Dear Friends,

We have started the 2021/22 academic year strong, back on campus, and in-person. Our first-year cohort is larger and more diverse than before. We are offering exciting new courses and capstone projects. SMEA students, faculty, and postdoctoral researchers started many new research projects. Our graduates continue to have major impact in marine and environmental affairs. I hope this newsletter will provide you with a glimpse of our work as we start this academic year.

After more than a year of online teaching, faculty, staff, students, and postdoctoral researchers are excited to be together again. Public health and management experts told us that returning to campus would be more difficult than converting to online work. They were correct. It takes a lot of effort, time, innovation, and patience to bring people to work together again given various health challenges. The University of Washington mandated COVID-19 vaccination for employees and students. Even guests, who come to interact with our researchers and students, are expected to be vaccinated. Our staff has developed health and safety protocols for return to campus and we had no difficulties following them. All our courses this quarter are taught in person. When it was warm enough, the lawn and picnic tables were dotted with small groups of students and faculty taking the opportunity to meet outdoors. With rains and cold, we will have to adapt again. We continue to offer some events online, including our SMEA Speaker Series, thesis presentations, Blue Drinks, and events for prospective students.

SMEA is brimming with new people, new courses, and new projects. We welcomed 45 first-year students. They come to us from as far as Hong Kong, Shantou, or Northern Mariana Islands and as close as the other side of the W35 parking lot; from coastal and landlocked states, from large R1 universities and small liberal arts colleges. Their undergraduate degrees reflect their diverse disciplinary and interdisciplinary training in anthropology, aquatic and fishery sciences, art, biology, chemical engineering, conservation biology, biotechnology, earth sciences, environmental biology, environmental humanities, environmental policy, environmental science, environmental studies, geography, geology, geophysics, government, international studies, marine biology, marine science, Native American studies, natural resources, oceanography, photography, political economy, psychology, social entrepreneurship, sociology, Spanish studies, sustainability, and wildlife biology. Some have worked for years as consultants, educators, environmental managers, lawyers, and researchers in AmeriCorps, The U.S. Coast Guard, NOAA, FEMA, local governments, maritime industry, ports, and firms. We are excited to see how they build on their expertise in SMEA courses and projects.

This fall, we offer exciting new learning opportunities to our students. We developed two new permanent courses, SMEA 572 Environmental Justice and Political Ecology Field Course: Indigenous Perspectives, Coalitions, and Activism, which is offered jointly with the Jackson school, and SMEA 580 Coding in R for Marine and Environmental Affairs. With the help of our colleagues and our communities, we designed seven capstone projects for our first-year students:

• Aquatic recreation, subsistence, and restoration preferences of underserved persons along the Lower Duwamish River (with NOAA Restoration Center);
• Finding Common Ground: Communicating Across Borders to Restore the Salish Sea (with Puyallup and Tulalip Tribes, and SeaLegacy);
• Improving capacity of governments and the fisheries sector to conserve marine biodiversity through the use of “other effective area-based conservation measures” (with Fisheries and Aquaculture Division of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization);
• Karuk Tribe Sahpihnîich (Beaver) Research and Recovery (with Karuk Tribe Dept. of Natural Resources, Wildlife Division);
• Multi-level governance for conserving migratory shorebirds (with Audubon Washington);
• NNA Planning: Community-based Mitigation and Adaptive Strategies for River Flooding and Erosion in Alaska Native Communities (with Iowa State University);
• Tracking ESA-listed fish research on the West Coast (with NOAA Fisheries, West Coast Region – Protected Resources Division).

While the rest of the world talks of the “great resignation”, SMEA faculty and staff remain committed to our shared mission. Tiffany Dion, our Graduate Program Advisor, completed 10 years at UW. Professor Sunny Jardine celebrates her promotion to Associate Professor with tenure. Our Emeritus Professors remain active and engaged with SMEA. Professor Marc Miller continues supervising thesis projects and teaching courses in sustainable tourism and interviewing methods. Professor David Fluharty, in his role as the Associate Director, maintains our strong network of our graduates and continues to develop capstone projects and supervise students. Professor Tom Leschine continues to help us with recruiting and reviewing excellent applicants every year. Every staff and faculty member remains focused on our mission and our students. I am grateful for everybody’s unstinting support during these challenging times.

Our core faculty continue with their active research programs. At the risk of missing some important work, I list our faculty current research projects as they were presented at our New Student Orientation in September: territorial use-rights in fisheries; small-scale fisher local ecological knowledge networks; community-engaged applied ecology; diversification and adaptation strategies in fishing communities; tribally-led restoration in Salish Sea; demand-driven conservation networks; public opinion about various approaches to climate mitigation and adaptation; public support for climate aid and migration; Polar science at human scale; race, indigeneity and environmental justice in the blue economy; optimization of funding for salmon conservation; economic impacts of harmful algal blooms; detection and monitoring with environmental DNA; ocean acidification and global change; environmental change in high-latitude rocky systems; biological sensitivities to climate change projections; mitigation of stormwater impacts on coastal ecosystems; vulnerability of fishing communities to climate change; ensuring equity as the guiding principle of ocean governance; field studies and modeling in the Klamath Basin and Stillaguamish River; grounding Duwamish river research in community and tribal priorities; sustainable tourism in iconic national parks; origins and implementation of the Integrated Ecosystem Assessments in NOAA.

A big thank you to our alumni, donors, and friends from the community who continue to support our work. Your contributions play a vital role in our efforts to recruit excellent and diverse students and support our research. Flexible private support – your support – plays a critical role, 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. 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.

I wish you wonderful holidays and hope to see you in the coming year at our events. And, of course, feel free to stop by for a chat and a cup of coffee or tea.

Nives Dolšak, Director