>From ESA's blog EcoTone: Meet this year's ESA Grad Student Policy Awardees
ESA, which is headquartered in Washington, DC, works to give the ecological community a voice at the federal level through its public policy initiatives. It also looks for opportunities to support young ecologists' interest in policy. One way is through the Society's annual Graduate Student Policy Award (GSPA). The competitive award brings graduate students to the nation's capital to participate in two days of science policy activities, including meetings with congressional offices and briefings with policy experts on how current political and fiscal issues may impact the work of federal agencies and support of ecological research. Since 2007, over 20 ESA graduate students have received the GSPA. Some have gone on to careers that routinely involve policy or public outreach while others have obtained Fellowships through the American Association for the Advancement of Science to work for agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Forest Service. It is always exciting each year to meet the new group of ESA Graduate Student Policy Award winners and to see them in action later in the spring when they will head to Capitol Hill to bring their voices to the discussion of national priorities. As ESA President Scott Collins notes in a recent BioScience column, "Congress makes a lot of decisions about ecology, and scientists need to be at the table when decisions are made." This year's ESA GSPA winners are: Matthew Berg, Texas A&M University Lindsay Deel, West Virginia University Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie, Boston University Carlos Silva, University of Maryland Read the full EcoTone blog post at: http://www.esa.org/esablog/ecology-in-policy/meet-this-years-esa-grad-student-policy-awardees/ Nadine Lymn ESA Director of Public Affairs Washington DC 20036 (202)833-8773 x205 www.facebook.com/esa.org http://twitter.com/#!/esa_org
