ANNOUNCEMENTS & KUDOS

As you have likely heard, we will no longer have the great pleasure of seeing the bearded visage of Shane Krause, our long-time IT Lead, strolling our halls and supporting our technical infrastructure! Shane is taking on a new role for the Port of Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, which means he will have the extraordinary joy of living and working at Friday Harbor (gah, jealous!). His last full-time days in the office were last week, but he’ll still be advising Styles, Greg and Grace during the transition period. We are so excited for Shane with this new opportunity, and we hope you’ll join us in thanking him for his many years of wonderful service to our school!

The only way to remove some of the sting of a sad departure is to announce the arrival of someone new. That’s exactly what we get to do today, as Dr. Kent Wheiler is arriving this week to take over as the next director of CINTRAFOR! Kent has extensive experience working in Asia and the forest products industry, and he has strong contacts in the field. We are extremely pleased to welcome him to our school, and we’ll have more details to share about Kent in the coming weeks!

In other fun news, we received some excellent kudos from Christine Phelan, who attended the student-led Camera Trap and GPS Workshop on June 28! Christine writes, “I just wanted to email about Camera and GPS workshop that was hosted by Apryle Craig and Lauren Satterfield yesterday. I am really glad I was able to attend, and it was particularly helpful to get out with the equipment and have an opportunity to ask questions in context. Both Lauren and Apryle were knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the material.” Great stuff!

On the cool videos front, in her ESRM 101 course this spring Professor Kristiina Vogt had her students—including majors and non-majors—create three-minute videos about what they thought a future forest would look like. If you’d like to check out the creative videos they produced as part of the Future Forest Storytelling project, Kristiina uploaded some of the highlights for your viewing pleasure.

On the future events front, this September the Washington Environmental Council invites you to join a conference—held on September 12 at Cedarbrook Lodge—to discuss how forest management practices can maximize carbon sequestration to combat climate change: “Carbon Friendly Forestry: A West Coast Forest Carbon Conference.” Registration will open soon, and you can contact Arianne Jaco with any questions in the meantime.

A week after that, of course, is the annual SEFS Retreat on Wednesday, September 20, at the Center for Urban Horticulture (roughly from 9 a.m. to 4 or 5 p.m.). All students, staff, faculty, postdocs, adjuncts and affiliates are invited, and we’ll have more details to share later in the summer!

Finally, as folks in Anderson Hall already know, this summer a middle school girls’ science camp is using some of the space on our bottom floor, including Anderson 22. The same group was here last summer, though this year they’ll be in that space until the middle of August. In general, we don’t expect any significant annoyances, but we have had a couple minor complaints of excited screams and running the hall, which we’ve addressed to the group. The camp is committed to being a respectful tenant, and we can absolutely relay any other suggestions to make sure we all get along beautifully. So please don’t hesitate to reach out to Karl Wirsing with any concerns or feedback. We’re happy to host this group—not least for its scientific mission—but we don’t want them to disrupt our normal summer operations and work. Also, at the end of the summer they are hiring a professional cleaning crew, so there is a chance Anderson 22 will come out with a fresh shine for the fall!

DIVERSITY TOPICS

Michelle Trudeau passed along a great story, “Reflections on being awarded tenure as a woman with kids and a disability/chronic illness,” a first-person account of one woman's path to tenure in a STEM field while navigating having children, chronic illness and disability.

COMMITTEE NOTES

All three SEFS Director candidates have completed campus visits, and the faculty will vote on the search committee’s recommendation at a special meeting tomorrow, July 11.

SEMINAR SCHEDULES

Wildlife Seminar: Done for the quarter

ESRM 429 Seminar: Done for the quarter

SEFS Seminar Series: Returning Autumn 2017

PUBLICATIONS

These publications are from 2016, so not exactly hot off the presses, but we wanted to share a couple papers from our new-ish faculty member, Professor Sarah Converse, if you’re curious about her recent work before joining us! Here’s one she co-authored in Conservation Biology, “Planning for ex situ conservation in the face of uncertainty,” and another in General and Comparative Endocrinology, “Female gonadal hormones and reproductive behaviors as key determinants of successful reproductive output of breeding whooping cranes (Grus americana).”

SEFS IN THE PRESS

On Wednesday, July 5, the Peninsula Daily News in Port Angeles ran a story, “Hoh elder to give canoe to ONRC in Forks,” about a special ceremony this past Saturday at the Olympic Natural Resources Center. We’ll have more to share about the event later this week, but in short it involved solving a mystery about the origins of a tribal canoe that had been on display in Pioneer Memorial Park in Sequim since 1967, restoring it to its rightful family owner with the Hoh Tribe, and then the gifting of it to ONRC to strengthen cultural and educational connections between the tribes and our research center in Forks.

ALUMNI UPDATES

We sent a new wave of SEFS alumni scattering to the winds after graduation in June, and we are eager to stay in touch and hear what they’re doing. So whether you’re one of these new graduates yourself, or if you know what a former student is doing, please let us know, whether it’s starting a new job or knitting an awesome sweater!