Congratulations to Prof. Andrea Rager who has been awarded a large Expanding Horizons Initiative Award for the interdisciplinary project “Ecology, Attention, Action.” Prof. Rager is serving as co-principal investigator on the project, with Prof. Fey Parrill (Chair, Dept. of Cognitive Science) as principal investigator, and Prof. Francesca Brittan (Dept. of Music) as co-principal investigator, along with co-investigators Dr. Nárcisz Fejes (Dept. of English),
Prof. Timothy Beal (Religious Studies), Prof. Julie Exline (Dept. of Psychological Sciences), and Dr. Joshua Wilt (Dept. of Psychological Sciences).
Together with undergraduate and graduate student fellows, the team will seek to create a transformative program around the concept of ecological attention. Ecology is the study of relationships among organisms and environments. Attention is the capacity to process relevant information while excluding irrelevant information. Ecological attention captures the fact that what humans attend to changes what we care about, what we care about changes what we act on. With this EHI award, we will learn from each other, create new courses/programs, carry out studies, generate authentic community partnerships, and secure stable funding for future work.
Prof. Rager is excited to build on her ongoing teaching and research on art, ecocriticism, and the environment, as well as her commitment to community collaboration.