In this issue:
2019 Maine S&WC Keynote Speaker
This year’s Maine Sustainability and Water Conference keynote address will be given by Bridie McGreavy, Assistant Professor of Environmental Communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism and Faculty Fellow in the Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine.
Finding effective, creative, and inclusive ways to communicate conservation and sustainability are much needed in today’s world. In this talk, McGreavy shares how thinking with rivers provides one means for such communication. McGreavy draws from her research and experiences in and beyond Maine, as well insights from communication studies, environmental communication, and sustainability science.
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2018 Mitchell Center Awards
 Mitchell Center Sustainability Awards have been presented annually since 2013. The awards are designed to recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of Mitchell Center members, researchers, students and external partners who have helped advance the values and principles at the heart of the Mitchell Center’s stakeholder-engaged, solutions-focused, interdisciplinary projects and partnerships.
Click here for a list of 2018 awardees...
Swimming Towards Sustainability
Gayle Zydlewski migrates from fisheries biologist to director of Maine Sea Grant
Gayle Zydlewski was a member of the interdisciplinary Sustainability Solutions Initiative (SSI) research team—this $20 million National Science Foundation grant led to the creation of the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions.
Prior to her participation in SSI, Zydlewski concentrated her research on fish biology in UMaine’s School of Marine Sciences. But with SSI, she began to see a bigger and more diverse world to which she could apply her research, a world that included social science and issues that mattered deeply to people and communities.
Does her journey from fisheries biology to Maine Sea Grant surprise her?
“Yes, particularly because early in my career I went into working on fish so I wouldn’t have to deal with people. Now, the work is all about people,” she says.
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Communicating Conservation
Course builds the skills required for communication and group facilitation in a conservation context
Almost all conservation efforts are fundamentally shaped by communication. In a one-week intensive course held at the Mitchell Center January 14-18, a team of Mitchell Center researchers helped participants build the skills required for communication and group facilitation in a conservation context.
In particular, the instructors helped participants understand the complex communication issues that arise in conservation-related collaborations. The course allowed students to gain practical training in diverse communication skills and perspectives in order to support and help shape ongoing conservation efforts.
Co-instructors, Bridie McGreavy, Aram Calhoun, and Mac Hunter brought their interdisciplinary and applied experience in communication and conservation. Collaborating instructors, Sandra De Urioste-Stone, Jessica Jansujwicz, and Carly Sponarski helped students connect the facilitation skills and communication planning with a specific case drawn from their conservation work.
Complex Decisions on Dams
Mitchell Center postdoctoral fellow Sam Roy's paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences was recently written up in the journal Nature Sustainability.
A growing interest in restoring rivers across the United States is driving decisions to remove dams that have significantly aged or no longer fit for their original purpose. However, such decisions require a full understanding of the costs and benefits associated with dam removals. The Nature Sustainability article is available here.
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