Owen Doherty and Charles Wall have been selected as the two new Schubel Fellows for 2008. The J.R. Schubel Graduate Fellowship, named for former Dean and Director of MSRC Jerry Schubel, provides an annual stipend supplement for SoMAS graduate students committed to translating science into forms that are accessible to the public and/or inform public policy.
The selection committee, which included Leslie Taylor, Larry Swanson, Anne McElroy, and Sultan Hameed, was impressed with Doherty and Wall’s communication skiIIs and previous experiences working with the public.
As an undergraduate, Doherty worked with a local elementary school teacher to develop a curriculum for teaching basic meteorology to fifth graders. “Many elementary school teachers don’t have strong science background but want to know more about science,” says Doherty, “It was great to combine their teaching expertise with my knowledge or science to come up wllh a series of lessons that kids could enjoy.”
Doherty also worked on a program in the south Bronx that studied whether planting trees on the outskirts of parks and schools would reduce atmospheric particulates of less than 2.5 microns that can cause respiratory health problems. Doherty and other researchers worked with community groups to plant trees and deploy instruments to measure particulate matter. Doherty enjoyed talking to non-scientists about the research going on in their neighborhood. “A lot of people had never seen scientific equipment up close,” he says, “I think it made the world of science a little more accessible.”
As part of his Schubel Fellowship commitment, Doherty plans to create a blog that discusses environmental issues in a non-biased way, particularly issues that face Long Island and the New York metro area.
Charles Wall is a Ph.D. student in Chris Gobler’s lab who studies benthic-pelagic coupling in estuaries, particularly how benthic suspension feeders such as bivalves structure estuarine ecosystems.
Before beginning graduate school, Wall taught science at several outdoor education programs on the West Coast.
Inspired by the success of the Southampton Coastal and Estuarine Research Program (SCERP) environmental symposium, he plans to create more public forums for discussion of local environmental issues.
Wall is particularly interested in restoring bivalves to Long Island estuaries. He plans to collabotate with the Cornell Cooperative Extension, which has a shellfish hatchery in Southold, on activities to engage lhe aquaculture community.
“Science education is very important,” says Wall, explaining that too frequently the public doesn’t have an adequate foundation in basic science to understand important concepts.
“The fact that we’re still arguing about the existence of evolution and climate change means we [scientists] are not doing a good enough job.” he says, “How can you understand what’s going on in the world if you don’t at least have some general background in science?”
