On Thursday, June 6th, 2024, the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs held its graduation ceremony where 33 graduates received their Masters in Marine Affairs.
Congratulations, SMEA Class of 2024! 

SMEA student Adriana Apintiloaiei has been selected as a member of the 2024 Bonderman Fellow cohort. The Bonderman Fellowship was created by UW alumnus, David Bonderman, in 1995. This fellowship provides graduate and professional students with the opportunity to independently travel abroad to encourage discovery and learn to understand the world in new ways. The 2024 cohort cover a wide variety of interests including:

Interconnectedness
Reciprocal relationships with land
Disability rights
Biracial identities
Notions of the Absurd across the world
The connection between people and water
Queer communities around the world

By Taylor Hughes, Class of 2025
A few days in the Pacific Northwest is enough to see that salmon and orcas are the region’s lifeblood. These species elicit deep emotional responses that tie people to this place and make marine resource management a dinner-table topic. Historically, seaweed has not topped the list of priorities for marine conservation, despite playing a significant ecological role in supporting economically and culturally important species. 

Strategic Planning
By Dave Fluharty
It has been more than 10 years since SMEA developed a Strategic Plan. Many changes have occurred since the last effort and SMEA is facing many challenges. Therefore, SMEA Director Nives Dolšak led faculty and staff into a planning process during Autumn 2023 and Winter 2024 with facilitation by consultants Brian Murphy and Maddie Immel from BERK Consulting, Inc., Seattle. 

Please join us for our SMEA thesis and capstone presentations on both Friday, May 10th and 17th in MAR 168 or on Zoom. Each presentation will be followed by a short Q&A.
Zoom link: https://washington.zoom.us/j/7379570075
Full presentation schedule is posted below. We hope to see you there! 

SMEA alumni, Olivia Zimmerman (’22) and Tanya (Eison) Pelach (’22), recently published a paper in Frontiers in Climate: “Addressing inequities and meeting needs of Indigenous communities in floodplain management” that emerged from their capstone with The Nature Conservancy.
This work examined the degree to which the Washington State Floodplains by Design (FbD) program met the needs of Washington Tribes. The research found that while FbD was meeting some needs, there were areas where it could better support Tribal communities and address inequities. 

SMEA alum, Andrew Kenefick (’23), has been appointed to the Roundtable on Plastics Committee established by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to provide as a forum for examining issues associated around national efforts to reduce plastic pollution.

The Roundtable will serve as a collaborative platform for federal agencies and cross-disciplinary experts in academia, industry, and non-governmental organizations to discuss research initiatives. 

In the last few years, the U.S. Federal and Washington State governments significantly focused on climate action. In addition to re-joining international climate efforts, President Biden directed U.S. agencies to incorporate the social cost of carbon in their decisions, developed ambitious renewable energy targets, and released the Ocean Climate Plan. In 2022, the U.S. Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which included significant support for energy innovation, carbon storage, and energy efficiency. 

Monterey, CA
This November three students from the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs presented their research at the Western Society of Naturalists conference, in Monterey, CA. The annual meeting brings together students, academics, and professionals focusing on ecology, evolution, and natural history along the West Coast of the United States.
Taylor Hughes (she/her/hers, SMEA ‘25) presented a research project she conducted this summer at Friday Harbor Laboratories investigating how temperature affects the microscopic life stages of bull kelp, Nereocystis luetkeana. 

SMEA professor Patrick Christie and SMEA graduate students were featured in a UW College of the Environment article, titled SMEA students support Indigenous voices in video storytelling project. The article describes a collaboration between SMEA, the Jackson School of International Studies (JSIS) and Chief Leschi Schools (CLS) that resulted in transformative storytelling videos about the Salish Sea and Indigenous culture centered on student voices.