has tried to cultivate both resilient landscapes and resilient people. Sometimes this takes shape as a course exploring regional adaptation to extreme weather. Sometimes it means conducting research on sustainable groundwater management to protect disadvantaged communities from bearing the brunt of resource scarcity. And sometimes it means funding a journalist to investigate Native Alaskan traditions that have brought indigenous people back from the brink of despair – a despair that rural western communities know too well, given the social isolation, health disparities, and generational trauma that grip them.
As always, the Bill Lane Center remains dedicated to understanding the dynamic ecosystems and cultures that constitute a magnificent, if troubled, American West. With your support, we continue to thrive as a hub for education, research, journalism, and public engagement, committed to solving problems and fostering hope. We invite you to look back with us on meaningful moments from 2024, and we wish you all the best for the year ahead.
Happy and hopeful trails,
The Bill Lane Center for the American West
Educational Programming: Inspiring the Next Generation
This year, our educational programming inspired and engaged students from multiple disciplines across campus. Under the direction of Corinne Thomas, the Center’s education manager, we ran another successful internship program placing 20 students at 18 organizations across the West. As always, the students accepted into this program found the work to be meaningful, eye-opening, and influential on their future academic and career goals.
Anneli Chow, ’26, had this to say about her Lane Center internship at American Rivers, a nonprofit dedicated river protection and restoration: “Adjusting to the inundation of information, tasks of project management, and expectations of a leading environmental nonprofit became the most exciting and enriching experience of my undergraduate career.” She continued, “My internship with American Rivers will influence every next step I take in the environmental field.”
Echoing Chow’s enthusiasm, Alonzia Quinn found her summer with the National Conference of State legislatures equally rewarding: “Overall, I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity. It has not only enriched my skills working in a nonpartisan research setting but also deepened my appreciation for the field of elections, which I am eager to pursue in future endeavors. Thank you to NCSL and the Bill Lane Center!” Quinn made significant contributions to the NCSL's research goals, working with an “elections and redistricting team” to create a comprehensive web page focused on the challenges voters sometimes face at the polls. In an article she published with her supervisor, Helen Brewer, Quinn detailed these challenges, and the rules governing voter eligibility from state to state.
Work experiences like these are invaluable to students. We remain committed to serving as a home for undergraduates, offering them opportunities to expand their skill sets and deepen their understanding of the West.
Another vital undergraduate program offered by the Lane Center is Sophomore College, which occurs in September during the three weeks prior to the new academic year. Taught by Bruce Cain, this year’s immersive course on coastal resilience brought students 500 miles down the California Coast, then all the way up to Seattle and the San Juan Islands to meet with over 60 stakeholders through site visits, lectures, and guest speakers. This article gives more detail on the SoCo itinerary, learning objectives, and impact on students. Final presentations by the cohort are available to view on our website.
Finally, a year at the Lane Center wouldn’t be complete without our flagship American West course where students learned from Professors Bruce Cain, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, David Freyberg and David Kennedy, about the past, present and future of the region. With lectures covering five themes – “Space and Time,” “Peoples Then and Now,” “Politics and Policy,” “Water, Energy and Fire,” and the region’s “Boom and Bust” cycles – the course is a paragon of interdisciplinary education that cultivates future leaders of the West. One student commented, “I learned about the wide range of perceptions of the American West—both the good and the bad—whether that be regarding the geography, the political environment, culture, and underrepresented groups and their experiences in the West.” As so many of our students have done in the past, this year’s course alumni will undoubtedly continue stewarding the region and its magnificent natural resources into the future.
Advancing Knowledge Through Research
Research at the Bill Lane Center continues to illuminate critical issues facing western North America, from climate resilience to energy transitions. In 2024, working under the guidance of Esther Conrad, the Lane Center’s research manager, and Bruce Cain, the Center’s faculty director, a total of 34 student research assistants (RAs) pursued original projects with faculty, working part-time for a maximum of 10 hours per week during the school year and up to 40 hours per week during the summer.
The majority of our research assistantships are offered during summer quarter, in partnership with VPUE. Beginning in June, the Lane Center sponsored 20 undergraduate research assistants whose projects fell into four broad categories: water and climate resilience; wildfire; energy and transportation; and arts and culture. Taken as a whole, the projects highlight vital aspects of the region’s environmental, health, equity and policy challenges, while elevating aspects of the West’s natural and cultural uniqueness. In a news article published in September, we summarized the research and offered student reflections about the meaning, purpose, and potential impact of their work.
Highlights from this year’s research projects included fruitful partnerships with The Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz), Seamless Bay Area, and UC Santa Cruz. With Go-Biz, Esther Conrad and co-authors Bruce Cain and Preeti Hehmeyer published a policy brief in February sharing findings of our 2023 research on barriers to expanding electric vehicle infrastructure in California. Our partnership with GO-Biz continued this year, as students investigated the barriers faced by cities and counties in California as they attempt to transition their fleets to zero emission vehicles. Other RAs explored the future of regional transit planning in California with Seamless Bay Area, taking into consideration the state’s climate change goals. Last month, the nonprofit published a blog post referencing Lane Center research by recent graduate Kohi Kalandarova who conducted analysis to understand how current travel patterns overlay with existing regions. We’re proud to have partnered with Seamless Bay Area to provide critical insights into optimizing the state’s public transit system, and they have benefitted from the talent and dedication of our student researchers.
Finally, in July 2024, the Bill Lane Center launched a collaboration with researchers at UC Santa Cruz to assess the climate resilience and adaptation strategies groundwater basins in California managed under a court order (adjudicated basins). Supported by the California Natural Resources Agency, this study is part of the state’s Fifth Climate Assessment. During summer and fall 2024, three undergraduates and one graduate student contributed to this research, which will continue in 2025.
In addition to our students, faculty have also been prolific in their research. Bruce Cain, along with co-authors Elisabeth R. Gerber, Nathan Lee and Susan Miller, has published a new article in Energy Policy looking at the increasingly important roles of local governments in building out the infrastructure required to support a large-scale shift to electric vehicles.
We are excited for upcoming projects, which will include an expanded focus on water and climate resilience in the coming year. For example, in collaboration with researchers at UC Irvine, we will be undertaking an analysis of groundwater management plans in the Central and South Coast of California. Additionally, with faculty from the Doerr School of Sustainability, as well as practitioners, we will deepen our research on policy and incentive design to support the repurposing of agricultural land. This improves groundwater conservation while generating environmental and socioeconomic benefits.
Ever committed to finding solutions to real-world problems, the Center remains at the forefront of research that informs public policy and empowers local communities. Be sure to follow our research updates online by visiting our home page or social media channels: Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, Facebook, X, YouTube.
Events: Engaging the Public with the West
In 2024, we hosted a number of events that drilled down on topics currently invigorating conversations about Western land and life. This included visits from artists and intellectuals, conferences with key Western stakeholders, and panel discussions looking at the region through multi-disciplinary lenses. Several events stood out.
In February, we presented the ArtsWest program, “Not Your Grandfather’s Remington: Reimagining the Cowboy Today,” co-sponsored by the Cantor Arts Center and MCA Denver. In conversation with artist Jaye Rhee, MCA Denver's director, Nora Burnett Abrams, and senior curator, Miranda Lash, unpacked the myths and realities of the American cowboy before a full house at the Cantor Arts Center. The panel explored the development of "Cowboy," an ambitious traveling exhibition invoking questions about one of the West’s most enduring icons, both historically and in contemporary pop culture.
Also of note was the Lane Center’s Tenth Annual Eccles Family Rural West Conference in Tempe, Arizona. The spring program convened academics and practitioners to discuss issues like migration between Arizona, California, and Texas; the Colorado River agreement’s impact on water issues; U.S.-Mexico border challenges; and Native American affairs in the Southwest. Vibrant panel discussions earned coverage in the Stanford Report, which published an article about the Colorado River crisis and how it figures into larger discussions about the future of water in the Southwest.
Finally, just last month, the Western History Lecture Series featured Mark Brilliant of UC Berkeley for a talk examining the intersection of high tech, shifting political ideologies, and rising income inequality in California. A recording of his lecture, “Gilded State: California and the Dawn of America’s New Gilded Age,” is available for viewing under the Events tab of our website, as are many other past Bill Lane Center public programs.
Journalism: Sharing Stories of the West
The original journalism published by the Center's online magazine, & the West, dove deeply into a number of subjects tied to the region's past and future. We looked at how the rise of social media is transforming the way the public interacts with national parks, not always for the better. At the intersection of health and the environment, we examined the dangers of dust storms, which emerge from the shores of terminal lakes and make everything from driving to breathing more hazardous. A former student intern published a piece on the evolving role of horses over the decades, and how they remain central to Western culture. And we probed the transformation of geothermal energy in the West, a region endowed with great geothermal potential, as new techniques make it more accessible.
In addition to our online magazine, the Bill Lane Center supports journalism by funding a Western Media Fellow each year. The awardee undertakes a journalistic project that illuminates critical issues facing the West today. Brandon Kapelow, our 2024 fellow, produced a moving piece on how Native Alaskan communities at the western edge of the state are working to reverse high rate of suicide by bringing community members together. These collective experiences of learning traditional tasks and participating in ceremonial events have proven to be both healing and empowering. The story was broadcast by National Public Radio and a longer version was published on the NPR website. Another highlight this year was the recognition of Janet Wilson, one of our two 2023 media fellows, with a national award for the originality of her reporting on the few farmers in California's Imperial Valley who command the rights to as much water as some Southwestern cities.
Through & the West, we aim to shed light on complex issues and elevate diverse voices, fostering greater public understanding of the forces shaping our region. You can sign up to receive stories in your inbox by subscribing to the magazine’s newsletter.
Clockwise from top left: First Sergeant Heather Thomas at Fort Wainwright military base in Fairbanks, Alaska. In 2021 there were 10 suicides at the military base, giving it one of the highest suicide rates among U.S. military bases nationwide; An arial view of the village of Nunapitchuk in Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta; Dominic Hunt, 71, holds a catch from a blackfish trap on the Yukon River near Emmonak, Alaska. Dominic and his wife Lala are volunteers with a suicide prevention program called Qungasvik, which uses traditional subsistence activities like ice fishing and tool crafting to empower at-risk communities; Sunrise view from a cemetery in Mountain Village in Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. One of the country's most remote regions, the Delta has the highest rates of suicide in the United States; James Joseph, 33, (left) and Albert Simon, 29, (right) scout for game on an ice floe several miles offshore of Hooper Bay, Alaska. The two friends helped to organize seal hunting trips, and served as boat drivers in Hooper Bay’s Qungasvik program, which officially ended in September after a funding grant elapsed. All photos by Brandon Kapelow. Captions adapted from Kapelow's story on NPR, "Native-led suicide prevention program focuses on building community strengths."
Podcasting: Conversations That Matter
In 2024, we launched an exciting new collaboration with long-time KQED radio host Michael Krasny and his Grey Matter podcast. Together, we have produced a series of thought-provoking episodes that feature interviews with significant figures in the West. So far, three Lane Center affiliates have joined Krasny for these fascinating conversations: David Kennedy, Felicity Barringer and Alexander Nemerov. In the coming days, a fourth interview will air with Oakland born and raised novelist Tommy Orange, whose award-winning fiction follows the lives of urban Native Americans.
From discussions of history, art, and the environment to conversations on indigenous communities in the West, these podcasts offer a new way of engaging with the Bill Lane Center as we strive to tell the region’s stories with diverse voices and in new modalities.
Looking Ahead
As we step into 2025, we are more committed than ever to serving the West through education, research, journalism, and public engagement. Your support fuels our mission and makes our work possible. Thank you for being a part of our journey this year, and we hope you stay connected in a meaningful way by updating your Lane Center subscriptions and interests. Together, we will continue to explore, protect, and celebrate this extraordinary region we call home.
