On Climate Change:

​

I collaborate with a fellow graduate student and a faculty member in UMaine's Climate Change Institute to bring the experience of the United Nations climate change meetings back to Maine. We are using Climate Interactive's World Climate Simulation tool which give participants an opportunity to become a country and try to negotiate a climate deal. To date, we have run the program at the Climate Change Institute's annual retreat, the 2018 Camden Conference, The Maine Science Teacher Association annual conference, at UMaine's Hutchinson Center for the general public, and with students in the Orono based Upward Bound Program. We have scheduled 8 more programs that will reach over 500 Maine students during the 2018-2019 academic year.

​

To bring these students to the UN meeting with us, I will be participating in the Maine Cooperative Extension 4H Follow A Researcher program. Through this program, students have the opportunity to learn about how graduate students conduct research in the field and the ways in which this connects back to what they are learning in the classroom. 

​

I am also working with colleagues in UMaine's Climate Change Institute to institutionalize UMaine's attendance at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) annual Conference of the Parties (COPs). In 2017, I helped lead UMaine's inaugural delegation to COP23 in Bonn, Germany. We have gathered University support, and are planning to bring a delegation of up to 10 students and faculty to the upcoming COP24 in Katowice, Poland. To support this initiative, I co-authored "A Scientist's Guide to the COP" with a fellow graduate student, to support UMaine's new delegates.

 

Other Activities:

 

I also enjoy volunteering at the Orono Community Garden, serving on Dickinson College's President's Commission on Environmental Sustainability as an alumni representative, and participating on committees within my departments at UMaine such as the planning committees for the Climate Change Institute's annual retreat and for the School of Policy and International Affair's participation in the Camden Conference.