Grace A. Wang

Department of Environmental Studies, Huxley College of the Environment at WWU

Grace Wang
Associate Professor

Office: AH 203
Phone: 360-650-3278
Fax: 360-650-7702
Email: grace.wang@wwu.edu
Mailing Address:
  Dept. of Environmental Studies
  WWU MS-9085
  516 High Street
  Bellingham, WA 98225-9085

My research activities throughout my professional career fall into three interrelated themes of research and involvement. These are thehuman dimensions of natural resource management, community-based resource management, and cultural resources management. In my human dimensions research, I've focused on stakeholder issues and attitude identification. Using different social science approaches -focus groups, key informant interviews, sample surveys and questionnaires - I have coordinated research which has implications for the management of natural resources. Specifically, I've identified attitudes or resource users including hunters and anglers.

In my community-based resource management research, I'm interested in personal and social responses to resource changes. I've been involved in evaluating how organizations can maintain sustainable human and ecological communities in light of changing conservation laws in the United States. In particular, I'm working on how harvesting non-timber forest products might serve as a basis for community-based sustainable development. With declining forest resources (i.e. timber), many individuals are pursuing economic relief through the harvest, cultivation, and sale of NTFPs.

My most long-standing area of research is cultural resources management (CRM). Both my Masters and Doctoral work addressed the policy implications of CRM in federal land managing agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service. My recommendations, based on extensive interviews with Forest Service Regional Archaeologists, were to work more closely with stakeholders who may have different cultural attitudes about resource management.