Many faculty members and students from UW Environment spend their summers collecting data, monitoring conditions and altogether applying concepts from the classroom in the field.
Purpose
The College of the Environment supports its student services staff in furthering their careers, and in particular in connecting them to networking opportunities and professional development afforded by attending and presenting at national conferences (or other types of professional training). The College realizes that attending or presenting at regional, national or international meetings hosted by academic advising or higher education student affairs organizations can help accelerate the professional development of early-career student services staff and provide valuable continuing education for veteran student services staff.
By studying this natural laboratory for many years, researchers found that drought actually helped ecological underdogs by stressing the dominant species.
UW Environment Dean Lisa J. Graumlich shares her thoughts about LGBT STEM Day, celebrated July 5th, on the American Geophysical Union’s From the Prow blog.
“So, why do we need a special day for LGBT STEM? The data speak for themselves. According to a 2013 study in Nature, 43 percent of our scientific community is not comfortable being out at work,” Graumlich says.
The University of Washington’s College of the Environment is pleased to announce that Professor Ken Creager will serve as Chair of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences for a two-year term that began on July 1, 2018.
During the search process, Creager — who has served in a number of leadership roles within Earth and Space Sciences and is regarded as a trusted, respected leader within the Department and College — emerged as the Advisory Search Committee’s top choice to lead the Department in the coming years.
College of the Environment faculty, staff and students use countless ways to broaden the reach and impact of their work. We rounded up a few examples that illustrate the breadth, innovation and creativity that come with different kinds of science communication and outreach. Enjoy and explore the highlights from a year of great science communication.
1. Public Comment Project
The Public Comment Project seeks to promote evidence-based policy by facilitating scientists’ engagement in public comment on federal regulations.
In the fall of 2014, West Coast residents witnessed a strange, unprecedented ecological event. Tens of thousands of small seabird carcasses washed ashore on beaches from California to British Columbia, in what would become one of the largest bird die-offs ever recorded.
A network of more than 800 citizen scientists responded as the birds, called Cassin’s auklets, turned up dead in droves along the coast.
The University of Washington’s College of the Environment and its faculty members are no strangers to ground-breaking and important research on volcanoes and magma—from a land-sea experiment tracking earthquakes and volcanoes along the Alaska Peninsula to publishing an atlas of seafloor volcanoes and deep-ocean life.
George Bergantz, a professor in the College’s Department of Earth and Space Sciences, is a geologist who studies the physics of magma.
The College is pleased to announce the following undergraduate and graduate scholarships awarded for 2018-19:
Del Rio Endowed Environmental Studies Scholarship
The Del Rio Family Foundation established the Del Rio Endowed Scholarship Fund for Environmental Studies to encourage and support students with an interest in the environment who are participating in the Educational Opportunity Program, which promotes academic success and graduation for under-represented ethnic minority, economically disadvantaged and first-generation college students at the University of Washington.
The University of Washington’s School of Oceanography has a new member of its fleet. After revamping its global-class research vessel earlier this year, it now also has a new ship that will allow UW researchers and students to explore waters in Puget Sound and nearby coasts.
The RV Rachel Carson was built as a fisheries research vessel in Scotland in 2003, and the UW acquired it in 2017 and had it shipped to Seattle last winter.
The generous support of donors like Tom Hinckley, Environmental and Forest Sciences professor emeritus, makes immersive learning in the field accessible for more UW undergraduates.
Fifteen University of Washington students were recently awarded prestigious Bonderman Travel Fellowships, including one from the College of the Environment. The award will enable Program on the Environment‘s Frieda Luoma-Cohan to embark on a solo journey at least eight months long and take her to at least two regions and six countries around the world. The fellowship, established in 1995 and worth $20,000 each, aims to expose students to the intrinsic, often life-changing benefits of international travel.
Congratulations to UW Environment’s Chelsea Wood! The assistant professor at UW’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences was recently selected to receive the 2018 Distinguished Teaching Award. She will be honored at the UW’s Awards of Excellence ceremony on June 7, 2018, at 3:30 p.m. in Meany Hall. The UW community and general public are invited to attend.
Distinguished Teaching Award recipients are chosen based on a variety of criteria, including mastery of the subject matter, enthusiasm and innovation in teaching and learning process, ability to engage students both within and outside the classroom, ability to inspire independent and original thinking in students and to stimulate students to do creative work, and innovations in course and curriculum design.
College of the Environment faculty received all three of the University of Washington’s Innovation Awards for 2018. The awards are designed to stimulate innovation among faculty from a range of disciplines and to reward some of their most novel ideas, and are made possible by generous donors.
Knut Christianson and Michelle Koutnik from the Earth and Space Sciences, along with David Shean from Civil and Environmental Engineering, were awarded $300,000 over two years to “build a digital glacier time machine” that will generate a high-resolution, 3-D time series of how glaciers have changed over time to help understand the future of water resources in the western United States.
Earth and Space Sciences' student Mary Alice Benson spent an entire summer studying geology at UW Environment's field camp. This is her field notebook.