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...

By: Josie Lindsey-Robbins. This fellowship year has been unlike years past, with the majority of fellows in my cohort exclusively teleworking since March 2020. For all future fellows, here are five things I think you need in order to have a successful virtual fellowship.

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.

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.   

By: Lauren Bonatakis. When I decided to quit my full-time, benefitted job to move to a new state for a year of service with AmeriCorps on a whim, it was a surprise to those who know me best. It was also one of the best decisions I have made.   

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.

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...

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...

By: Grace Roskar. From a summer internship in North Carolina to policy work in D.C., graduate school in Florida, and a research cruise in the Southeast, the variety of experiences I had and the people I met over the years are what influenced my journey to the fellowship.

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...

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...

By: Brianna Shaughnessy. While I now live in Washington, D.C., and have committed to a career in science, it was only six months ago that I packed up my favorite corkscrew and bottle opener to begin my adventure as a Knauss fellow. Five of the lessons I learned through my bartending experiences stand out as those that I believe make me successful...

By: Rachel Hager. I’m a Knauss marine policy fellow at NOAA because of a poster. Seven years ago, I saw one small poster pinned to a brown cork board in the hallway of a research center in Maryland. I decided to apply for the Knauss fellowship as an inland fellow from Utah because I kept thinking about that poster.   

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...

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...

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 Hawaiʻi at the start of my fellowship year, we covered most of this breadth.

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...

By: Alexandra Skrivanek. Stuart Levenbach began his career in marine policy exploring how anemones, macroalgae, sea urchins and fish interact on rocky reefs off southern California. Less than two decades later, he was appointed as the Chief of Staff of NOAA. Dr. Levenbach always knew he would play a role in advancing natural resource policy in...

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...

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...