3292 Views (as of 05/2023)
  1. Carrie Ferraro
  2. https://c2r2.rutgers.edu/
  3. Associate Director, Coastal Climate Risk & Resilience Initiative
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Rutgers University
  1. John Gattuso
  2. https://gattusomediadesign.com/
  3. Communications Consultant
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Rutgers University
  1. Jeanne Herb
  2. Director
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. Rutgers University
  1. Adam Hubeny
  2. Borough Administrator
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. Atlantic Highlands
  1. Robert Kopp
  2. http://www.bobkopp.net
  3. Professor
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Rutgers University

NRT: Coastal Climate Risk and Resilience (C2R2)

NSF Awards: 1633557

2021 (see original presentation & discussion)

Graduate

Addressing risks posed by changing climate conditions in coastal areas demands innovative strategies that intersect multiple disciplines including engineering, ecology, communication, climate science, and community planning. To be usable, it also requires engaging local stakeholders in the development of research questions, the assessment of implications of research for planning and policy, and the communication of research results. This video highlights an example of this type of collaboration and co-production, focusing on work done between students in the Coastal Climate Risk & Resilience (C2R2), an NSF Research Traineeship at Rutgers University, 2 NJ shore towns and the NJ Department of Environmental Protection.

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Discussion from the 2021 STEM For All Video Showcase (14 posts)
  • Icon for: Carrie Ferraro

    Carrie Ferraro

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Director, Coastal Climate Risk & Resilience Initiative
    May 10, 2021 | 02:12 p.m.

    Thank you for taking the time to check out our video on how Rutgers graduate students are working with local municipalities to make the coast more resilient to climate change. Our video focuses on some examples of how this collaboration has benefited all of the participants. If you have participated in similar activities, we would love to hear about your experience and the outcomes for those involved. Of course, we would also be happy to answer any questions you may have about our program or its components.

  • Icon for: Heather Hopkins

    Heather Hopkins

    Informal Educator
    May 11, 2021 | 11:32 a.m.

    This is great work and so wonderful to hear the students' share how the hands-on experience made an impact on how they will view and solve problems moving forward.

    In order to broaden understanding of human behavior - as you mentioned how people react to resilience - in what ways did/do you collaborate with students/faculty from the social sciences? And how did you ensure the local concerns of community stakeholders from areas that may be disproportionately burdened by climate change, such as minority and low-income communities, were integrated into the findings/solutions?

  • Icon for: Carrie Ferraro

    Carrie Ferraro

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Director, Coastal Climate Risk & Resilience Initiative
    May 12, 2021 | 09:03 a.m.

    Hello, Heather! Thank you so much for your kind words and thoughtful questions. Our program serves graduate students from across our university. We have students from the social sciences, including those from human ecology, geography, policy departments, that participate alongside those from engineering and natural sciences. In having students from multiple disciplines in the program and classes together, we can work with them to build confidence in working with those outside their discipline first and then train them to collaborate with stakeholders from outside academia.

    Your question about climate justice is a great one and something that we have worked hard to integrate into the program. Students meet leaders working in climate justice and also have the opportunity to visit some of these more vulnerable areas and here from residents. Every year, we hear from the students that one of the most impactful experiences that they have is driving around Newark, NJ with a local non-profit that is working on equity issues, including those related to climate.

    As part of our studio experience, we have also worked hard to collaborate with communities that do not have the resources available to help them plan for resilience.

    Please feel free to reach out if you'd like any additional information or if anything is unclear.

     
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    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Yolanda Abel
  • Icon for: Joselina Cheng

    Joselina Cheng

    Facilitator
    Professor
    May 13, 2021 | 12:03 p.m.

    Excellent!!! The recruitment of graduate students with multi-disciplinary background and inclusion of diverse talents are so critical for building a robust and sustainable ecosystem. Can you elaborate strategies to help students collaborate climate-related projects with non-academic stakeholders representing government and/or the industry?  Thanks in advance for sharing your expertise.

  • Icon for: Carrie Ferraro

    Carrie Ferraro

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Director, Coastal Climate Risk & Resilience Initiative
    May 14, 2021 | 12:53 p.m.

    Thank you for your excellent question. To prepare the students to work with the different stakeholders, we have them take a course led by professional boundary workers on communicating with decision makers. We also train them to use mental models as a boundary object to facilitate discussions with different audiences. Once they have completed these trainings, the students participate in a studio course where they work together with a client (e.g. municipal official) to address a resilience related concern that the client is facing. After participating in the traineeship program, students are also often brought on individually as technical advisors to work with municipalities.

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Yolanda Abel
  • Icon for: Lydia Horne

    Lydia Horne

    Researcher
    May 11, 2021 | 01:22 p.m.

    Great to see a project thinking about how our social systems influence resilience in addition to biophysical changes! Did you encounter any resistance or skepticism to addressing climate change in the communities you partnered with? Through my own experience working with members of the public, I've seen mixed perceptions of risk in relation to climate change. Also, have there been any publications from your project? (This is very close to some of the research I've been doing on risk, resilience, and climate change in Maine's coastal tourism destinations. I would love to cite your work!)

  • Icon for: Carrie Ferraro

    Carrie Ferraro

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Director, Coastal Climate Risk & Resilience Initiative
    May 12, 2021 | 09:10 a.m.

    Hi, Lydia! Thank you so much for your important question. While we definitely have climate deniers in our state, we are fortunate in that our current state officials have make climate change a priority for the state and planning for the future. We are even the first in the nation to have climate change integrated into all content areas of our K-12 standards. As such, we do not receive much push back from those that we collaborate with.

    I will say that we also run a communicating with decision makers course, which does touch on dealing with resistance and skepticism, to better prepare our students to deal with this issues.

    I would love to hear more about what you are doing. I will definitely watch your video next and if it makes sense to you, perhaps we can touch base at some point.

    Lastly, to address your question about publications, we have published a book chapter about the program. Here's the link: doi:10.4018/978-1-7998-2208-0.ch017. Let me know if you need help gaining access.

  • Icon for: Lydia Horne

    Lydia Horne

    Researcher
    May 12, 2021 | 06:49 p.m.

    Thanks for sharing the paper information! My work with coastal climate resilience was part of my PhD. I've now shifted my focus to STEM education research as a postdoc (the topic of my team's video).

     
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    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Carrie Ferraro
  • Icon for: Gerhard Salinger

    Gerhard Salinger

    Facilitator
    Former Program Officer (NSF)
    May 12, 2021 | 06:54 p.m.

    This is an excellent example of case-based problem-based learning – working on a solution to an issue that someone really cares about.  How does it fit into the graduate student's program of study?  It looks like it could be a group thesis (if such a thing exits).  How many projects do you do per year or overall?  How many students are involved in one project?   How do you evaluate individual student's contributions?  How do you measure the success of the program for the students and for the client community? 

     

  • Icon for: Carrie Ferraro

    Carrie Ferraro

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Director, Coastal Climate Risk & Resilience Initiative
    May 15, 2021 | 05:20 p.m.

    Thank you for your wonderful questions! Over the course of their first two years, the graduate students take three core courses (transdisciplinary perspectives, communicating with decision makers, and a resilience studio course). They also take two elective courses outside of their discipline to learn how other disciplines look at and address a problem.

    In addition to the coursework, we ask that our research based students do a disciplinary plus chapter in their thesis related to resilience along the coast (coast being loosely defined).

    I love the idea of a group thesis and while we have had a couple of student publish journal articles together, their main publication is the report that they work on together as part of the studio program. Thus, along with their individual research projects, the student participate in a group research project as well.

    While we are formally measuring the impact of the program on the students throughout the program through external evaluation, we have not formally measured the impact on the clients. It is something that we have been doing informally through conversations and feedback and something that we hope to develop a more formal mechanism for at a later time.

  • Icon for: John Fraser

    John Fraser

    Researcher
    May 13, 2021 | 09:21 a.m.

    What a wonderful initiative.  It's great to see a program on climate that's working to think about planning as a socio-ecological problem. I wonder if your program is also working with the stakeholder government officials to talk to them about jobs for your graduates in those departments?  One of your interviewees said the report was great, in part, because it didn't cost their department anything.   

    I was also wondering, as I watched the video, if you're engaged with the Association for Climate Change Officers. It seems that a lot of your curriculum would be of interest to their members?

  • Icon for: Carrie Ferraro

    Carrie Ferraro

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Director, Coastal Climate Risk & Resilience Initiative
    May 15, 2021 | 05:31 p.m.


    Thank you so much for your positive feedback and wonderful suggestion to engage with the ACCO. It is definitely a partnership that we should be pursuing. More recently, we have discussed how we can bring this type of systems thinking training to professionals and we are definitely looking at the ACCO core competencies when thinking this through. I hope that once we've piloted something locally, we could connect with larger organizations like the ACCO to expand the training in some form.


    To answer your questions about jobs, yes, in going through the program and meeting the various stakeholders, the student learn about different opportunities beyond the academic track. In fact, this program has opened their eyes to the possibilities beyond academia and we currently have 9 out of 12 C2R2 students working in resilience related fields. Alumni of the program are currently employed by private companies (e.g. Princeton Hydro, Michael Baker, EDR, Silman, and Roux Associates), the NJ Department of Environmental Protection, and other academic institutions (e.g. U Penn’s Warton Risk Center).


    Personally, I wish that when I was working towards my graduate degree that there had been more programs similar to this so that I was aware of all of the job possibilities out there. I believe that this is so important, especially these days.


  • Icon for: Yolanda Abel

    Yolanda Abel

    Facilitator
    Associate Professor
    May 15, 2021 | 12:30 p.m.

    Love the idea and resource sharing going on in this thread. It is an great example of diversity of thought and how we are better when we collaborate than work in silos. 

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Alex DeCiccio
  • Icon for: Carrie Ferraro

    Carrie Ferraro

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Director, Coastal Climate Risk & Resilience Initiative
    May 15, 2021 | 05:32 p.m.

    I agree. Thanks, Yolanda! This has been extremely helpful in thinking through how to improve and expand the program. So thankful for the feedback!

  • Further posting is closed as the event has ended.