GLI 2023 Capstone Winners Publish Children's Book on Wildfire Ecology

The Franke Global Leadership Initiative is reflecting on another successful year and wishes our graduates the best in their future careers. This year’s graduating cohort produced impactful capstone projects that benefited UM, the greater Missoula community, and beyond.

One of these capstone groups received special recognition as the winner of the Franke GLI’s Capstone Award, bestowed upon the project that earns judges’ highest scores during presentation at UM’s Conference for Undergraduate Research. The winning group, Preparing the Younger Generation for a Better Future with Wildfire, wrote, illustrated, and published a children's book aimed at addressing the increasingly negative public perception of wildfire in a way that highlights place-based ecology and management. Through this book, the group hopes to equip the younger generation of Missoulians with a more nuanced and productive understanding of wildfire.

“From the beginning of the process, each of us were interested in creating a children’s book because we wanted to demonstrate our areas of study, which center around storytelling, education, and science,” members of the group reflected. “We decided on the topic by realizing that wildfire is an issue that many people deal with, yet it does not receive much attention or nuance in children’s literature. How should we deal with increasing fire frequency and severity? Can we manage land differently? We wanted to learn the answers to these questions and communicate them in our book.”

The GLI extends its sincere congratulations to our capstone winners and all our capstone groups. We are so proud of our students and the work they produce!