Hello everyone and welcome to Meet the Experts:
Empowering Yourself on your Science Journey. We are just waiting a couple minutes for folks to join
and get connected but we are so excited to talk to you all today and introduce you to our speaker,
Marissa Vera and while we're waiting for folks to join we want to hear from you. We
have a word cloud question for you about what are you passionate about. We want to know what are
you passionate about because we're going to be talking a bit about
different STEM careers today
as well as how that connects to your passions. I think we're gonna go ahead and get started
today so we today are going to be doing Meet the Experts: Empowering Yourself on your
Science Journey and I'm Katie Wilson with the UCAR Center for Science Education
and this is Meet the Experts. We have folks joining today from all over the world. We
have folks that are coming to us from here in Boulder, Colorado where we are at the National
Center for Atmospheric Resea
rch. We have folks that are connecting from Turkey, from India
from Tanzania, from Florida, from Louisiana, Virginia, all over the country here in the
U.S. Wee are so excited to welcome you to Meet the Experts. For those of you who haven't
seen it before or participated before Meet the Experts is a monthly Q and A where we connect you to
experts in the weather, climate, and Earth sciences and we are so excited to connect
you with our expert today, Marissa Vera. I'm going to introduce her in
just a moment but before we
do that I also want to share that this month's Meet the Expert as well as next week's Meet
the Expert are part of the worldwide teaching on climate and justice. Today
is actually the main event day for the worldwide teaching climate and justice. There are events
happening all over the world today and in the coming days we have a second event happening next
week on Wednesday, April 5th that we invite you to come participate in as well but I'm going to go
ahead a
nd turn it over to the event organizers who have a quick welcome video to welcome us all
and bring us into that climate and teaching event. thank you [Music] welcome to the worldwide teaching on climate
and justice you are joining tens of thousands of students at hundreds of schools across the
planet in learning and thinking about the work each of you can do now and in your future to
repair the climate and lead a just transition to a clean energy future your worldwide kitchen will
mobilize
the power of Educators and students and Empower generation of fighting to stabilize
the climate and Advance climate suggestions we all need to get comfortable talking about
climate all the time the teaching helps us do that is equal to organize events on campus or
community on or around March 29th 2023 [Music] biggest threat to your future is
thinking that somehow someone else is going to stop global warming this is
the great work of Our Generation we hope this teaching will help you find y
our
own Pathway to Preparing the climate All right everyone, so this is just one of the
events as part of that worldwide teach-in and today what we are going to be doing is we are
going to be talking with Marissa Vera who is a higher education specialist here at the UCAR
Center for Science Education. Throughout this presentation I want to encourage you all to
type to us in the chat or use the Q and A function in this webinar to ask your questions and you can ask
questions at any time based
on anything you hear or see during the presentation or anything you
want to share in response to what we're talking about. This is going to be an interactive presentation.
We'll have some questions for you and also time for questions from all of you so please feel
free to if you haven't already type in the chat to let us know where you're watching from today. We
would love to say hello and know where everyone is joining us from so type that in the chat and then also
feel free to enter any
questions you have for us at any time during the presentation. There's
also closed captioning available through Zoom too that you can turn on and off if you would like
that. So without further ado I'm going to go ahead and bring on our speaker. Welcome Marisa. Hi, thank
you. Marissa is somebody who is a higher education specialist here at the UCAR Center for Science Education. She is
a wonderful teammate of ours and Marissa can you tell us a bit more about what do you do as a
higher educati
on specialist. Yeah, so my job is to be helping the students, undergrads mostly,
that are from historically marginalized communities and find their career path and help them guide them
through their career path, give them advice, support them, mentor them, find good mentors for them. Really
just kind of help them grow in the person that they are and in the STEM careers
themselves. So you're kind of helping people find their path or empowering them on their path to
their STEM careers. Yes,
so that's what I hope is that I get them figuring out what
they're really passionate about, what they're really interested in and then they connect all
the dots together and then hopefully they follow their passion and go on with their careers
that way and then another part of my position is really wanting to not only allow the students
to find their career paths and get there but I don't want them to go into an environment that
maybe isn't the most welcoming for them. So a big portion of m
y career or my position is to really
help the culture and the environment within the STEM fields to be more inclusive of all
people so it's a mix of both things. So you need both of those things right. It's so important
and especially creating that healthy environment for everyone going into the STEM fields and so
we're going to get into that a bit more later but we want to turn it over to our audience
now and find out, I know we have a variety of folks registered that are going to be at di
fferent
stages in there career path and in their science journeys so we're curious to learn from you
about what kind of job do you want to have or do you have right now. What kind of work do
you do. Is it connected to the STEM field or not. We want to know from you so type that
in the chat if you can share with us what kind of job do you want to have or what kind of job
do you have and we're talking a bit about STEM careers. Those science, technology, engineering,
math are those science jo
bs. And so a lot of people might think about science jobs just being
a researcher or a scientist right. Are there other types of jobs that might be. Absolutely, yes I'm an
educator but I still consider myself a scientist. I still work in the science fields. I'm still very
much a STEM professional but as an educator I get to do a mix of using my science passion and what
I'm interested in and helping those students in their education and their
pathways. So that's one example, I was a teacher
before. I was a science teacher. That's still in the
STEM field. You can also be a park ranger looking and guiding people through walking trails and
things like that and learning about the ecosystems around. That's a stem career. There's a wide variety
in the federal research labs, academia, all sorts of different types of STEM jobs out there.
I think one thing too that I like especially through these Meet the Expert programs is we
get to do is we get to meet so many different types of job
s, right, that are related to the STEM
fields. So here the National Center for Atmospheric Research we have aircraft mechanics,
we have chefs, we have lawyers, we have custodial staff, we have facilities maintenance jobs.
There are all sorts of jobs that are supporting STEM or working in STEM fields that I think are
so important and so powerful for us to remember. Let's see what we have from our audience here.
We have a research administrator in STEM with a spanish literature and latin amer
ican
studies background, we have PhD students focusing on the marine carbon cycle and in the future
they're hoping to work on marine carbon dioxide removal as a climate change solution. That's
awesome. That's super awesome. Thank you everybody for sharing that. I
want to take a second to look back to our first question when we're all getting started about
what are we passionate about. So let's go ahead and pull up that word cloud responses and let's see
what some of our audience are passio
nate about. I like the helping my community.
That's also something I'm very passionate about and I think my job suits that
passion really well. Climate justice, accessible STEM education, I really like that too. I
like to do things, I'm seeing here, with my church and family, right, so having those things that you're
passionate about in your personal life and in your family and thinking about how those might connect
to climate justice, climate action to climate science, including everyone,
accessible
education, connecting people, human connections. A lot of connections in here too I'm seeing and so
I think we're going to talk a little bit and Marissa is going to share a little bit about
what she's learned about connecting what you're passionate about to your careers or what job you
want to or even if it's not a job instead maybe it's a hobby instead. Maybe you're doing community
science and citizen science and that kind of work as well and so science can be accessible for a
lot in lots of different ways. There's multiple different ways to do science. It's not just being
in a research lab. I'm actually going to step off camera but Marissa,
I'm curious. We're talking a lot about STEM and science and that kind of stuff. Were you
always interested in science? Were you kind of a science kid? I was very much a science kid growing
up. I grew up in a small town in Texas called Uvalde, Texas with my beautiful family here
that you can see and I grew up in the country k
ind of. It was a big, huge amount of land that I
could just go and explore and really be curious and really step into my curiosity. I would go
and crack open rocks or I would climb up a tree and look at the different types of leaves
or lay down on the grass and stare up into the clouds and see it moving and being like
oh, wow, clouds move and the world churns and this is so interesting and so I was very interested
in the environment and the elements that were surrounding me. However, I alwa
ys assumed that
the only way I could do science was to be in some sort of biological field so I thought it would be
like a health science or an animal kind of medical science field so a veterinarian or a doctor were
really the only two things that I thought were options for me as a kid so I had no idea that
there was an actual science out there for our system sciences and the environment and climate
and things like that even though those were things I was passionate about. I thought I just
had to be into
the biological science to do them but it wasn't until I joined Geoforce, which is an outreach
program that focused on South Texas, rural South Texas and urban areas of Texas. So the Houston area
and then the San Antonio area where my hometown is at. They recruited a whole bunch of students
from lower income schools and kind of historically marginalized groups as well to really get
them interested and started getting interested in the geosciences so I got recruited my eighth
grade year and started that summer in the program. It's a four-year program. So every summer we went
to a different spot. There are spots in the DC area, there are spots in the Grand Canyon area,
Florida was one of them and Oregon was one of them. But it wasn't until the Oregon spot when I went
to go visit Oregon that I was like hooked on it. Before that it wasn't interesting.
it was just like I just assumed it was just rocks and didn't realize the connections that Earth sciences
have with
the environment and the climate until I went to Oregon and then I saw the different types
of environmental changes and climate changes going from the mountains and the volcanoes there to
the coastline and that drastic change and climate between those two areas and then it clicked. Oh,
I can do environmental climate change within the geosciences and I can have a career outside and
be outdoors which I love doing and really kind of invest in this so I ended up going to undergrad
because geofo
rce is sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin, the Jackson School of Geosciences.
So I ended up going there for my undergrad and I was very excited because I got in and it was
my first choice and it was what I was thinking that I wanted to do but then I got kind of a
reality check I guess you could say. I'm a first generation college student. My parents didn't go
to college so I struggled a lot in my first two years there. I didn't have
the college prep that maybe some other of my
peers had. I wasn't really
great in the basics of the science and math. I wasn't able to really fully understand
those big lecture classes and trying to understand what they were teaching me. I just
ended up realizing I learned in a different way. I got through those most of the time. I went to
a community college and took those classes at a community college but once I got through those
basics and I kind of got into the geoscience classes a little bit more I thrived and I was
like connect
ing all the dots and it made sense what they were talking to me about in chemistry
finally and like it all just started connecting and it wasn't until like probably my third year
in college that I was like, oh okay, I'm learning a little bit differently than maybe my peers
were learning and I see more things in a big picture kind of sense and the little details
need to connect to the big picture for my brain to understand it and having more like hands-on
related things. So all the labs I di
d great on, things like that. It was really interesting
to realize that I just wasn't a typical learner in undergrad and it was an adventure that ended up taking
five years instead of the traditional four years just to really understand everything and then
I wanted to get my grades back up and then graduate and move forward with that. It
sounds like, I think that's a common story. I think we hear it's a very
different environment in high school that it is going into undergrad and there's a
lot of
learning that you do about yourself and about the rest of the world in college that maybe was
going to be a different environment than in high school and so were there any particular
things that you learned about yourself or maybe ways or resources that you've learned
that might be that might be helpful to other people. I mentioned that hands-on
stuff was really important to me so doing the the labs was a good way for me to
understand the material that I was learning. One of my exp
eriences was a field experience if you
see there I'm on a boat swiping off some mud of a collection that we collected for a field
campaign at a field camp that I was on. The group that I was in ended up being
like a whole bunch of different little groups that worked as a team to solve a big problem and it
made just complete sense. I thrived in that environment. I was like oh, I'm a team worker. I know
what my part is. I could make sure that I can get that accomplished and then I
can see ho
w that fits in with the bigger picture and I just got really excited and really invested
in the fact that like this was how I learned, you know and so it was just really oh,
I can do this career. I can be a good scientist in this field and I just need to do it with an
environment that is more of a team environment and a collaborative environment. That's kind of where I
thrive at personally so it was just learning those things about myself, you're great at
this. You're not a bad scientist b
ut you you need to have a different type of
environment to really help you and support you in this career. Do you feel like you had some
folks that could support you in undergrad to help you find those things out about yourself
or were you kind of figuring that out a lot on your own. It was a little bit of
a mixture really. I had a really hard time asking for help in undergrad. I thought
that me asking for help would be a weakness. It would be kind of like if I ask for
help that means I ca
n't do this that means I'm not cut out for this. I had that mindset for some
reason in my head that huge amount of imposter syndrome going through undergrad and so I had a
really hard time asking for help so a lot of it was me persevering like you can just keep going,
you'll keep going, it'll happen, it'll work, you just keep working hard and you'll get there but
then it was a realization like I can't do this on my own. There's no way I can do this on my own. My
parents are great wonderful
supporters but they don't know this experience either, being again, a
first generation so it was really tapping into my mentors from Geoforce that I had there that really
kind of helped me understand that like, okay you need to learn how to work in a college atmosphere
like here's a little bit more on that college prep kind of mindset of things. So it was really
finding the mentors in the support system within that environment that helped me be like okay I can
trust these people to ask for
help and that they won't judge me that I'm not capable of doing
any of this work and then on top of it I can kind of grow myself in that way. Yes I'm still
pretty stubborn in that sense where I am pretty resilient and push through a lot of things
that I probably should ask for more help for but realizing that asking for help is
totally okay and it's totally a reasonable thing to do and it does not mean
you're not good at whatever you're doing. I think it's a lesson of that there are people
around us who
can help if we reach out or especially in like climate science and in the climate movement, right,
like it takes all of us working together on teams which you realize you did, you know, thrive in and
you know learning from each other and asking for help is kind of how we're gonna move through this
climate movement, right. So you learned a lot of things about kind of
yourself and how you thrive in undergrad and from that point like what did
you think you wanted to do next afte
r your undergrad degree. I had no idea. Grad school
was always in the back of my head. It was always something that I thought I would do but I just
wasn't sure if I fully wanted to commit to doing that. I did undergrad research. I really
enjoyed it but I just didn't know if I wanted to continue on into grad school. So I ended up
getting an internship at the Texas Commission in Environmental Quality there in Texas. It was
working for the environmental agency there so I was in the remedial ar
ea and I was working there
all summer long and then I got an opportunity to go into a research vessel in Antarctica
so I said yes to that. I kind of was just like I don't really know what I want to do
but I'm going to explore every option so I stayed in the environmental sector because I was
like well I do want to do something that seems like I'm making a difference.
I've always been invested in the climate. I've always wanted to help the Earth and the world be a
better place so I've alway
s wanted to do something climate related so I thought the environmental
sector was the best place for me personally. My school is a big oil and gas school so I was like
I don't think I want to do oil and gas. It doesn't seem like it fits my personal core
values and morals so I went to the environmental sector thinking that I would help in that aspect
of being in the remedial area and helping clean out the Earth kind of thing and then I learned I
didn't like it. I didn't like necessarily be
ing a regulator. I felt like I wasn't really making
that big of an impact that I thought I did and then having that research experience that I had I
was like I really do still love research. I really do still love that kind of aspect of understanding
a problem and going kind of really deep into it and really trying to figure out a solution about
it like how my research was in paleo climate, which is study the of past climates. I did a lot
of research on understanding past climates and how t
hat could help with this current climate
that we're in so after staying at TCQ for two years I was like, okay I tried it, the environmental
sector is not for me personally and I think I should go back to grad school so I ended up going
back to grad school. And what did you want to do with the degree?
Yeah, so I still continued doing paleoclimate research and I studied corals actually
in Veracruz, Mexico which is off the Gulf of Mexico. So my research
advisor in that group was all very much
in the Gulf of Mexico region. My research was more about
kind of, so corals are a proxy, a climate proxy, that helps you kind of determine what the climate was
back in time because they're so sensitive to the environment that they're really
good climate tracers. I did geochemistry, which surprisingly, I struggled in chemistry
in undergrad so much. I ended up doing it as a research because again once it clicked it
clicked. So I used geochemistry on my corals to understand some trace element
s and some oxygen
Isotopes and things like that to really understand the sea surface temperatures for when they
were alive and helped kind of put together, reconstruct is what we call it, a climate of
that area to determine what the climate was and then see the differences from there to
today and what differences there were and what maybe environmental impacts have affected the
climate from then to now kind of situation. A climate detective. I loved it. I
thought it was great. It was wonde
rful research. I really enjoyed that aspect of things and I like
knowing about these things and kind of putting things together kind of like an investigator like
you said but unfortunately the environment in grad school just wasn't supportive
for me again. I really thrive on that team and collaborative kind of environment. My advisor
was not the best match for me mentor-wise, mentor mentee wise. We just didn't see eye to eye in that
situation and then I had some really difficult problems wi
th the environment that I was in.
I was one of the few and I'm sure lots of people have heard somebody say something like
that was one of the few in that environment, I was, I just didn't feel like I had support. Not
necessarily from my peers. There was a certain, some peers that just weren't supportive, but there
were a group that were supportive but the general support, supporting of my professors the people
that you thought would understand the struggles that you were going through espec
ially
as a woman. I had a woman advisor like having that kind of perspective of like oh you went through
this so you should know this kind of thing and then wondering and realizing that it wasn't the right
thing that they went through kind of situation. So I know I'm beating around the bush. I had
a lot of, unfortunately, racist kind of remarks and microaggressions and it really affected my
mental health at that time and I was just not able to, I realized that that pathway just wasn't
the
right pathway for my academic trajectory and I was just like I don't think I can do this anymore
and then I kind of started volunteering more with outreach groups and like working
with more of these local student programs and stuff like that and getting involved and helping
education and outreach aspects of things and I was like I really enjoy doing this. This makes me
happy. It's not like research, it did make me happy but that environment made me so exhausted that I
was like this in gener
al is not making me happy. I want to go and like be in education and
really kind of tap into that kind of aspect of of what I've always been passionate about because
of Geoforce because of all these experiences I've had before this time. II
don't think that academia is for me. I don't think that it's for my mental health. I don't think it's
something that I want to continue doing forward. In that aspect I do want to help people in academia
so that doesn't happen to them but I don't think I
want to be in that place anymore.
I'm so sorry that you had that experience and I think it's an experience that, unfortunately,
happens a lot and it's such a powerful thing for you to realize that
there are different ways you can follow your passions. You discovered this new passion in
education and outreach and also you took what you learned, as unfortunate as it was, in grad school
and it sounds like you turned that into this amazing career that you have now. So what
what that like? What
were those steps? What brought you here to NCAR as a higher
education specialist. So after grad school I was always
in contact with Geoforce, kind of what I would imagine people who are
alumni to other programs like that they're always going to be supportive of those
students. They've always been supportive of me so they were like oh you want to do education
outreach? Come behind the scenes and learn about the logistics with us. Spend the summer with us and
hang out with us all summer lo
ng so I did that all summer long. I was so thankful. It gave me
kind of an opportunity to leave an environment that wasn't good for me and I got another kind
of way of exploring a new career path that I was like, oh this is something I
can do kind of thing. um Then after that I ended up teaching at my local high school for a
little while. I taught high school science there, environmental science actually. So like trying to
learn how to communicate science in a way with people that aren't, I
've always communicated
science with people who are passionate about science but communicating about science with a
whole bunch of high schoolers who honestly just want to graduate and get out of there kind of
situation was a different way of communicating because it was trying to relate more to them
than maybe somebody who's already really interested in science kind of situation. I
learned a different communication style but then I also, unfortunately, learned the inequalities
of the educ
ation system and how maybe it's not very equitable along all different types
of groups and even within the organization. My environmental science class was
not a pre-p class so all the pre-p students were a different type than the
students that I had and it wasn't that it was bad it was just that they needed to be taught in a
different way and I related to that because I need to be taught in a different way. It was just
kind of like learning different learning behaviors and learning styles
and really kind of just being
embraced in all of that and kind of forced to learn that aspect of your way of communicating
kind of situation. Then I got a job at the National Science Foundation after my teaching
position and I learned that my perspectives that I had from undergrad and my teaching perspectives
and my working in the education space so far really was a
pro working at the National Science Foundation because they were looking for somebody to
provide these kind of perspectives.
They were talking about it but they didn't really have
somebody who went through it kind of situation. So I provided that perspective and I kind
of worked on there and I learned that I could blend my education and science passion in with
the diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that they were trying to move forward in that
space and I ended up just kind of blending those two together and just working in that
space and I ended up getting recruited from there to NCAR working for the S
OARS
program which is Significant Opportunities for Atmospheric Research and Sciences here at
UCAR. So I do that program as well as I go on talks in different organizations to different scientific
conferences and things like that talking about DEI related work and initiatives and really kind of
moving forward in that space too within not only our organization but the community as a whole
the scientific Community as a whole. That's what got me here so far and I really
enjoy it. I love doing
what I do. It's really igniting all of my passions into one and I kind
of fell into this career path but I I think now looking back I would have always gone here.
I think all my pathways whichever one I would have took, would have always
led me to where I'm at right now. And you kind of started with like realizing with
geosciences and connecting it to get to climate research and wanting to kind of change the
world and help the world through climate science. Do you feel like you get to do
that in your role
now? Yeah, so originally I wanted to be a professor and kind of have my own research group and do
climate research and help students with that aspect of things and while I don't have my own
research lab and I'm not doing climate research per se I do think that I'm helping students
understand how to bridge those connections together because most of the students who come
have to have a STEM background or STEM interest of some sort and then we do
atmospheric science research
here at this organization so they like to connect whatever
they're passionate about in the STEM fields to the atmospheric research realm and then they can
see those connections and that's what I think the beauty of Earth system sciences and climate in
general is that it's not just one space, not one sphere of the Earth
system that is impacted. It's the geosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere. All of them are
connected with each other and interact with each other and I get to help stude
nts understand that
aspect of things and they start connecting things to not only just the atmospheric sciences but the
societal impacts, the human impacts and and how they can maybe make a difference within their own
community and bring that back to their own space in their own place and understand how to really
make those things move forward and I have a part in that and if I've seen them like light up with
the passion that they have for further research and their science is just really a
n amazing
part of my job and it's really rewarding. I love that I get to help them with that and
then I get to help train the next generation of scientists too to do this work like that
video said earlier. This is for this generation of science to really make
those climate impacts and those climate solutions that we're all hoping for. And
what's the power that you see in making STEM and making climate science more
accessible and more welcoming to individuals from historically marginalized
communities.
So in general, most of the climate, most of the people who are impacted by climate
change and the really severe climate events are historically marginalized groups and if we
can get their perspectives they are doing this, they probably were born into these situations so
they see this every day. Their perspectives are way beyond what a scientist who's been studying it
for eight years has because they've been doing it their whole lives so I think bringing
in their perspectives,
bringing in what they can offer from their community and their space and
really giving them that space and a voice to do that science and to do that study we should
just stand out of their way. Why are we creating all these barriers and these things to make them
not feel welcomed in this field. We should lessen those barriers. We should let them do that.
I bet you we would solve the solution a long time ago if it was more inclusive a while back but
that's my personal perspective. I think it
's important to have those perspectives.
It's important to have that mindset and it's truly just the right thing to do. Why are we
being elitist and not allowing everybody into a field that is impacting the entire world and impacts
every person. We're all a part of that. We should all be working
on that together. Well, let's see if we have some questions from the audience. I have a few
more questions for you, Marissa. But I want to make sure we have some questions here so feel free to
type
those in the chat or type those in the Q and A if you have questions for Marisa before we wrap
up today so feel free to start typing those in. Marissa, I'm wondering if you can share
with me you, you help students on their path, and so do you have any kind of go-to
advice or general tips for any students who are watching today and participating today.
Trust your gut. Trust your instincts. If there's something that just doesn't feel right wherever
you're working at and if it doesn't seem l
ike it's the best environment for you and you have a way to
move forward then try to get out of it as much as you can. I know that it can be difficult
in some circumstances and it's not the easiest. I'm not saying that it's definitely
something that everyone can do kind of situation but for instance ,my example of grad
school, I could have continued on doing research that summer and maybe going to a PhD
but I had an out with my Geoforce colleagues who were like if you want to do this let's
do this
kind of thing. So I took my out and it's landed me here so far so I think it's possible. It
doesn't always work out and I'm not saying that it's a thing but you know yourself better than
anybody so if it's not something that's healthy for yourself then you should probably second guess
and take a step back and really reevaluate the situation and if it's a place that maybe you can
leave then I would recommend it. I know there was a comment on the passion question we
asked folks about
of self-care. So especially in climate work where it can feel overwhelming or
exhausting that having taking that time or making sure that you center yourself and giving yourself
the space and the energy and the care and being in a safe and passionate and a joy-filled
environment where you can do that work is going to be so important. Yes, always take care
of yourself. Your mental health is so important. You can't save the world if you yourself are not
feeling like you are stable in that sp
ace. I'm curious if you have any
advice, you said the other piece, that the other part is not just all on the students.
Maybe even more so it's on the institutions and organizations and the schools to
create a welcoming environment. What tips, since you do this work every day, what kind of tips and
advice do you have for professors for schools for organizations for bosses for teachers to create
that welcoming environment. Right, 100% it's not on the students. This is not something that
th
ey shouldn't have to have to figure this all out on their own. They should have an
environment that allows them to do that and my first thing would be to just be kind to each other
but that's easier said than done especially when people don't realize that they're not being kind.
So setting those expectations in organizations and institutions of what they expect their students
to do or what they expect their faculty to be like with students creating those environments with
agreements, commun
ity agreements kind of situations but then having accountability for those
agreements. So if somebody doesn't follow through or if somebody isn't following those agreements then
what's going to be the action to make sure that they are accountable for that
situation. So it's a mix of things. It's being kind and just being human because
everybody's human and everybody goes through struggles and just realizing that kind of aspect
of things but then on top of it really sticking to those communi
ty agreements that you
make with your group and understanding that if you're going to do this then you're going to
have to kind of make everybody accountable not just the students which is definitely not just a
student situation but faculty leadership and all sorts of different types of people need to do that.
So approaching it from that kind of systemic change and collective action approach too
so we can create an environment where students don't have to advocate or protect themselves
and
that they just feel like they can belong and they can bring their whole identities, their
perspectives their unique perspectives into this so that you can do the work and people
can follow their passions wherever that leads them. It should
not definitely be on the students. It should be a whole system working together to really make it
a better inclusive environment. We have a question here, what is
your one advice for next generation on how to be less impact on our Earth and actions to
t
ake now. Do you have any thoughts on like for the next generation what are actions that they
can take to make less of an impact on our Earth. I would say that's a good question.
It would be just kind of understanding what you can control. So a lot
of the impacts that are happening in our system right now, our climate
system, a lot of the problems are things that are
happening here are not necessarily something that one individual can do but you can do what
you can within yourself. So it wo
uld be working on like recycling and
doing things like that. Those are important and I think those are things that people are doing now
but being mindful of those things early on I think it's very helpful and like understanding that
this is our space and just like loving and trusting the world that we're in it's
Mother Earth so kind of give it the love that you would your mother kind of situation or your family
member or somebody that you really love and care for. So as long as you love it
the way that
is happening and I think it will be okay but the real problem is probably more of those kind of big
companies and Industry kind of people which in that sense getting into policy and doing science
policy is a good way of doing things you know not just staying in the research realm of things but
really combining that research space with policy or with education and educating the new younger
generations and really connecting science to the different aspects of things would be a g
ood way
to kind of influence that in a space. Also being able to talk in a relative way.
The communications piece is really important. I've been in conversations with
people, congressmen and other types of people in my previous work, where if I discuss climate
change in a way that was understandable to them, like okay what's happening in your actual
space right now, your environment, your community and they're talking about their cattle not
being able to walk on their grassland in the wint
er time because
the grass isn't being frozen over so they're getting stuck in mud and not
really having a good environment. I was like well that's climate change. That's
what it is so let's figure out how to like make that solution. Wouldn't you want a
solution because your cattle is really important to you kind of thing. Finding those values and
connecting over value and local relatable things. I would add too since we're
talking about careers and things like that not one person like you
said
not one person is gonna fix everything. Not one of us individually can fix
everything but every job no matter if it's a STEM job or a job in the arts which
are so important for climate communication but every job can be a climate job right so
whatever job you're passionate about again following those passions or hobbies
or things like that think about how that job or that passion connects to climate change and what
are actions that you can take there or policies you can advocate for
from those positions or
from those different social justice movements that you're involved with or things like that.
Because climate, as you're saying, Earth systems like we're all part of it. It's all
interconnected. There are things there to explore and little actions that we can
all take and all of us are taking actions in all the places where we are. That's where
we can start moving. Exactly. Wonderful, well we are actually about at the
end of our time. I don't see another question in
here just yet. Feel free if
you would like to reach out to us with more questions for Marissa. You'll get a follow-up
email tomorrow that will have her email address that you can reach out with more
questions. Also if folks are interested in getting involved with the SOARS program,
how could they find out more about that. Our website is soars.ucar.edu.
We'll have all of that information there. Our applications for this summer is closed
but we're open around the November or December time f
rame for new applicants and then the
deadline is usually in the first week of February. We're always looking for awesome potential
Protege, is what we call them so if you're interested in the Soars program at all please
contact me or my colleagues. Awesome, thank you so much, Marissa, for talking to us today. Thank
you everybody for joining us from all over. I want to invite all of you to join us next week
for our next Meet the Experts which is also part of the climate teach-in. Next week we
have Meet
the Experts: Youth Action for Collective Climate Justice on April 5th. We have an 11 A.M. mountain
time as well as a 6 P. M. mountain time where we'll be talking to three different youth voices in the
climate justice movement so we would love to have you come join us for that. You can sign up for
that on our website here and the link is in the chat as well but with that we are at the end of
our time. Marissa, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much everybody
and
we will see you next time. See you next week. Bye.
Comments