At the end of Block 7, State of the Rockies Fellows Izzie Hicks '22 and Dova Castaneda-Zilly '23 traveled with Dr. Kat Miller-Stevens, director of the State of the Rockies Project, to the Midwest Political Science Association’s annual conference in Chicago, Illinois. Hicks and Castaneda-Zilly presented a paper from the State of the Rockies Project's 2021 summer fellowship titled “How Anger and Fear Influence Policy Narratives: Advocacy and Regulation of Oil and Gas Drilling in Colorado”. The paper was co-authored with Miller-Stevens and Dr. Jonathan Pierce and two other State of the Rockies fellows, Evan Rao '23 and Saigopal Rangaraj '23.  Rockies fellow Greta Forseth '23 also helped gather data for the paper.

Hicks and Castaneda-Zilly presented the paper on a panel with three other academic papers applying the Narrative Policy Framework to a variety of policy arenas. Feedback from the conference will be used to revise the paper for submission to an academic journal.  The 2022 State of the Rockies summer fellows are continuing the project and will produce a second paper to be presented at the annual conference of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organization and Voluntary Action in Fall 2022.