A UW professor is contributing to the Wyoming community by co-leading the Youth Vision for 2030 competition, as well as assisting in research and community efforts to aid energy transitioning in Wyoming.
Doctor Matthew Henry helped with Youth Vision for 2030, a state-wide narrative contest that asked youths what they think the year 2030 will look like given the current challenges of Wyoming.
“People are really resilient and, against all odds, come out to support each other here in Wyoming,” Henry said. “It just makes me want to show up and do my best in the community and with the students because I am inspired all the time.”
“Really the goal was to give youth a voice in conversations about the future of the state, and to better understand how rural communities in the West are resilient in the face of change.”
Outside of this competition, Henry is also involved in Circular Wyoming, an energy economy project in Sheridan that finds creative ways to reduce energy waste.
“Discarded solar panels or equipment that’s past its prime are recycled into art or other useful products as a way to think of what Wyoming can do as it transitions to a new energy economy with wind and solar emergence.”
Energy transitions research initially drew Henry to Wyoming, where he joined the UW community in a three-way joint appointment between the HAUB School of Environment and Natural Resources, the School of Energy Resources, and the Department of English in 2019.
“I was originally hired to teach one class a semester, then do research on environmental justice and energy transition issues in Wyoming,” Henry said. “Looking at the sort of human and cultural dimensions of transitioning from carbon-intensive economies to renewable energy.”
Henry said that this research contributed to his latest work on water environmental justice, which will be published this fall.
“It basically looks at how the arts and artists support water environmental justice movements in communities with water problems, like Flint Michigan or Indigenous communities in the Western U.S.,” Henry said.
While Henry’s background is in English, pursuing a Ph.D. at Arizona State University helped rekindle an old passion for environmental studies.
“There was a lot of interdisciplinary collaboration there,” Henry said. “Which meant that even though my Ph.D. is technically in English, I use those literary, cultural analysis, and critical skills and apply them to problems outside the field.”
Henry said that the HAUB School of Energy Resources, and subsequently the Honors College, has provided him a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary teaching reflective of his mixed educational background.
“For me, being an educator means finding ways to support students that are tailored individually,” Henry said. “It makes me feel like I’m having an impact in the world far beyond any of the research that I do.”
Henry is now an Assistant Instructional Professor for the Honors College, teaching non-western attributed classes about social justice and environmental studies.
“I wanted to seek answers to questions about how humans interact with their environment, and then how that environment shapes their identity,” Henry said. “The social justice side of that came from a natural combination of caring about equity, equality, and fighting against systemic oppression.”
