Speaker: Geoff Willard

Geoff is Deputy Director of NCEAS and SNAPP. Through his career he has sought to change policy and practice in ways that improve the human relationship with ecosystems, and to cultivate public engagement in science and conservation. As Public Programs Manager at the California Academy of Sciences, he designed educational programs about evolutionary biology and directed a team of educators. He led redwood and salmon restoration projects with Conservation Corps North Bay, served as Treasurer of the Board for RE-volv, and was a Fellow with both EDF Climate Corps and the Coro Center for Civic Leadership. Geoff has a B.A in History from the University of Rochester and a MESM in Conservation Planning from the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UCSB.

EPA’s Great Lakes Long-term Monitoring Programs
Kathryn Meyer, NCEAS

Vanessa Raymond – Talking about things is hard: Creating common ground with your audience
Explaining research or technology to the uninitiated remains a
challenge. When speaker and audience don’t share the same worldview,
the same context, the same acronyms, or the same lexicon, how do you
achieve a shared understanding? How do we create a common ground? As a
political scientist who often finds herself in a room full of ‘hard’
scientists or technologically-minded folks, how can I effectively
exchange information and ideas?

At this roundtable, I’ll share some methods I have used to explain
concepts and give context to audiences who are not in the same field
as me. These include a comicstrip I created for my M.A. defense to
describe the process of working on my thesis, and a zine I wrote to
talk about open data.

Bio
Vanessa comes to the Arctic Data Center from the Geographic
Information Network of Alaska, a research to operations (R2O) group
specializing in satellite imagery processing and distribution at the
University of Alaska Fairbanks. She has an M.A. in Arctic Governance
with a focus on Arctic Security issues, and a BA in Cultural Studies.
She is also a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Bulgaria 2009 – 2012).
Vanessa is excited to blend her passion for Arctic research support
and open data / open science at the Arctic Data Center in the role of
Outreach and Training Coordinator.

Kathryn Meyer – EPA’s Great Lakes Long-term Monitoring Programs
Did you know the EPA has a research vessel that monitors all five
Great Lakes? It’s called the R/V Lake Guardian and it’s been sampling
water, aquatic life, sediment and air in the region for nearly 30
years. In addition to a storied shipboard community, these long-term
monitoring programs have generated a lot of data. I’ll share a mix of
ship life and data trends, specifically particulate nutrient data
trends, from the Great Lakes. Your tax dollars help fund the
Guardian’s work, so it’s probably time you knew about it, too.

Bio
Kathryn comes to NCEAS from Chicago, IL, where she worked at the U.S.
EPA Great Lakes National Program Office as an ORISE fellow. At the EPA
she worked on a variety of projects ranging from data analysis and
annual reports to website updates. The most unique part of the job was
getting to travel across all the Great Lakes on sampling surveys
aboard the R/V Lake Guardian. Kathryn received her M.S. from the
University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment,
where her focus was on aquatic ecotoxicology; and her B.S. from
American University in DC.

Speaker: Ben Halpern

Ben is the Director of NCEAS and a Professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UCSB. He is the lead scientist for the Ocean Health Index project as well as a Chair in Marine Conservation at Imperial College London as part of the Grand Challenges in Ecosystems and the Environment program. He is also a Senior Fellow at the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, a part of the United Nations Environment Programme. Much of his research addresses Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning (CMSP), including cumulative impact and ecosystem service tradeoff assessments.

Speaker: Mike Burrows

About Mike: I’m a Professor at the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Oban in western Scotland, and have been there since the early 1990s. My research interests range from behavioural ecology, through trophic interactions in communities, spatial patterns in community structure in relation to waves and phytoplankton, to long-term change in populations and communities – mostly on intertidal and shallow water rock and sand.

Speaker: Coowe Walker

Coowe is the Program Watershed Ecologist and acting Research Coordinator for the Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (KBNERR), located in Homer, Alaska. She works collaboratively with colleagues from universities across the US to conduct research that improves understanding of how landscapes are connected with aquatic systems, and how human activities affect those systems.  She has been with KBNERR for 18 years, and enjoys celebrating grant successes with single malt scotch.  She lives with her husband, son, daughter, two dogs, eight chickens, cat and two guinea pigs at the head of Kachemak Bay.

Speaker: Erin Meyer-Gutbrod

Erin is a postdoctoral scholar with the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is broadly interested in assessing ecosystem response to anthropogenic impacts, with a focus on commercially valuable and at-risk species. She is currently conducting a net environmental benefit analysis of oil and gas platform decommissioning scenarios in the Southern California Bight.

Erin’s Website: https://meyer–gutbrod.weebly.com/

Speaker: Will McClintock

Will is originally from East Lansing, Michigan, and has studied Biology (B.S., Earlham College), Behavioral Ecology (M.S., University of Cincinnati), Psychology (M.A., Pacifica Graduate Institute) and Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology (Ph.D., University of California Santa Barbara). He has worked in over a dozen countries to support marine spatial planning in the form of stakeholder-friendly decision support tools.

NCEAS is in a unique position to clarify its identity and voice, a crucial priority for enhancing the center’s reach and influence, especially as it settles into the (arguable) 2.0 version of itself. New-ish communications officer Jenny Seifert will present on how NCEAS communications are evolving. Come prepared to participate in a discussion! Jenny doesn’t want to do all the talking.

Small homework assignment: Is there a website you think is really slick and has some relevance to NCEAS? There will be an opportunity during the Roundtable to share a website you really like that has elements NCEAS could emulate in its forthcoming website remodel.