By Mackenzie Nelson
SMEA Alums can be found all over the U.S. (and the world!) We were fortunate to catch up with several recently who shared what they’ve been up to, as well as some words of advice.

ERIK STROMBERG, Class of ‘82
Location: Beaumont, TX
Erik is the Executive Director of the Center for Advances in Port Management (CAPM) at Lamar University where he is building the curriculum for the fully online Masters of Science in Port and Terminal Management Program, which is expected to begin Fall 2017. 

By Mackenzie Nelson
This year, Professor Patrick Christie taught an undergraduate class in the Jackson School of International Studies, a Task Force capstone course for the International Studies Program focused on the Tulalip Tribe’s environmental recovery plans. The premise of this class arose as the result of lack of understanding among non-tribal individuals about tribal treaty rights and environmental decline in the Puget Sound area due to “climate change and unsustainable human activities” (Task Force Report 2017, p. 

The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) announced the winners of the latest round of its scholarship program, which provides funding of up to £4,000 to support research that looks at environmental improvement, supply chain management or best practice in fisheries management. The two winners, SMEA graduate student Lily Zhao and Timothy Munyikana Kakai from Pwani University, Kenya were selected from a record 70 applications from 30 countries. 

By Danielle Edelman
The freshly-minted SMEA class of 2017 is incredibly diverse, and their plans for the future reflect the incredible pool of talent they represent. Two recent grads share their post-SMEA destinations. 

Grace Ferrara
Grace has worked for the National Marine Fisheries Service since Summer 2016. She has recently been selected for the prestigious Knauss Fellowship in Washington, D.C., which begins in February of next year. 

Why did you decide to pursue a Master of Marine Affairs?
After spending a couple of years working on community-based marine conservation projects in the developing world, I realized that in order to help build impactful and resilient conservation initiatives I needed to further strengthen some of my technical skills. Through my job, I had been exposed to challenges that were not solely scientific or development focused in nature. 

Professor Eddie Allison was a co-author on two recently published articles. “Adaptive capacity: from assessment to action in coastal social-ecological systems,” published in Ecology and Society, draws on case studies of coastal communities from around the globe, describing and comparing 11 approaches that are often used to study adaptive capacity of social and ecological systems in the face of social, environmental, and climatic change. 

Assistant Professor Ryan Kelly was featured on Parsing Science’s recent podcast which highlights 2016 SMEA alumna, Annie Hillier’s, master’s thesis “Is There a Role for Narrative Attributes in Scientific Literature?” In the episode, Kelly tells the unpublished stories behind the article “Narrative Style Influences Citation Frequency in Climate Change Science,” which he published along with co-authors Hillier and Professor Terrie Klinger in the December 2016 edition of PLoS One. 

A big congratulations to recent SMEA graduates Grace Ferrara, Jimmy Kralj, and Carrie Schmaus who were selected as Washington Sea Grant’s John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellows for 2017-18.
The Sea Grant Knauss Fellowship provides a unique educational and professional experience to graduate students who have an interest in ocean, coastal and Great Lakes resources and in the national policy decisions affecting those resources.  

SMEA Professor and Associate Director Nives Dolsak, and UW Professor and Director of the Center for Environmental Politics Aseem Prakash recently wrote an article for The Conversation titled, “Are we overreacting to US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate?” In the article Dolsak and Prakash state the President’s withdrawal from the agreement is a symbolic action with little substantive impact on climate mitigation, and as such, it is critical not to overreact and lose sight of domestic issues that could significantly jeopardize future climate policies. 

SMEA Research Associate Ramon Gallego and co-authors from the University of Auckland published a paper in the Journal of Biogeography titled “On the need to consider multiphasic sensitivity of marine organisms to climate change: a case study of the Antarctic acorn barnacle.” In the paper the authors present the first study in which species distribution models (SDMs) have been simultaneously developed for both the larval and adult stages of the same organism, highlighting the importance of considering such effects on both larval and adult life stages.