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Before last summer, Dr. Michelle Adams had only a vague idea of the Progress Women of Excellence Awards. “Two colleagues of mine have won this award in the past, but I knew little about it. One was the national sales director for Bullfrog Energy. So I thought they were kind of ‘beyond-me’ awards.” Adams, an associate professor in the School for Resource and Environmental Studies, was nominated by a SRES colleague, Dr. Karen Beazley, and was one of 19 Halifax women to be honoured with an award this year at a fundraising gala on November 17.

 “When you look at the people who get nominated, you think, ‘this is pretty cool,’” says Adams. “It’s a really good philanthropic organization.” The Halifax women’s chapter of the Canadian Progress Club was founded in 1988 and has been raising funds for local charitable causes since then, primarily for Phoenix Youth Programs. Each year the chapter grants awards to “inspirational women who play an important role in our community” in a variety of fields. Dr. Martha Crago, Dalhousie’s Vice-President of Research, also won an award this year, in the Education and Research category.

Adams, however, won in a less academic category: Entrepreneur/Innovator. “Michelle is herself ‘innovation’ by nature,” says Beazley. “She lives it.” Adams elaborates: “What I do wouldn’t traditionally fall under academic research. I think part of the reason Karen nominated me is because I’m really actively trying to intersect what we do in academia with what goes on in the real world.” Adams takes learning outside the university, through research projects, internships and thesis work for Master of Environmental Studies students; she has created opportunities for student groups in the Management Without Borders course to work with local companies, and involves students in her own outreach projects. “Students respond very well to real-world examples of what’s going on not just in a lab but in a boardroom,” says Adams, “and they also respond well to knowing that their assignments will be read by someone other than an academic.”

Adams’s research in eco-efficiency and industrial ecology also brings together academia and the real world. “I truly believe that business and industry have to play a very significant role in sustainable development, but they don’t do that research,” she says. “We do. It behooves us to say ‘you can make your money, but here are some strategies that will help you do that but also put you on a sustainable path.’ You don’t have to be a business person to be entrepreneurial—it’s just leveraging knowledge in new ways.” Adams has worked in Latin American countries to implement energy efficiency programs, often through the former Eco-Efficiency Centre (EEC), which she directed. She recalls working with Ecopetrol, a Colombian oil and gas company: “They approached me, and were trying to design a sustainability plan and saw that the EEC was a pillar of that,” she says. “We developed a plan and employed some Master of Resource and Environmental Management students on it. In 2014 they were on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, and their sustainability report is currently featured by the Global Reporting Initiative. And they had none of this when we started in 2010. We said basically what they needed to do, and they did it.” Adams and the EEC have also had success closer to home: in 2009, along with Dr. David Wheeler (former FOM Dean), they convened stakeholders in Nova Scotia as part of a renewable energy initiative. “We fielded more than one thousand written submissions and held focus groups where people could give feedback. Over 25 recommendations came out of this, and the government actually implemented many of them. That was very powerful for me, to see where your efforts can go.”

Besides her activity at SRES, Adams conducts research at the Verschuren Centre for Sustainability at Cape Breton University. Like the EEC, the Verschuren Centre focuses on energy and the environment. Some of the SRES students Adams supervises also work with personnel from the Centre on real-world problems. Adams also speaks highly of the interdisciplinary and cooperative nature of SRES and its effect on her research. “SRES is very respectful of efforts to engage the outside world in a non-academic way, which may not be as easy in other units,” she says. Beazley’s reaction to Adams’s award speaks to the supportive environment in SRES. “I am so proud to see Michelle’s accomplishments recognized,” she says. “She is a role model and mentor for other young women, and a leader in bringing environmental concerns into the mainstream of engineering and business.”

Adams herself is most thrilled with the nature of the award. “I’m really pleased that this was in the Entrepreneur/Innovator category,” she says. “It shows that what we do and learn in higher education can and should be integrated into society. And getting the award in this category demonstrates that my passion about that is noted. I’m pleased that someone else realizes that you can get out of your box.”