Category: Webinars and events

Update (9/1/20): watch the event video

This spring, the Nathaniel B Palmer (NBP) Antarctic research vessel headed for a new destination: Humboldt Bay, California. The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns had complicated delivery chains from Chile to the US, so the NBP brought its Antarctic field research samples directly back to the States. The ship will be moored off Eureka through the summer, before returning south to Antarctica in September.

In this special Sustainable Futures event, we’ll be joined by three US Antarctic Program participants: Julia Wellner, Principal Investigator with the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration project; Al Hickey, Marine Project Coordinator on the Nathaniel B Palmer who will speak to us from onboard the ship; and Tim McGovern, Ocean Projects Manager within the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs.

Join us for this exciting opportunity to learn about Thwaites Glacier research, life aboard the Nathaniel B Palmer, and polar climate research supported by the US Antarctic Program.

More about our speakers

Dr. Julia Wellner is an Associate Professor at the University of Houston. Her research interests include Antarctic Ice Sheet history since the Eocene, including geomorphic signatures of ice sheet retreat across the continental shelf, sedimentation patterns in fjords, and their relation to oceanographic controls. She also studies Plio-Pleistocene sequence stratigraphy from three-dimensional seismic data, and the Holocene climate of the Antarctic. Wellner and her team recently returned from Antarctica where they were investigating sediments deposited in the seas near the Thwaites Glacier as part of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration. She worked closely with British Antarctic Survey scientists on board the NBP.

Tim McGovern is the Ocean Projects Manager for the Antarctic Infrastructure and Logistics (AIL) Section, within the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs. In this role, he oversees and coordinates the operations and budgets of the U.S. Antarctic Program’s icebreaking research vessels Nathaniel B Palmer and Laurence M Gould, and all scientific activities in the Antarctic Peninsula, including Palmer Station. He is also currently on the management team of NSF’s single largest award — the contract with Leidos ASC for the operation, maintenance and science support of the U.S. Antarctic Program.

Al Hickey is a Marine Project Coordinator (MPC) for the US Antarctic Program. As MPC he serves as a liaison between the scientists aboard and the ship’s crew. He is a US Coast Guard licensed professional mariner with an educational background in the marine sciences. He has worked closely with many different research and educational vessel platforms since the 1980s. When not working with the USAP, he often goes on assignment overseas as a logistics coordinator for Doctors Without Borders.

Upcoming this fall

Thanks to everyone who participated in our first Sustainable Futures webinar lecture series this spring! We will announce the upcoming semester schedule in August.

This fall, we will also host a series of webinars to share and discuss findings from our offshore wind feasibility studies for the California north coast. Email windstudies@schatzcenter.org if you’d like to receive updates on these webinars and our offshore wind research.

We have a new events page for our Sustainable Futures and Schatz Research webinar series, as well as links to external public events where our staff are presenting.

Sarah Jaquette Ray has been leading undergraduate environmental studies programs since 2009. During this time, she has observed changes in how students feel about environmental problems, the relationship between those problems and social justice, and their own ability to tackle the problems we face. In her new book, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet, Ray researches and guides students through strategies to cultivate personal and collective resilience, to engage for the long haul as social change leaders in this political and ecological moment. This talk will explore the unique challenges and strengths of the climate generation — the youth leading the charge in the movement for climate justice around the world — and offer strategies for existential survival.

Sarah Jaquette Ray is program leader of the Environmental Studies BA major at Humboldt State. She is author of The Ecological Other: Environmental Exclusion in American Culture (Arizona, 2013), and co-editor of three volumes, most recently, Latinx Environmentalisms: Place, Justice, and the Decolonial (Temple, 2019). A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet was released this April on Earth Day.

How to attend

We’re holding this semester’s Sustainable Futures Speaker Series online via webinar. Talks are given from 5:30-7:00 pm on Thursday evenings (Pacific). Each lecture has been streamed via Zoom with closed captioning, and will be followed by a Q&A discussion period. All events are free and open to the public.

• REGISTER for this talk

About the series

The Sustainable Futures Speaker Series stimulates interdisciplinary collaboration around issues related to energy, the environment, and society. All lectures are free and open to the public, and are sponsored by the Schatz Energy Research Center, the Environment & Community graduate program, and the College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences at Humboldt State. For Spring 2020, we’re bringing our ongoing series online via Zoom with closed captioning. Please visit schatzcenter.org/speakers for the full lineup. Questions? Email info@schatzcenter.org.