When the TESI team approached me with the opportunity to be the graduate student coordinator for the second cohort of the Environmental Leaders Fellowship, I knew I couldn’t pass it up. The job combined my two favorite things: mentoring students and educating others about environmental issues impacting Florida.
Although I’ve been involved in many environmental education programs, I have never been a program coordinator, which involved creating an immersive educational experience for our Fellows from the ground up. It was a learning curve in the beginning, but the success of the first TESI Environmental Leaders Fellowship was an immensely helpful starting point. I am so grateful to Sadie, Becca, and Alise for their mentorship in planning professional development opportunities, leadership-building activities, and K-12 classroom visits for the Fellows.
My favorite memory of the ELF program was the Spring Break Field Experience, an immersive field trip about environmental research, community engagement, and K-12 environmental education in Florida. This field experience involved an overview of aquaculture and living shorelines in Cedar Key, tours of the Santa Fe River Preserve, kayaking down the Ichetucknee, a glass bottom boat tour of Silver Springs, and more. The field trip took two months of brainstorming, reaching out to partners, and coordinating travel, but it was all worth it to see the looks on the Fellows’ faces as they saw manatees while kayaking on the Ichetucknee River. Even more rewarding was chatting with the students after each day, where they all excitedly talked about how directly learning from natural resource and environmental professionals across Florida confirmed and expanded their ideal careers.
Another highlight of the Fellowship was the TESI Scientist in Every Florida School teacher professional development workshop, “Moving and Improving the Florida Museum of Natural History Fish Collection.” In this workshop, teachers were introduced to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s extensive “wet” collections from the Herpetology, Ichthyology, Invertebrate Zoology, Mammals, and Ornithology divisions and got to experience a “day in the life” of collections managers and curators. The Fellows shadowed the teachers in this workshop and exchanged ideas and expertise about science education with the teachers. As a former marine scientist, I enjoyed learning about the Ichthyology collection, its applications to conservation, and the passion the faculty, staff, and students have for the field of natural history collections. Their passion deeply inspired the teachers and the Fellows and was a huge part of the workshop’s success.
One of my greatest passions in life is to foster a deep connection between the next generation and the environment, and this job provided so many opportunities to do that. I am so grateful to the entire TESI team for the opportunity to work with students to share valuable knowledge about Florida’s environment and change their career trajectories. I will use all the skills I learned as a graduate student coordinator in my dissertation research and future TESI projects.