Summary

Under the guidance of CHEER Education Director Meghan Millea, eight students engaged in this year's six-week residential program, which was hosted at East Carolina University.

When Nimay Mahajan learned that the CHEER Hub’s summer scholars program was seeking students for its 2024 cohort, he jumped at the opportunity to apply.

At the time, Mahajan’s research interests aligned with what he calls “the formal sciences,” or disciplines grounded in science, technology, engineering, and math. More specifically, his academic career rested on the three M’s: meteorology, mathematics, and models.

It wasn’t long into the program, however, that he considered a challenge many scientists face: how to prevent his work from being locked away in an ivory tower. It was this common crux that led him to take a step away from the STEM silo and into a more interdisciplinary approach to research. 

“Coming from a background of modeling, I thought that was really important for me to understand how people understand (our work),” Mahajan said. “Research only means so much if you don’t have an effective way to communicate it to the public.”

Mahajan was one of eight students taking part in the CHEER Hub’s second annual summer scholars program. This year, the six-week residential program was hosted at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.

The CHEER Hub’s 2024 summer scholars are Sydney Sherbitsky of Stony Brook University, Alasqa Farley of the University of Delaware, Max Masleyev of Cornell University, Susan Funes of Kean University, Melissa Villarreal and Grace Weinrich of the University of Colorado, Amidu Kalokoh of Virginia Commonwealth University, and Nimay Mahajan of the University of Miami.

Over the course of those six weeks, students participated in various research activities, traveled to several different locations across North Carolina to conduct fieldwork, and learned about various topical issues related to climate change and community resilience. 

Meghan Millea, a CHEER co-principal investigator and education director for the hub, said each of this year’s scholars added their training, perspective, and curiosity to the CHEER project. 

The summer scholars did a combination of individual and team projects. Prior to the start of the program, Millea split them into groups of three – each led by a graduate student mentor – to tackle a research topic related to CHEER research, namely hurricane preparedness, recovery, and resilience. In an intentional effort to reflect the Hub’s commitment to interdisciplinary research, each team included students with varied skill sets and academic backgrounds, which ranged from economics to sustainability to history.

Each scholar worked on their own part of the group projects, which culminated in their final 15-minute presentations to members of the CHEER team, its partner organizations, and invited guests. 

Much of their research was done in the field. The students had the opportunity to travel to nine storm-impacted communities across Eastern North Carolina.

Hearing first hand from local agencies and community members allowed students to see how their research applies in the real world. For Max Masleyev, a rising junior at Cornell University majoring in atmospheric science, these site visits shed light on the intricacies of the hurricane recovery process.

“I didn’t know about the numerous local and federal government programs that contribute to it, such as those from FEMA, HUD, non-profits at the local level, and even the SBA (Small Business Administration),” said Masleyev. “I was surprised to learn how long and complicated the process can be, especially when dealing with federal funds, and the need for the process to be streamlined to reduce the timeline to recovery.”

An interdisciplinary approach, a cornerstone of the Hub’s approach to research, is required to effectively address these complexities, and Sydney Sherbitsky’s work throughout the program was a testament to this significance. 

Her final project, Permanence of Place in an Impermanent Environment: Hurricane Environmental Security for Mobile Manufactured Homes, explored the various factors that impact environmental security for mobile manufactured homeowners which was part of a larger group’s project focused on mobile manufactured homes. 

“I liked working within an interdisciplinary setting because my team was able to cover different perspectives of our topic and give well-rounded presentations while specializing in our respective disciplines,” said Sherbitsky, a newly minted graduate of Stony Brook University. “I looked at environmental security and used my background to read zoning codes and create GIS maps for manufactured home zoning in the flood plain, while my teammates focused on social stigma and policy inclusivity.”

This same sentiment was echoed by Amidu Kalokoh. Kalokoh, a doctoral candidate in public policy and administration, called the Hub’s interdisciplinary approach a “profound learning experience” because it helped him connect the dots between the many disciplines represented in emergency management and disaster science. 

For several of the students, meeting with the Hub’s partners, community members, local government officials, and experts like Jamie Rhome, the deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, were particularly memorable experiences. For Alasqa Farley, it was moments like these that brought their research to life.

“One thing that surprised me was how we were always met with such enthusiasm from the people we were interviewing,” Farley said. “Everyone was genuinely interested in our own stories, what we were researching, and many of them expressed how excited they were to talk with us. It made me feel like our research is truly important and valued.”