Our New Dispatch
Welcome to a new academic year! While the pandemic isn’t over, we do seem to be finally crawling out from under the darkest strands of its long shadow. Campus and our program have restarted and are more or less back to our pre-pandemic activities. Our classes, labs, and offices are again full of students, staff, and faculty. Everyone is dusting their offices, recycling hallway flyers advertising seminars from last January, and back to complaining about the lack of nearby parking spots. To help with that restart, we will be sending out this weekly dispatch. Enjoy the first edition of the ESRM Dispatch.
New Faces
We have several new faces joining us this fall.
Professor Joana Tavares is teaching our ESRM 205: Introduction to Sustainability Science course. Zach and Dr. A met the UC Irvine Ph.D. candidate last fall during a livecast from Huntington Beach where they were sampling oil deposition in the wake of the October 1, 2022 Huntington Beach Oil Spill. Astute observers will recognize her from a Dew Drop Inn in mid-October where we talked about her Ph.D., her path from Brazil to California, and tackling environmental problems with passion and dedication.
Professor Julie Larson is teaching our brand new GIS course, ESRM 228: Maps to Apps. Her path to CSUCI took this hydrologist through UC Berkeley and UCLA. Most recently she has worked for several years with Kasraie’s Consulting, the home base of Hassan Kasraie who has partnered with Dr. A over the years on various hydrological and TMDLs projects across Ventura County.
We are also doubly fortunate to have not one, but two National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded teaching fellows with us this semester via the Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) network.
Professor Rachel Torres is teaching Data Visualization (ESRM 303) alongside Dr. Fairfax, and Professor Timnit Kefela is partnering with Dr. A in ESRM 462 (Coastal and Marine Management). Professor Torres’ graduate research merges ecohydrological models with tree species-level remote sensing data to explore urban tree resilience to drought and how we can adapt irrigation and landscaping for more resilient urban vegetation in the face of intensifying drought and a changed climate more generally. Professor Kefela’s nearly-completed Ph.D. is unraveling the sources, pathways, and fates of plastic pollution in coastal and urban soils. And while Professor Kefela isn’t technically a new face here in ESRM (many of you might have had her for Coastal Contaminants last Spring), her fellowship engagement with us is guaranteed to elevate our teaching and learning and bring a fresh perspective to Coastal Management.
Reopened Doors
ESRM is back in full swing with the start of the fall semester. We have a host of open labs for working on data visualizations or GIS assignments, new trainings for microplastic technicians, and new lab meetings. Stop by the Tech Lab in Sierra Hall to find out the latest offerings and schedules. If you are totally new to ESRM (and even if you are an old hand), make sure to mark your calendars for our Welcome Back Celebration (on Thursday, Sept 8). In the meantime, come pop on over to our office hours and say hello to your profs…we love to chat.
ESRM In the News
Here is a brief round-up of some of the places ESRM has been popping up in the media in the last few weeks.
ABC10. 2022. Beavers Be Beavers.
Carlson, C. 2022. State denies additional water for fire-prone Southern California neighborhoods. Ventura County Star, August 12.
Tavares, J. 2022. Morro Bay estuary program gets $4.5 million from EPA. How will the money be used?. The San Luis Obispo Tribune. August 22.
Wells, C. 2022. Who’s breaking drought rules? SoCal science teacher can show you. Greater LA, KCRW. July 20 (rebroadcast on various other NPR shows in subsequent weeks).
Happenings
Get the following dates onto your calendars:
ESRM Plastics Orientation: Sept 1 (Thursday) & Sept 2 (Friday). This is for anyone wishing to do macro or microplastic work this semester.
AARR Weekly Lab Meetings (everyone is welcome!): Each Friday at noon in Tech Lab
ESRM Welcome Back Community Throwdown: Sept 8 (Thursday) 11am-2pm 2nd Floor Sierra Deck
Western Society of Naturalists Annual Meeting is in Oxnard this year: November 10-13
Need Help? We’ve Got You
Dr. A is our Academic Advisor this semester. While you are welcome to chat with any of our ESRM crew about your plans, Dr. A should be your first stop. He is also the one who will handle all the official things such as crediting a course taken at a previous university, changing your emphasis, ideas for which courses to take next semester, etc.
To get you answers:
- Start with filling out your info via this link:
- Then make an advising appointment with Dr. A to get your questions answered:
Schedule an Appointment with Dr. A
Remembering our Friend
We end this dispatch with a melancholy note. Someone most of you never had the opportunity to meet impacts ESRM to this day. Dr. Cause Hanna grew up in Ventura County, went away to college, and ultimately completed his PhD on invasive species at UC Berkeley, with most of his work centered on the Big Island of Hawai’i. Cause joined CSUCI just as we were closing in on the specific idea for a research station on Santa Rosa Island. He taught with ESRM and ultimately became our founding Director of the Research Station. He laid all of the groundwork for that integral part of our program and campus. He had only been with us a few years when he was diagnosed with cancer. And while our campus has struggled through many horrible times, this date five years ago was the most gutting for our ESRM family. It happened to be the start of our semester. The first Monday of Week 1. Five minutes into our Coastal and Marine Management class we received word that our friend had succumbed to his illness, and the world went dark.
If you have a few minutes, I’d invite you to peruse our Padlet where folks who knew Cause are sharing memories and reflections on our friend who left us five years ago. He is gone but his spirit and impact play out in all of you. I miss my friend but am glad he and his family became a part of our ESRM family.
Be well everyone. And see if you can spy a dragonfly today.
Where might we meet up for the micro/macroplastics orientation?