Dear Friends of SMEA,

Greetings. I trust all of you are in good health. As we begin the new academic year in a few days, I want to reflect on our accomplishments and vision for the future. The COVID outbreak and the pandemic of violence against Black people have raised important issues for our communities and have deeply influenced our teaching, research, and service. SMEA faculty, staff, and students continue to work hard to become agents of change for a more sustainable, healthy, safe, and equitable future.

SMEA substantially increased our faculty expertise last year. We started the fall quarter with a new faculty member, Assistant Professor P. Joshua Griffin, who is jointly appointed in SMEA and the American Indian Studies department. He brings deep knowledge of indigenous sovereignty, community-engaged research, and environmental planning to SMEA. We successfully conducted a national search for two tenure track faculty positions in Regional Ocean and Coastal Management and U.S. Fisheries Management. With support from many sources—including the Office of the Dean, the Office of the Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement, and SMEA donors—we were able to recruit two excellent scholars, Dr. Eréndira Aceves Bueno and Dr. Anne Beaudreau. Further, SMEA expanded its faculty research and teaching expertise by appointing new Affiliate and Adjunct Faculty who work in the areas of pollution research, ecosystem conservation, and collaboration between regulatory agencies and non-governmental organizations. You can read about our new faculty here. Lastly, SMEA hosts six new postdoctoral researchers, funded by external grants, who work on research projects on ocean acidification, ocean litter, fisheries management, and links between climate science and climate action.

In response to the COVID outbreak, the University of Washington moved to online teaching and research. All of our administrative activities are also online. Research projects requiring travel and interpersonal interactions are suspended, although they may resume partially on a case-by-case basis. SMEA faculty and staff have worked hard to move online. Thanks to their invaluable efforts, we did not cancel a single course. Staff have been remotely providing administrative support and student advising as well as devising and administering protocols to keep SMEA community healthy and safe.

Despite COVID, SMEA faculty and students had a productive year. Faculty published over thirty articles in peer-reviewed journals based on research conducted in the U.S. (the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, California, and the Midwest) and overseas (Bangladesh, Brazil, China, and India). This work advances scientific knowledge, provides guidelines for more effective and equitable marine and environmental management, and emphasizes the perspectives of historically marginalized communities. These publications in natural science, social science, humanities, and natural resource management journals cover diverse topics, including blue carbon, a blue economy, carbon tax policy designs, Dungeness crab fishery, environmental DNA, food sovereignty in Indigenous communities, geoducks, harmful algal blooms, India’s Supreme Court, Indigenous and queer belonging, integrated ecosystem assessments, invasive European green crabs, management of Twitter reputations, polar bear co-management, TV ads on the carbon tax, and whale entanglements.

The SMEA community remains very active in public scholarship and this work receives a lot of media attention. SMEA students run an excellent blog that covers a variety of topics. SMEA faculty publish in leading media platforms. They are interviewed over NPR and their opinions reported by major outlets. We remain committed to public engagement and shaping the public discourse.

Students also maintained their research focus. Thanks to donor support and faculty research grants, we were able to fund twenty-two student-quarters and offered hourly employment to 11 students. Second-year students completed their research projects and presented them via Zoom. Several were awarded competitive and prestigious fellowships at the state and federal levels, such as the Washington Sea Grant Hershman Fellowship and the John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship. Many first-year students revised their research plans to adapt to the new constraints, some adjusting their research questions for secondary data, others revising their interview protocols to work for the online environment.

Although we were physically distanced, we remained socially connected with our alumni (now 750 strong). Many joined us as guest speakers in our classes and helped in the recruitment of prospective students. Here is the great news about their careers and publications we heard.

Left: A heat map of SMEA’s incoming student cohort. Right: Our incoming cohort features a variety of academic disciplines in their undergraduate studies.

The SMEA community has a deep commitment to equity and diversity. National protests focused on police brutality against Black people and the COVID crisis, with its disproportionate impacts on people of color, have created new urgency among SMEA students, faculty, and staff to address the systemic racism in our society. SMEA students organized numerous events to bring our community together. They began researching ways to strengthen the institutional support to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion in our research, teaching, and outreach. We focused the 2020/21 SMEA Speaker Series on issues of environmental justice and equity. To increase student diversity, we have secured competitive funding from the Graduate Opportunities and Minority Achievement Program (GO-MAP). Additionally, we are working with the Advancement team of the College of the Environment to build support for this kind of work. If you have suggestions on how we can enhance our funding support for diversity, equity, and inclusion, please get in touch with me.

We are starting the 2020-21 academic year with optimism. SMEA faculty have secured a number of research grants and participated in the collaborative grant to establish a NOAA Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies (CICOES). We developed protocols to safely conduct research in labs and in the field when we are eventually allowed to resume doing so. In the fall quarter, we will offer all courses remotely. Finally, we admitted an outstanding cohort of new students; about forty will join us in the fall. They have diverse undergraduate backgrounds and experiences. We are excited to start the new academic year with this cohort.

As a significant budgetary crisis leads to decreased state appropriations for higher education, flexible private support – your support – plays a critical role in helping to cover the gap. From funding student research projects to strengthening our capacity to attract students from underrepresented and marginalized communities, SMEA needs your support. Please consider making a gift to the Donald McKernan Discretionary Fund today. To learn more about how you can tailor your giving to achieve maximum impact for our students and faculty, please reach out to me to begin a conversation. I’m grateful for your commitment to our shared community.

We are looking forward to engaging with you in 2020/21. We hope you will join us for the SMEA Speaker Series and students’ theses and capstone presentations. At least for the first part of this academic year, it will only take a mouse click to join. Moreover, if any of your friends turn sixty this coming year, tell them about the Access Program at the University of Washington. They may enjoy auditing SMEA courses and joining our dialogue. Needless to say, I’m always excited to connect with you over phone or zoom and in-person once social distancing guidelines are relaxed.

With best wishes,

Nives Dolšak
Stan and Alta Barer Professor in Sustainability Science
Director, School of Marine and Environmental Affairs