Hawaii
From DC to Antarctica: Gina Selig
Check out this new video from 2023 fellow Gina Selig discussing her work with the Antarctic Treaties Commission and her upcoming trip to Antarctica.
November 30, 2023
Post Archives
Category: My Fellowship Position
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Knauss Blog
NOAA Careers: Transition Manager
What do Knauss Fellows actually do? Well, it depends!
You may know NOAA for its science, but there are teams of people that help get the science in motion and to the communities that need it most.
2023 Knauss Fellow Briana Yancy works as a Transition Manager at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Lab this year. Check out her experience!
October 11, 2023
Knauss Blog
Life is like a box of… oysters
By: Kaitlyn Theberge. To honor the wonderful time I spent working on an oyster farm prior to being a Knauss Fellow, I tell my story by presenting four “life lessons from oysters,” which I learned by interacting with these amazing animals day after day working on the oyster farm.
May 23, 2023
Government
Locating Progress
By: Kate Shlepr. Change invites uncertainty and therefore risk. I feel the weight and exhilaration of this reality as I sit to reflect on events from the past six months, both in my personal life and in our world. For one, it strikes me that I am (now) an openly queer person writing from my desk in a Congressional office two generations after the Stonewall riots; if those aren’t evidence of change, what is?
June 30, 2022
Academia to Government
Building confidence in a new position
By: Michaela Margida. If you type the title of this article into a Google search, as I did nearly a year ago when I was first placed in U.S. Senator Cory Booker’s office as a Legislative Knauss Fellow, you’ll find that there are over 27 pages of results. I read the first 30 or so search results before realizing that confidence probably wasn’t something I’d get through an academic approach.
January 19, 2022
Day in the Life
Fight or Flight
By: Shellby Johnson. When I received an unexpected invitation during my Knauss Fellowship to join an ocean exploration transit across the North Atlantic, stress definitely entered the room, but I chose to fight, and it was one of the best professional and personal experiences of my life. Learn about my experience in this interactive feature.
January 14, 2022
Academia to Government
Achieving resilience through flexibility
By: María Mercedes Carruthers Ferrero. “FEMA flexible” is a phrase I have heard many times throughout my Knauss Fellowship. I have learned that the mindset alluded to by this phrase is not only key to achieving community resilience, but to personal and professional success.
December 16, 2021
Government
Bipartisanship is Alive in the House Science Committee
By: Megan McKeown. Turn on any of today’s news outlets and it’s easy to believe bipartisanship is dead. But after almost a year of witnessing how the “sausage gets made” on Capitol Hill, I can tell you that there are pockets of Congress where bipartisanship is still alive.
December 8, 2021
Day in the Life
Life at sea as a Knauss Fellow
By: Lu Wang. To take full advantage of all this year has to offer, I adapted a mindset early on in the fellowship to try to say “yes” to every opportunity. And so when my host office asked me if I wanted to go to sea as part of my fellowship, my response could only be, “Absolutely, I do.”
August 13, 2021
Alumni Profiles
A decade of growth: How Knauss fellows shaped the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program
By: Halle Berger. Over the past decade, the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program (OAP) has grown through the recruitment of Sea Grant Knauss fellows like myself. In celebration of OAP’s 10th anniversary, I interviewed the former Knauss fellows currently working in OAP to better understand how the program has evolved since its inception.
July 30, 2021
Academia to Government
Floating in Interagency Space
By: Clea Harrelson. “Who is that?” was a constant refrain in my head for the first few months of my Knauss fellowship. The feeling of being overwhelmed that comes with the beginning of any new job is often described as a “crush”, but for me, it was more accurately a sensation of being untethered, floating in interagency space. Who are all these people, what do they do, and how do they relate to my work?
June 17, 2021
Communication
Lessons from the (corn) field
By: Maggie Beetstra. As a social scientist in the Midwest, I spent hours and hours having conversations with farmers, visiting their farms, meeting their families, and trying to understand how they make conservation decisions. Now, as a Knauss fellow, I’ve traded the corn and soybean fields for community resilience and marine education, but the same approaches still hold true. Here are some of the lessons I learned in science communication while out in the fields.
May 27, 2021
Academia to Government
The female mentors who made me
By: Taylor Goelz. In honor of National Mentoring Month, I wanted to add my two cents to the #WomenInSTEM mentorship conversation and use my Knauss Blog to highlight the female mentors that have made a difference in my life and journey. These women, among many others that I’ve interacted with over the years, exemplify the type of mentor that I will strive to be going forward in my career.
January 21, 2021
Communication
Learning to tame monkeys
By: Caroline Wiernicki. Who has the monkey? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately. In the words of William Oncken Jr. and Donald L. Wass, the proverbial “monkey” is a concept key to working on a team: an individual’s responsibility or task that contributes towards the team’s broader goals.
December 21, 2020
Fellowship Logistics
A FORCE for Good!
By: Jessie Straub. By applying my coastal resilience skills and knowledge during my Knauss Fellowship, I knew I could become a “force” for good. As part of an informal working group for 2020 Knauss fellows, FORCE (Fellows for Organized Coastal Efforts), I have the chance to do just that.
November 30, 2020
Communication
Lessons learned: The difference a mentor makes
By: Tiffany Atkinson. I can’t emphasize enough how incredibly valuable it can be when someone takes you under their wing as a mentor. The lessons we learn from these relationships can teach us so much about ourselves and the world.
October 29, 2020
Fellowship Logistics
International affairs… from the comfort/confines of home
By: Victoria Luu. A quick Google search reveals no shortage of articles and blog posts describing 2020 as what, at the end of 2019, many hoped and believed would be a “Super Year” for the ocean. However, with the travel bans and limits on in-person gatherings imposed in the wake of COVID-19, most of the international meetings have been postponed. Where does that leave someone working in NOAA’s Office of International Affairs?
October 8, 2020
Academia to Government
The Lost Geographer: Following the road signs to Knauss
By: Michelle Harris. There’s a common joke that geographers “know where it’s at” – but for this geographer, a sense of direction is not something I’m inherently adept at. No matter how much I plan, there is always an unexpected turn somewhere along the way to be laughed about later. When comparing this to my life roadmap, it is because of fateful turns that this “lost geographer” ended up becoming a Knauss fellow.
October 2, 2020
Academia to Government
Becoming the type of scientist my childhood self never pictured
By: Naomi Lewandowski. For nearly 10 years, I’ve made career choices based on one very sacred metric: would my eight-year-old self be proud of me? As I navigated college, temporary lab jobs, and graduate school, I held this metric dear. However, after becoming a Knauss fellow, and starting down an unexpected and, potentially, brand new career track, it’s been more difficult to figure out what my eight-year-old self would think.
September 17, 2020
Communication
“So, tell me…†How in-depth conversations propelled my work with communities in graduate school and the Knauss fellowship
By: Maggie Chory. When thinking about my experience so far as a Knauss Fellow, I am struck by the fact that many of the skills I learned and practiced as a graduate student play into my day-to-day work now. One skill that I was surprised to discover would have so much importance this year is the ability to conduct a productive and meaningful interview.
September 8, 2020
Fellowship Logistics
A Tale of Two Offices
By: Brittney Parker. I knew the Knauss Fellowship was the perfect way to take on a new challenge while pushing myself out of my comfort zone of scientific research. Little did I know prior to placement week that through my Knauss Fellowship I wouldn’t just be learning the ins-and-outs of a single executive branch office; I also would be working at a national non-profit.
August 6, 2020
Government
The Business Case for Knauss Fellows
By: Meredith Richardson. Knauss Fellows have the unique opportunity to follow their own interests during their fellowship year, rather than exact roles laid out in a job description. It’s this flexibility that allows fellows to serve as connectors between departments and agencies, identifying areas for improvement and increasing efficiency.
July 28, 2020
Day in the Life
One NOAA ‘Ohana
By: Alexandra Skrivanek. NOAA’s mission of science, service and stewardship is vast in scope, spanning the surface of the sun to the depths of the ocean. I can personally attest to this because, in the first 24 hours of traveling with RDML Gallaudet in HawaiÊ»i at the start of my fellowship year, we covered most of this breadth.
July 9, 2020
Academia to Government
You Can’t Plan for a Change of Plans
By: Cheyenne Stienbarger. Before we begin, there is something you must know about me. I like organization and need to have a plan, whether it’s a plan for the trip to the grocery store, for the year, or for the next five years. I live to plan. Spoiler alert: you just can’t plan for some things. I discovered the Knauss Fellowship at a critical point in my graduate career where I was uncertain as to what my next steps would be. My decision to pursue the fellowship was not a frivolous one, but it also wasn’t part of my original plan.
June 25, 2020
Academia to Government
How a love of seafood brought me to Capitol Hill
By: Kat Montgomery. Did you know that most of the salmon you see in grocery stores and restaurants comes from a fish farm? In fact, aquaculture, which is the farming of fish, shellfish and seaweed in fresh or saltwater, produces about half of the world’s seafood supply. I became interested in aquaculture sort of by accident, and that newfound interest led me to my current position as a Legislative Knauss Fellow.
June 12, 2020
Knauss Blog
Weathering the Storm: Improving Communications About Extreme Weather and Climate
By: Christine Bassett. Given my experience thinking about past climate and oceans, it might seem peculiar for me, a geoscientist, to spend my Knauss Fellowship year in the National Weather Service’s (NWS) Office of Observations. Read about how my work at the NWS gives me the opportunity to bring my focus on past human-climate interactions into the present and future.
June 4, 2020
Knauss Blog
Far from HOMES*: The importance of place-based stewardship
By: Kirsten Rhude. Even though my work as a Knauss Fellow makes me feel connected to coastal communities, lately I’ve been missing my time spent in nature. While I may not have realized it initially, my sense of stewardship and love of the natural world, which made me so passionate about becoming a Knauss fellow, have deep connections to home and a sense of place. For me, home is the Great Lakes.
May 14, 2020
Academia to Government
Decreasing Marine Debris: From Coastal Communities to National Efforts
By: Amanda Dwyer. One of the Knauss Fellowship’s most exciting opportunities is to explore areas of marine science that are outside your academic field of expertise. With my placement at the NOAA Marine Debris Program, I am working to support NOAA’s National Ocean Service (NOS) Zero Waste Initiative to promote zero waste efforts in the organization’s daily operations and events.
May 7, 2020
Knauss Blog
The Power of Connection: Knauss Fellow and Alumni Engagement During a Pandemic and Beyond
By: Emily Y. Horton. Social connection. It’s part of what makes us human and it’s fundamental to our wellbeing. So how does the 2020 cohort of Knauss Fellows network when required to “physically distance” at home? In this blog post, I share about virtual alumni-engagement initiatives our cohort is leading and discuss how in my fellowship as a Partnership Specialist for Sea Grant, I will help lay the groundwork for a fellows network.
April 30, 2020
Graduate School
From Katrina to COVID-19: Influences on a Career in Environmental Policy
By: Connor Fagan. In August of 2005, the winds and waves of Hurricane Katrina smashed through the city of New Orleans. A middle-schooler at the time, my life, along with millions of others, as a New Orleanian would never be the same. Since then, I have directed my studies and career towards environmental policy as a result of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters in the Gulf of Mexico.
April 14, 2020
Knauss Blog
Photo story: 5 lessons learned during my Knauss Fellowship
Over a year ago, I packed my belongings and moved from Long Beach, California, to Washington, D.C. to get firsthand experience working in the federal government as a Sea Grant Knauss Marine Policy Fellow. Embarking upon my year, I knew one thing for sure: it was bound to be full of surprises. I’ve learned a number of important lessons this year about NOAA’s role in advancing the human dimensions of coastal, atmospheric, and marine sciences.
March 9, 2020
Graduate School
How climate change is changing the way we do science
August 29th, 2005 is a day that I will never forget. My mother and I had evacuated our New Orleans home several days earlier, and we sat glued to the television, transfixed by the images of Hurricane Katrina inundating our city. In the months that followed, we scoured Google Maps, simply to see if our house still stood. When we finally returned home ten months later, I saw how easily entire ecosystems can be disrupted and destroyed by natural disasters. Hurricane Katrina left a legacy of destruction in its wake, but watching my city recover from the devastation gave me an intimate perspective on the issues associated with living in a coastal environment and compelled me to pursue a career in coastal resiliency.
December 13, 2019
Day in the Life
Where in the World is Bianca Prohaska? Life as an International Activities Fellow
By Bianca Prohaska. Going into my fellowship position, I knew I would travel a lot, lead our collaborations with India, and provide support for our work with China. What I didn’t realize is how quickly I would get to start my work and get traveling! Read about my experiences in India, Ireland, Hawai’i, France, Malaysia, and more!
November 8, 2019
Day in the Life
Waves and Sea Ice and Hurricanes, OH MY!
By: Alison Agather. In 1912, over 1,500 people lost their lives when the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank. But what does the Titanic have to do with my fellowship role in the National Weather Service’s Ocean Prediction Center?
November 1, 2019
Day in the Life
Thinking Fast and Slow: Keeping pace with international fisheries policy
By Madi Harris
Speed-walking down 5th Avenue in my suit while fighting early Manhattan summer humidity was not the morning I had planned for myself. Expecting the early Amtrak train from D.C. to New York to be on schedule may have been my own naivety, but I now found myself tempting a late arrival for my very first meeting at the United Nations (UN).
October 3, 2019
Knauss Blog
Belonging: a look into my year in the Knauss fellowship as a first generation immigrant
By Lisa Kim
I never expected my Knauss Fellowship to land me in South Korea. Yet, there I was, full of anxious excitement on a bumpy car ride in the narrow streets of the country I was born in. I looked in the rear view mirror to make sure my hair was neat and my button down shirt was straight. I got out of the car, and saw an old woman, tears in her eyes. “My grandbaby!” she cried. My grandmother stumbled over with her cane to hold me in a warm and familiar embrace. The last time I saw her, 26 years ago, she had black tightly permed hair and a little more fat on her skin.
September 26, 2019
Knauss Blog
Using Dungeons and Dragons to Navigate the Knauss Fellowship
My position as the Knauss Policy Fellow working on the GEO Blue Planet Initiative has required organization, flexibility, creativity, teamwork, and comfort with (lots) of learning on the job. The thing above all that has helped me to navigate these challenges is my role as a Dungeon Master (abbreviated as DM) in Dungeons and Dragons. I thought it would be fun to share with current and future fellows five different ways in which being a DM has helped me in my role as a Knauss Fellow and as a member of GEO Blue Planet.
September 12, 2019
Knauss Blog
Learning to Swim with the Big “Fish” (Marine Mammals)
By Roxanne J Carini
In graduate school, I would quip that I studied everything about the ocean, except what lived there! So, imagine my surprise when I wound up at the Marine Mammal Commission for my year-long Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship.
Falling in love with the world of marine mammals didn’t take long! But, not for the reasons you may think.
August 29, 2019
Academia to Government
From Math to Mapping: Characterizing the U.S. Caribbean
By Katharine Egan
A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the wet lab on the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster watching a video feed from the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that I helped to deploy. The pilot guided the ROV into shallower waters, and I was quick to identify the corals as these depths. I thought about what I was doing this time last year: sitting in front of my laptop using math to find coral reefs just like these for my Master’s thesis research. More specifically, I was using spatial predictive modeling to produce maps showing the potential location of star corals, which can help researchers identify where important reef habitat is located. This year, I didn’t have to predict where the star corals were located, instead I was identifying them as they came across the video feed from the ROV.
August 22, 2019
Knauss Blog
Conservation Success: How Regulations, Policy and Habitat Restoration benefit Wildlife and People.
By: Alicia Wilson
While spending my first field season of graduate school on the coastal barrier islands of Georgia, I thought I was lucky to witness a record number of loggerhead sea turtle nests for the state. Three years later, as I watch from my fellowship in D.C., I am even more amazed. Loggerhead sea turtle ladies are kicking butt in Georgia. They are poised to break all nesting records in the state, with an anticipated final nest count of over 4,000! Just 15 years ago, the count hovered around 400 nests total for the entire state.
August 15, 2019
Academia to Government
From No to Ph.D: a journey from imposter to scientist
By Zac Cannizzo
“Not for you. You just don’t have the mind for science.” The words of my 8th grade science teacher when I asked to be placed in Biology for my freshman year. It hurt. I always liked science, and I loved biology. Some of my earliest memories are watching Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures. From a young age, I wanted to be a biologist. But, I guess it wasn’t for me. I guess I’m not smart enough. I guess maybe I need to do something else. I just don’t have the mind for science.
Two years. I believed her for two years.
July 23, 2019
Academia to Government
Switching Up Your Communication Style
In the academic world, communication comes in the form of peer-reviewed papers, theses or dissertations, seminar talks, conference talks, and posters. All long format and so deep into the science that you’re no longer certain what language they’re speaking. So, what do you do when you’ve been trained in those styles of communication for the past five years and you begin a communications position in the federal government as part of the Knauss fellowship program for a climate modeling program?
July 6, 2019