From the Director

Warm autumn greetings from all of us at SMEA. Our street is carpeted with red and golden maple leaves, mountains are expecting heavy snow, and NOAA is predicting king tides in the third week of November. In spite of the potential rough seas ahead, we are steadily working hard. We started this fall by welcoming 32 new students. They come to us from as far as St. Petersburg, Florida, Princeton, New Jersey, or Hawaii, and as close as Wallace Hall, the building next to SMEA. They have done work on issues as diverse as the health of mangrove ecosystems in the Philippines and Indonesia, community gardens in Panama, threats to water snakes in Cambodia, building complex software projects, grievance proceedings for longshoremen and ocean-going vessel workers, dispersal and burial responses of the aquatic beetle, environmental outdoor education, provision of energy-efficient technology to low-income households, approaches to sustainability in Chile, reduction of whale-ship collisions, microplastics in Puget Sound and Yakima River watersheds, international conflict, ocean acidification, water crisis in Flint, Michigan, macronutrients in algae, sustainability of Alaskan fisheries, and Snake River dam removal. We offered them seven exciting capstone projects where they can work in teams on marine and environmental challenges brought to us by our partners, many of whom are our alumni. We are thrilled to work with our students and learn from the committed researchers, educators, volunteers, and advocates from such diverse backgrounds. Please read more about our students’ work and interests here.

Our graduates are also doing exceedingly well. This year, several of them secured prestigious fellowships. Two SMEA graduates hold the Dean John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship, one with the Executive Office of the President and the other with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; one SMEA graduate completed the Presidential Management Fellowship; eight SMEA alumni started their respective Washington Sea Grant Hershman Fellowships this fall. All these fellowships enable our graduates to work for and obtain professional training in federal, state, and local government as well as with Native Nations. We asked them to write about the impact of their fellowships on their learning and careers. Please read their reflections here.

We observe, with great joy and admiration, the work of other graduates. Professor David Fluharty describes many exciting 2024 accomplishments (and lively SMEA events) in his article Washed in on the Tide. As we zoom in on some of the work they do, we learn about their contribution to building climate resilience. Please read about their work in this article entitled “Coastal resilience: more than just a hot topic”, written by Henry Bell. Also read the article by alumna Amanda Fisher, in which she reflects on her career of over 20 years in the U.S. Coast Guard. In her article, she writes: “My education at SMA not only taught me about the world of marine affairs and policy, but how to think critically about problems, evaluate and iterate our work as we go, and most importantly, listen to others.”

SMEA faculty and staff also had a busy year. We are continuing our work on strategic planning, now devising the first steps to implement the plan and diversify our curriculum offerings. Furthermore, our plan to hire an Assistant Professor in Coastal and Environmental Affairs and a Professor of Practice has been approved by the Provost. We are now receiving applications for the Assistant Professor position.

While doing this important work of institution building and teaching, our faculty are continuing their research. Since our 2023 fall newsletter, we have published 20 journal articles and a book. Our work addresses fishing and water rights, coastal tourism, illegal fish markets, climate resilience and adaptation in fishing communities, building stewardship capacity through fishers’ knowledge, climate voting in the U.S. Congress, willingness to incur private costs to adapt to climate change, rural opposition to renewable energy, Indigenous knowledge for Arctic climate adaptation, use of eDNA for species management and trawl catch predictions, improving access to eDNA methods and capacity building, information literacy and the UN Ocean Decade, the impact of CO2 on Pacific herring, and many more. We are committed to publishing the results of our work in open-access journals to increase the accessibility of our findings beyond those institutions that can afford subscriptions to academic journals. We created this list for you to be able to access our publications. Lastly, we are proud to share that Professor Terrie Klinger received the Western Society of Naturalists’ Lifetime Achievement Award. Terrie was nominated for this prestigious award by colleagues from the Western Society of Naturalist’s in recognition of her research that has helped improve our understanding of the processes that structure marine ecosystems.

We are deeply grateful to the SMEA community for your engagement, support, and philanthropy. Thanks to your generosity and our staff’s careful stewardship of funds from the University of Washington Graduate School and the funding from the College of the Environment, we were able to offer full funding to three incoming students for one year. To understand the immense impact your support has on our students, please read the article by Professor Anne Beaudreau on the work completed by SMEA students who received SMEA’s North Pacific Marine Resources Endowed Fellowship. We were also able to partially support all second-year students who applied for funding from our endowments. Lastly, our faculty created research assistantships and teaching assistantships for 18 quarters (tuition and stipend).

While your donations are vital for strengthening SMEA’s ability to educate future leaders in marine and environmental affairs, our alumni and friends have been supporting our students and their learning in many other ways. As the SMEA Director, I am fortunate to have the support of the SMEA Director’s Council headed by Dan Hull. Please read about their work and what motivates them to continue to give their time and energy to SMEA.

Let me conclude with a big thank you to our alumni, donors, and friends from the community who continue to support our work. We are in the last stage of our 2024 annual campaign to raise funds for the SMEA Graduate Student Fellowship Fund. We are deeply grateful to all of you who have already contributed. Your contributions play a vital role in our efforts to recruit excellent and diverse students and support their research. And if you have not yet had a chance to make your end-of-year donations, I hope you will consider supporting the SMEA Graduate Student Fellowship Fund. Thanks to three anonymous donors, your donations up to $15,000 will be doubled through their match.

I wish you a wonderful holiday season and hope to see you at our events. And, of course, when you are on campus, do stop by for a chat and a cup of coffee or tea.

Nives Dolšak, Director