Speakers
Topical Presenters
Community Nursing
Maryellen Brisbois
Associate Professor
Community Nursing
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
Bio
Dr. Maryellen D. Brisbois is an Associate Professor in the Community Department at UMass Dartmouth College of Nursing & Health Sciences where she has been teaching since 2013.
She earned a diploma from St. Vincent Hospital School of Nursing, BS in Liberal Studies at Assumption University, MS in Nursing at Worcester State University, and PhD at the Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing, all in Worcester, MA.
She was previously a registered nurse at St. Vincent Hospital/UMass Memorial Health for 20 years and taught in the Undergraduate and Graduate programs at Worcester State University for 6 years before joining the College of Nursing & Health Sciences at UMass Dartmouth.
Her areas of teaching and research interest include global health and education interventions among populations, health and health care disparities, chronic illness, social determinants of health, cancer care and symptomology, global service learning (education and impact), nursing as a caring science, curriculum building and qualitative and mixed methods research.
"Community Health Nursing on the Rise"
Dr. Brisbois will discuss concepts related to Community Health Nursing, such as:
What is Community/Public Health Nursing
Shift to global health and importance of Global Citizenship
How to access reliable health information
Health literacy promotion
Cultural Competence/Diversity
Health disparities
Research methods
Fostering collaboration and partnership with liaison librarian
with an exemplar in the UMass Dartmouth College of Nursing & Health Sciences.
Monika Schuler
Associate Professor
Community Nursing
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
Bio
Dr. Monika Schuler, PhD, is Associate Professor in the College of Nursing & Health Sciences. She received her PhD from Northeastern University.
Dr. Schuler is a board-certified family nurse practitioner and nurse educator. She has experience teaching with simulation and research with undergraduate and graduate education. She has a program of research that focuses on understanding stigma and nursing in patients with opioid use disorder (OUD). She is actively practicing as a nurse practitioner working with patients with OUD.
"Using curiosity as an intellectual catalyst for change"
I'll share my story about how a spirit of inquiry and curiosity has led to a program of research focusing on reducing stigma when caring for individuals with substance use disorder. My research program focuses on nursing education related role development and how we can address this stigma.
Within this discussion I'll share the story of my journey from cranberry biologist to nurse scientist. Central to my story is the pivotal role that early access to a library played in sparking my intellectual curiosity and shaping my research career.
Civil & Environmental Engineering
Xiaoqi (Jackie) Zhang
Professor
Civil & Environmental Engineering
University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Bio
Dr. Zhang received her Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Cincinnati in 1999; her M.S. Environmental Engineering from Tsinghua University (Beijing) in 1994; and her B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Tongji University (Shanghai) in 1989
Xiaoqi (Jackie) Zhang, Ph.D. has led or participated in many research and educational projects through grants from NSF, EPA, USGS, Nanomanufacturing Center of Excellence, New England Transportation Consortium, and Massachusetts Water Resources Research Center. The projects range from generating biogas from algal biomass and septage, evaluating the impact of CNTs on wastewater treatment processes using both a biofilm system and an activated sludge process, introducing nanotechnology to undergraduate curriculum through hands-on laboratory modules, phosphorus removal from septage using iron reducing bacteria, phosphorus removal from confined animal feeding operations by forming struvite, introducing service-learning activities into her classrooms to enhance students’ learning, evaluating the effectiveness of stormwater best management practices, and examining the structure and properties of biofilms through extensive study of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS).
"Overview of Civil & Environmental Engineering"
Dr. Zhang's research focuses on wastewater treatment, particularly in the clearing of contaminants, including such techniques as nanotechnology, biofilm, and activated sludge. She has broad interests in renewable energy, biofilm properties, bioremediation, and more. She has been involved in shaping undergraduate curriculum as well as program coordinator for graduate students. Her overview will help us understand the focus and priorities of civil and environmental engineers as well as how they use and rely on library services and librarians.
What is the structure of the field; what are the foundational ideas? What are the big questions that this field is asking? In what new directions is research in this science going? How is research conducted in the field? What instrumentation is used? How is data captured?
Nefeli Bompoti
Assistant Professor
Civil & Environmental Engineering
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
Bio
Dr. Nefeli Bompoti is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Dr. Bompoti’s expertise is in reactive transport and environmental geochemistry, data-driven approaches in environmental systems, sustainable land reuse, societal impacts from environmental stressors, and environmental policy.
She has previously served as the Project Manager of the Technical Assistance for Brownfields Program EPA Region 1 at the University of Connecticut where she assisted communities with brownfield redevelopment projects across New England.
She received a PhD in environmental engineering from the University of Connecticut, a MSc in water resources science and technology and a Diploma in civil engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.
"Tackling Environmental Pollution Challenges: From the Nanoworld to the Community"
Environmental contamination, as the presence of harmful pollutants in the air, water, and soil, is one of the 21st century's challenges and a main threat to human health. Research topics from understanding the fate and transport of pollutants in the environment and understanding the behavior of new emerging pollutants to societal impacts of the contamination will be discussed in the presentation. The talk will introduce the audience to research in the environmental field, giving a higher-level overview of the scientific significance and broader impacts of the research.
Fisheries Oceanography
Steven Cadrin
Bio
Steve Cadrin is a Professor at the University of Massachusetts School for Marine Science and Technology. Steve has a PhD in Fisheries Science from University of Rhode Island, a MS in Marine Biology from University of Massachusetts, and a BS in Marine Science from Long Island University. He has been a stock assessment scientist for over 30 years, previously with the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts Marine Fisheries, and New York Department of Environmental Conservation.
His accomplishments include the advancement of stock assessment methods for a wide range of invertebrate and finfish species, fishery management advice for regional, national and international fisheries, and global leadership in evaluating geographic stock structure and modeling spatially complex populations. He has chaired several regional, national and international working groups and committees and has convened workshops, symposia, and conferences for the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas, National Marine Fisheries Service, New England Fishery Management Council, American Fisheries Society and the Northeast Fish and Wildlife Conference.
Steve received the American Fisheries Society’s Oscar E. Sette Award for sustained excellence in marine fishery biology, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s 2021 Scholar of the Year Award, and the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative’s Excellence in Mentoring Inaugural Award. He is also Past President of the American Institute of Fisheries Research Biologists. His teaching and research agendas focus on population modeling, stock identification, fisheries management, collaborative research with fishermen, and application of advanced technologies for fishery science.
"New Frontiers in Fisheries Science"
Fishery science was traditionally focused on single species population dynamics to achieve optimum yield. However, the effects of climate change on fishery productivity and efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change have accelerated the need for socio-ecological approaches. Traditional stock assessments that assume stationary productivity are no longer accurate for many species impacted by climate change. In response, recent stock assessments of New England groundfish identified ecosystem influences, like bottom temperature, Mid-Atlantic Cold Pool indices, and the Gulf Stream index, which have significant effects on recruitment, natural mortality, growth, and catchability of fisheries and surveys. These environmental effects are being used to standardize fishery and survey catch rates and as covariates in population dynamics models. Accounting for environmental drivers in stock assessment and fishery management can adapt to changing conditions, but fishery managers cannot completely mitigate the effects of climate change.
Reducing emissions through the development of renewable energy may be the most effective strategy to mitigating the effects of climate change. However, offshore wind farms also effect fisheries through ecosystem changes and direct impacts on fishing. In response, fisheries research is pivoting to multi-scale socio-ecological studies to understand potential impacts on the ecosystem and fisheries. Pre-construction baseline surveys are ongoing and transitioning to construction or operation phase monitoring to detect impacts on all major ecosystem components, from plankton to whales. Fishery monitoring data designed to support stock assessment and fishery management are now being used to estimate economic impacts. These recent applications demonstrate how climate change and offshore wind farms have accelerated the development of marine spatial planning, ecological research at multiple scales, operational socioeconomic analyses, and ecosystem approaches to stock assessment and fishery management.
Gavin Fay
Associate Professor
Fisheries Oceanography
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
Bio
Dr. Fay's research applies statistical and mathematical models for better ecosystem-based decision making for our oceans and the people who depend on them. He is interested in both developing new methods for statistical modeling, fisheries assessment, and ecosystem-based management; and also in how open data science tools enable better co-creation, communication, and use of scientific results for application to management and policy.
"Knowledge co-production to improve management outcomes for the US summer flounder recreational fishery"
Ecosystem approaches to fisheries management recognize people as part of a socio-ecological system and consider links among environmental, economic, and societal goals for sustainability. Our work focuses on creating decision support tools that can quantify tradeoffs among these goals. As part of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council's Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management, we have been conducting a management strategy evaluation to compare options designed to reduce discarding in the recreational summer flounder fishery, to increase both harvest and recreational opportunities. Reducing regulatory discards within the recreational sector of the summer flounder fishery has been challenging, and there is uncertainty in how information about the status of the flounder population should be translated into changes to recreational fishing regulations.
Through a collaborative, stakeholder-driven, and science-based process, we have developed a framework that integrates a model of flounder population dynamics with an angler economic behavior model to understand how recreational behavior at the state level responds to changing regulations and flounder availability. We use this framework to assess the relative benefits of a set of alternatives for managing the recreational fishery, over a suite of biological, social, and economic performance metrics. Our results show there are management options that can do better at reducing discards and converting those discards into harvest while limiting risk to the summer flounder population. However, the relative performance of management options is variable at the state or regional level, with negative recreational satisfaction outcomes for some states compared to status quo even when overall fishery performance improves. These models and results can be used to directly inform recreational management and provide both strategic and tactical advice for a variety of management priorities. The ability to compute likely outcomes of management options at the state or regional level provides a pathway for explicitly considering distribution of benefits when making management choices.
Capstone
Citizen Science in Academic Libraries
Caroline Nickerson
Executive Director and co-founder of Florida Community Innovation (FCI)
Citizen Science Advisor with SciStarter
"Life & Work with Caroline Nickerson" by VoyageTampa
Nickerson Bio
Caroline Nickerson is a citizen science enthusiast and public engagement professional; she is passionate about connecting people with real science they can do -- citizen science -- and believes that libraries are integral hubs for citizen science. She has worked with SciStarter in various capacities, including as Senior Program Director at SciStarter where she managed the Citizen Science Month Program, SciStarter’s Corporate Volunteer Programs and other programmatic and outreach efforts, including working with SciStarter’s Syndicated Blog Network, which encompasses the Discover Magazine and SciStarter platforms, as well as large-scale programs with multiple federal agencies (including NASA, NOAA, and the National Library of Medicine) and global groups (including the United Nations Environment Programme). She currently works at SciStarter as an advisor, managing several different projects, including the corporate volunteer program with Verizon, precision health outreach programs, and multimedia programs like the Flyways and Wild Hope citizen science programs.
Caroline Nickerson is the Executive Director and co-founder of Florida Community Innovation (FCI), a civic technology nonprofit. Caroline empowers over 50 student innovators from more than five different universities to build social services technologies, engage in research projects, and conduct public service efforts to benefit Floridians, including the Florida Resource Map, which promises to be the first-of-its-kind digital access point connecting Floridians to food banks, job resources, and more.
Caroline is also a PhD candidate in Agricultural Education and Communication at the University of Florida. At UF, Caroline has worked on multiple projects, including a climate change communication series with UF/IFAS Extension, creating the Internet of Things for Precision Agriculture community engagement team, research assessing the Restore the Shore project, and public engagement research about a certification for pollinator-friendly plants. She has also TA'd for multiple classes, including a social media class, a public policy class, and a multimedia communication class.
Caroline is a Master of Public Policy graduate from American University, where she was a Reilly Environmental Policy Scholar, an honor conferred by the former director of the EPA, Bill Reilly. Caroline was an undergrad at the University of Florida and was one of the inaugural recipients of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ Student Excellence Award, an honor conferred to only three graduating seniors. She graduated with honors as a double major in History and Chinese.
In her spare time, she volunteers with the UF-VA Bioethics Unit, the Christensen Project (where she serves homeless and underserved groups), and others.
Caroline also co-founded the Commission on Local Debates and produced multiple debates for local elections in Central Florida that ran on local news.
As a fun fact, Caroline was the 2019 Cherry Blossom Princess representing the state of Florida and the grand prize scholarship winner at Miss Earth USA 2021 as Miss Louisiana Earth. She was also recently featured in a children's book about open science!
Kavanagh Bio
Dr. Kavanagh teaches vertebrate anatomy, evolution, development, and marine ecology. She has a research career including field, laboratory, and theoretical studies on aspects of biodiversity including marine larval ecology, coral reef fish ecology and evolution, skeletal development and evolution in all major vertebrate groups. She has participated in NSF REU, GRFP, and EDEN projects as a teachers mentor.
As outreach, she developed a service-learning program entitled “Bones: Your Inner Animal” which introduced biology undergraduates to scientific communication and service by bringing the concepts of evolution to over 3000 schoolchildren on the South Coast of Massachusetts over the past decade. She also runs a weeklong Science Camp for Girls each summer and is involved in diversity and curriculum leadership on campus. Her research is published in Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and Proceedings of the Royal Society, among others.
Witzig Bio
Dr. Witzig teaches research methods courses for STEM Education doctoral students including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research approaches in addition to advising STEM Education doctoral dissertations. He is a science educator who studies SSI-based instruction as well as the development of teachers' specialized knowledge for teaching science (K-16). Specifically, he is interested in the sources of teachers' content and pedagogical knowledge as well as how experience shapes their knowledge. Rooted in this work, his research includes investigations on how teacher knowledge shapes student learning.
In the area of teacher professional development, he is currently the PI on the 3-year NSF IUSE funded CUBICS project and was PI on a six-year NSF grant (TEACH! SouthCoast STEM) working with STEM teachers from high needs schools in the areas of STEM content knowledge, technology, and leadership. His research is published in the International Journal of Science Education, Research in Science Education, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, Journal of College Science Teaching, and Science & Children, among others.
This capstone features a combined program that begins with an interactive presentation of tiered options for getting your library involved in citizen science from the fantastic Dr. Caroline Nickerson followed by a discussion with UMass Dartmouth faculty on their work integrating citizen science into classrooms.
Dr. Nickerson works extensively with SciStarter, an organization which promotes and facilitates citizen science for both researchers and participants, particularly on resources and programming for their Library Network. She's planned an interactive presentation with a tiered approach to getting involved, depending on the amount of time, money, and emphasis you're able to commit. She'll talk about
basics
kits / outreach projects
integration with faculty/course projects
She recommends exploring SciStarter's Free Citizen Science Training Modules as preparation for the capstone.
After two hours with Dr. Nickerson, we'll take citizen science into the instruction side of academic librarianship with a presentation from UMass Dartmouth faculty Dr. Kathryn Kavanagh and Dr. Stephen Witzig. They recently received a grant for "Connecting Undergraduates to Biodiversity Instruction through Citizen Science (CUBICS)."
"Citizen Science in the Undergraduate Classroom: Resources and Insights from the CUBICS grant"
We will introduce our workshop model for introducing citizen science to faculty to incorporate into their classes. We will also discuss citizen science resources available and provide insights from our CUBICS grant.