Outreach

2019 National Center for Science Outreach (NCSE) Science Outreach Fellowship: This was a year-long training program in community-based outreach, focused on scientific topics that have high relevance to people’s lives but are often misunderstood, like evolution and climate change.

• I ran about 40 hours’ worth of informal hands-on activities at farmer’s markets, festivals, and other community events. Watch a video diary of one of my outreach days here!

• I developed Every Little Thing, a species-interactions card game based on my own research. Watch a video diary of the development process here!

2019: “Higher/Faster/Hungrier: A Surprising Story of Climate, Grasshoppers, and Lupines.” Scarabs Society, Seattle, WA

2019: “Ecological Interactions in a Warming World: How will Climate Change Affect Relationships Between Plants and Insects?” Sound Waters University, Langley, WA: a one-day public symposium with talks about Puget Sound natural history and the environment

2016-2018: Repeat presenter for Mt. Rainier National Park’s Interpretive Ranger Ecology Training Day

From 2016 to 2020 I helped to run my lab’s community science project, MeadoWatch, in which volunteers hike trails on Mt. Tahoma (a.k.a. Mt. Rainier) and collect wildflower phenology data. At different times, I served as communications and outreach coordinator, volunteer coordinator, and crowdfunding wrangler. In 2020 I brought our orientation and training program online.

In 2018, with my friend and colleague Claire Rusch, I was the co-lead for BioPhilmD, a YouTube series created by graduate students in my department. Our goal was to help demystify the STEM Ph.D. experience and make the entire application process more equitable and inclusive for applicants who may not have access to the resources and connections that can make this less daunting (e.g. first-generation, Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students; disabled students, etc.).

In 2019, with Joshua Jenkins and Sasha Seroy, I helped run two interactive workshop sessions open to DDCSP scholars and alumni in which we talked about selecting and applying to graduate programs, as well as how to survive and thrive in grad school as a member of a historically excluded group/s.

Trench-Ed is a website containing a series of self-guided tutorials that allow users to explore real datasets using R-shiny apps, and thereby work on Translating Environmental Change into organismal responses (i.e. learn about how living things on our planet are responding to climate change). I wrote most of the text for the tutorials, working with my committee member Lauren Buckley and her team. In fall 2020 the UW Program for Climate Change is holding an interactive virtual workshop for secondary teachers interested in using Trench-Ed with their students.