News

Julia Whidden, Fulbright Student 2015-2016, talks about how the Ocean Defenders Program helps instill a love of marine biology in young Floridian girls

Our Ocean Defenders Program welcomed 13 girls aged 10 – 15 from Girls Inc. Sarasota to Miami on the weekend of May 4th – 5th. From the moment they arrived on Saturday morning, until the moment they left on Sunday evening, we made it our mission to pack in as much hands-on learning, fun, and exploration as we could! 


A fantastic group photo of our 13 participants from Girls Inc. Sarasota, their 3 chaperones, and our 9 women in STEM shark research crew. Girl power!

After our participants arrived and sorted their belongings into Field School’s R/V Garvin’s bunks, we headed to Hobie Beach on Virginia Key. We started off by splitting into teams designated by patterned Waterlust headbands, made from recycled pre-consumer waste and fabric scraps, into Team Cosmic Coral, Team Abalone, and Team Sun-Kissed Sea. We worked in these teams to first design and then build BRUVs, or Baited Remote Underwater Video Systems, that would passively record the plant and animal community of Hobie Beach’s seagrass bed ecosystem. The girls named these impressive structures “Patricia 0.5” and “Unigo”, and we filled their bait cages with delicious, slimy, and smelly mashed Menhaiden bait before we deployed them in the shallow seagrass beds for a few hours. After completing our BRUV engineering activity, we geared up with snorkels, masks and body boards to survey the seagrass ecosystem with our own eyes. The body boards were useful to keep our feet off the seagrass and the water clear. Since one of the functions of seagrass is to trap sediment, shuffling around it stirs everything up and reduces the visibility in the water to pretty much nothing! While we were enjoying our snorkeling adventure, Field School Director Dr. Catherine Macdonald and interns Kylie and Marissa pulled a seine net through the water to catch small creatures living in the seagrass. Despite us not seeing much more than swaying seagrass meadows during our snorkeling, seining seemed to catch everything that we couldn’t see! We put our catches into small jars and passed them around so everyone could get a good look while Kylie and Marissa taught us all about the incredible creatures. These finds included: 
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By Christy Yu, Killam Fellow 2018-2019

Upon returning from my exchange with the Killam Fellowships Program, I’ve had some time to reflect on my experience at the University of Washington. Spending a few months in Seattle and immersing myself into the American culture allowed me to gain insight into daily life as a student in the US. During my time abroad, I intended on taking advantage of unique academic and cultural opportunities.

One of the courses I took at the University of Washington was jointly offered for undergraduate and graduate students majoring in global health or bioengineering. Each week, researchers were invited to our class to present a health challenge currently faced by women and children, as well as possible solutions. Being part of a discussion in which opinions were shared through the lens of the two fields enabled me to gain a holistic understanding and form connections between concepts. Global health experts identify problems, while bioengineers come up with novel approaches. It is crucial that the product specifically targets the issue by considering contextual factors, in addition to incorporating the perspective of the end user. I had the chance to observe projects in progress during a behind-the-scenes tour with the Shop Team at PATH, which is an international, non-profit global health organization based in Seattle.
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Hi – my name is Geoffrey Moran and I was a U.S. Fulbright Fellow to Canada who studied environmental values in British Columbia during the mid-1990s. My research contextualized arguments that provincial forestry stakeholders were using to assert natural resource value claims, by tying their lines of argument to prominent socio-ethical traditions. My goal was to help everyone better understand one another’s underlying belief systems, and thereby help mediate their land-use conflicts.

Fast forward several decades and life has landed me in San Diego, California, a fair distance from the academic dining tables of Green College, UBC and the conifer-filled forests of Vancouver Island. Yet one thing that remains with me from my Fulbright Fellowship is a healthy respect for how sociocultural contexts influence our valuations of nature. read more

By: Julia Whidden, 2015-2016 Fulbright Student and recipient of a 2018 Eco Leadership Grant

In December 2018, I ran a weekend

-long, overnight marine conservation program with 12 girls from the organization Girls Inc. Sarasota. Our “Threatened Ecosystems and Species of South Florida” program was run in partnership with Field School, and funded by a Fulbright Canada Eco Leadership grant. read more

 

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Current Killam Fellow Shana Edouard is sharing her story on her personal blog: bit.ly/2zGQwTB

“Last Friday, early in the morning, I headed to Ottawa (the capital of Canada!) for the first time to attend the Fulbright Canada Fall Orientation. Over the course of the weekend, I got to meet many more Killam Fellows and Fulbright Students and Scholars, as well as other members of the Fulbright Canada community! Everyone was very intellectual, but also very genuine.

On the first day of Orientation, we went on an Indigenous walking tour and visited the Parliament of Canada. On the morning of the second day of orientation, we listened to panels of Fulbright Scholars discuss their research. It was awesome to learn about the research that scholars and Ph.D. students are doing and it was very exciting to hear how they’re going to spend their time in Canada in research during their grant period. To bring the orientation to a close, we went to the Carleton University Ice House to play a friendly game of hockey!  My time in Ottawa was a wonderful experience and I cannot wait to see the Killam Fellows in D.C. for the Fulbright Canada Spring Enhancement Seminar!”

Or, create a vlog like Liliana Zigo, Killam Fellow, 2017-2018: bit.ly/2QXdBa5

Perhaps, you’d prefer to submit a blog post to the Fulbright Canada blog like Dr. John Hartig, Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Global Governance, 2017-2018: bit.ly/2KSXtIs

Please reach out to us if you have any questions, plan to start your own blog, or you wish to submit to the Fulbright Canada blog.

 

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Public Affairs and Alumni Relations Coordinator, Fulbright Canada

ablackiedemos@fulbright.ca read more

Mallory and Ian both received Fulbright Student Awards to spend this past academic year at the University of New Brunswick. Mallory’s research uses linguistic analysis as an avenue to understand First Nations cultural landscapes in Maine and New Brunswick. Ian’s work examines the historic connections between humans and non-domesticated animals in Maine and New Brunswick. After becoming familiar with each other’s work through UNB’s Rural Issues Workshop they recognized they were both interested in First Nations history. They decided to explore this intersection in a co-authored paper for a Fulbright Enhancement Seminar, “Securing Our Future: Innovation, Action, and Entrepreneurship,” held in Ottawa in March, 2018. Both enjoyed working together and wanted to share their unique experience. read more

Are you ready to start your journey?