Voss Environmental Fellows

Check out the profile of the Voss program and program director Prof. Heather Leslie on the new Engaged Scholars page hosted by Brown University’s Swearer Center.

This COMPASS communications workshop led by Nancy Baron, author of Escape from the Ivory Tower: A Guide to Making Your Science Matter and lead communications trainer for the Aldo Leopold Leadership program, is designed to help Brown University faculty and postdoctoral research associates become more effective and comfortable communicators. Journalists will also provide their perspectives on how scientists can be more clear and concise when talking to the media and what they look for in a good story. This event will establish a network of new connections and hopefully will inspire new collaborations among participants as colleagues discuss their work.

Stay tuned for a post-workshop posting! To learn more about this and other Voss-sponsored events, please contact program director Prof. Heather Leslie.

Are you hooked on environmental research…

…but curious how it connects with policy and practice?

Interested in pursuing urgent policy questions…

…but concerned that answers be grounded in relevant research?

The Voss Environmental Fellows Program may be for you! Join us to learn more about Summer 2012 research funding through Voss and other undergraduate fellowships on Thurs., October 6 at 12 noon in the UEL.

Please see http://envstudies.brown.edu/ and http://www.brown.edu/academics/college/fellowships/ for more information.

Environmental Policy in an Era of Political Polarization: The Prospects for Conflict and Consensus

May 4, 3-5 pm, at the  Brown Science Center: Join the Brown Environmental Fellows, faculty mentors and friends for a special lecture by Juliet Eilperin, Environment Reporter for The Washington Post. A reception and book signing will follow.

Juliet Eilperin is a born-and-bred Washingtonian who joined The Washington Post in March 1998 as its House of Representatives reporter. Since April of 2004 she has served as the Post’s national environmental reporter, reporting on science, policy and politics in areas including climate change, oceans, and air quality. In pursuit of these stories she has gone scuba diving with sharks in the Bahamas, trekking on the Arctic tundra with Selma Hayek and Jake Gyllenhaal, and searching on her hands and knees for rare insects in the caves of Tennessee. Juliet launched the Post Carbon blog in December 2009. In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon explosion in April 2010, Ms. Eilperin wrote several investigative pieces exposing the lack of federal oversight over offshore drilling. Look out for Ms. Eilperin’s second book, “Demon Fish: Travels Through the Hidden World of Sharks,” to be published in June 2011 by Pantheon.

Nancy Baron, director of science outreach for COMPASS, author of Escape from the Ivory Tower and lead trainer for the Leopold Leadership Program, visited Brown in early March. Nancy spent the afternoon with the students of ENVS 1965, the capstone course for the Brown Environmental Fellows Program, sharing her experience working with scientists and journalists over the last decade and teaching us how to communicate our science effectively. See Nancy’s recent piece in Nature to learn more about why communicating science is not an ‘add on’, but in fact makes you a better scientist.

Nancy Baron’s visit to Brown was supported by the Dean of the Faculty’s Woods Lectureship Fund, the Center for Environmental Studies and the Environmental Change Initiative.

On February 12, 2011, President Simmons announced that an  anonymous donor has given a gift of $625,000, for five endowed Brown Environmental Fellowships, and $125,000 is for current-use support of Brown Environmental Fellowships. This incredibly generous gift will provide substantial sustaining funding for the program, starting in 2012. We are currently seeking support for the 2011-2012 fellowship year, and have several promising leads. For more on program development and gifts, please contact Program Director, Prof. Heather Leslie.

Join us for the first BEF sponsored lecture!

Co-host of NPR’s Radio Lab, NPR science correspondent, and for years Special Correspondent at ABC News, Robert Krulwich has been called the most inventive network reporter for television by TV Guide. His specialty is explaining complex subjects in a style that is clear, compelling and entertaining. He has explored the structure of DNA with a banana; created his own Italian Opera, Ratto Interesso, to explain interest rate regulation, and pioneered the use of animation on ABC and  NPR’s internet site. He has won three Emmys, a George Polk Award, a Dupont Award, and the National Cancer Institute’s Extraordinary Communicator’s Award.

http://brown.edu/Research/ECI/activities/robert_krulwich_lecture

This talk is made possible with support from

• Brown Environmental Fellows
• Woods Lectureship
• Environmental Change Initiative
• Center for Environmental Studies
• The Science Center
• The Career Development Center