Description
A native of Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, Vanessa Slinger-Friedman received three degrees from the University of Florida in Gainesville. In 1994 she was class valedictorian as she earned a BA in Geography. In 1996 she earned an MA in Latin American Studies with a thesis on the use of agroforestry for Amazonian urban resettlement in a city in Brazil. For her PhD in Geography she spent a year in Dominica researching her dissertation on “Ecotourism in a Small Caribbean Island,” which evaluates a special type of tourism for people interested in visiting untouched places and enjoying the local culture without disturbing the natural environment.
By the time she earned her doctorate in December 2002, she had moved to Georgia and begun teaching part-time at Kennesaw State that fall. Impressed with her students and faculty colleagues and the teaching focus at KSU, she applied and received a full-time, tenure-track position for the next year. One of only a handful of KSU faculty members in her discipline at the time, she was able to help develop new courses such as Geography of Latin America and the Caribbean. For a number of years, she was faculty advisor to the Geography Club and the Caribbean Students Association.
From the beginning she worked with her students and colleagues, especially Jason Rhodes, on a variety of environmental and community projects including the KSU Food Forest and the OwlSwap Clothing Exchange. The Food Forest demonstrates how poor communities in urban food deserts can utilize small spaces to provide nutritious supplements to one’s diet such as fruit and nuts, promoting food security and health while mitigating climate change. The idea of the OwlSwap grew out of a class taught by Dr. Rhodes on the geography of clothing and provided a mechanism for students to practice sustainability by swapping clothes they were no longer wearing for someone else’s used clothing. It also gave students an economical means of acquiring professional dress for job interviews.
Dr. Slinger-Friedman partnered with colleague Lynn Patterson on papers in the scholarship of teaching and learning, analyzing writing in geography classes. She has also conducted research in her field on Vetiver grass and its value in the Caribbean for controlling soil erosion. Her work has resulted in a number of awards. In 2016 she was the recipient of the Regents’ Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award for the University System of Georgia. In 2018 she received the Higher Education Distinguished Teaching Award from the National Council for Geographic Education. In 2019 she received the KSU Foundation Outstanding Teaching Award. Most recently, she was given the Environmental Education Award from Keep Cobb Beautiful in Cobb County, Georgia.
Citation
Vanessa Slinger-Friedman, 2024-05-16, Kennesaw State University oral history series, Kennesaw State University Oral History Project, 1973- , KSU/45/05/001, Kennesaw State University Archives.
Rights
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Identifier
ksu-45-05-001-03_161
Format
video/mp4
