Sage Kuehn and Quinn Tilling

Both in the BA in Environmental Studies program. Sage is in her 1st year and Quinn is in her 3rd.

SOC 291, Winter 2025, Dr. Ken Caine

Who was your community partner, and can you describe the project objectives?

Our community partner was Pesticide Free Edmonton. Their project objectives were to spread awareness about the ecological and human health impacts of SGARs, a specific type of rodenticide. We assisted with these objectives by creating a fact sheet about SGARs for multiple environmental organizations in the Edmonton area.

What was the biggest takeaway from your CSL placement?

Our biggest takeaway from our placement was learning about different ways to think about rodent management. We explored how we view rodents in general, and while they do cause harm to our society, viewing them as “pests” is rather harmful, as they are also a part of our ecosystem. We will never get rid of rodents in general, even if some of us really want to. For this reason, excluding rodents from our homes and buildings, rather than trying to eradicate them completely is a more realistic goal. This is also a more energy efficient solution, so it helps our planet in multiple ways.

How can you apply any newly gained knowledge/skills to your future endeavours (courses/employment/volunteering)? 

Through this project we learned about how we can communicate environmental issues to different members of our community, including stakeholders, environmental organizations, and general audiences. By understanding the different ways our audiences view the environment, we can communicate these issues differently to show how dire situations like SGAR use are empathetically and effectively. These skills are important for any environmental career we wish to go into. 

Why should students consider being involved with CSL, and how does it enhance their academic learning?

A CSL assignment can make students feel passionate about what they are learning. It can also connect the deeper lessons that they are learning in class to real life scenarios that they may come into contact with in the future. For us, we found this experience to be one of the most exciting portions of our academic careers thus far, and the connections we were able to make with people in our field were very valuable.

During your CSL placement, can you share the knowledge and skills you developed in relation to climate change mitigation or sustainability activities? 

By learning about preventing harmful pesticides like SGARs, we gained knowledge about maintaining the health and balance of our ecosystems. We also explored many more sustainable solutions for rodent control in the local context and communicated those through  our fact sheet.

How did you and your community partner meet project objectives that were aligned with environmentally conscious goals?

Our main project objective was to create a detailed fact sheet about SGARs. This included information about what SGARs are, how they were developed from FGARs, why SGARs are ineffective, their risks of bioaccumulation in the ecosystem,  causing mange, and harming human health, as well as possible alternatives and calls to action. This fact sheet is meant to give people enough information to help them make informed decisions about their individual and business level consumption of SGARs. This could also be a resource to start a campaign to an institution to stop SGAR use to align with more environmentally conscious goals.

In partnership with the Business + Higher Education Roundtable (BHER), and with support from the Government of Canada, CSL provides financial support to environmentally-focused community partners for their educational and mentoring roles with CSL students.