On 19-25 January, I will be attending a yearly Ocean Leadership Practicum with students from UC Santa Cruz, CSU Monterey Bay, Stanford U, Moss Landing Marine Lab, Hopkins Marine Station, Monterey Institute of International Studies, and the Naval Postgraduate Society. The practicum is sponsored by Monterey Area Research Institutions’ Network for Education (MARINE), a collaborative program funded through the Center for Ocean Solutions.
Over the course of seven days, we’ll be reviewing the recently released (July 2012) Consensus Statement on Coral Reefs and Climate Change, and discussing ways that global, expert-driven initiatives can affect on-the-ground, lasting change. In the “learning by doing” workshop, we’ll be presented with numerous case studies, work with student teams and experts to discuss and strategize avenues of change, foster communication and advocacy skills through presentation and activities, and finally produce a product to guide the future directions of the consensus statement initiative.
In the meantime, I’ll be reading Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, thinking about change theory, and getting myself back in the mindset of a coral reef manager (a welcome mental visit back to tropical ecosystems!).