2024 Candidate Mark Scheuerell
Mark Scheuerell
Research Ecologist
U.S. Geological Survey
Candidate for:Â Member of the Governing Board
My career in ecology began after my junior year of undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison when I was hired as a field technician to work with Steve Carpenter’s group in northern Wisconsin. After graduating with a BS in Zoology in 1991, I worked as a full-time research associate at the UW Center for Limnology and then with the Cornell Biological Field Station. I began my graduate studies at Cornell University in 1993 and earned my MS in Fishery and Aquatic Science in 1995. I then pivoted to terrestrial ecology and worked for the University of Massachusetts for two years studying the demographics of federally endangered Florida grasshopper sparrows. In 1997 I began my doctoral studies at the University of Washington and earned my PhD in Zoology in 2002.
Only eight months into my postdoc, I was hired at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center where my research subsequently focused on status assessments of ESA-listed species and the development of statistical methods for temporal and spatial data. In 2019 I was hired as the Assistant Unit Leader of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Washington Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, and I also joined the faculty in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington. Research in my lab tends toward applied and quantitative ecology.
I served as the secretary of the ESA Aquatic Ecology Section from 2008-2009. I served on the editorial board of Ecological Research from 2007-2017 and since 2016 I’ve served on the editorial board for Limnology and Oceanography Letters. Over the past 20 years I have also organized and led several topical sessions and continuing education workshops at conferences hosted by ESA, the Association for the Sciences of Limnology & Oceanography, and the American Fisheries Society.
What interests, experiences or skills would you bring to this position?
I am an applied ecologist who uses a variety of quantitative approaches to analyze often noisy and disparate data. Much of my research focuses on food web interactions in lakes, large rivers, and nearshore marine areas. I really enjoy teaching and mentoring students and early career scientists, and I love learning new things from our experiences together.
I have worked for more than 20 years as a research scientist with the U.S. government. I work closely with other government agencies, tribes, and NGOs, and my work has directly informed management policies in the U.S. and Canada. Drawing from these experiences, I foresee a role in helping expand member engagement with diverse stakeholders and rightsholders beyond academia.
Many of us find failures to be uncomfortable so we try to ignore them and move on, but I see opportunity for learning and growth from that discomfort. I am a strong proponent and practitioner of open and reproducible science, and I teach a graduate course on best practices in environmental data science as well. As a board member, I would work with others to advance our standards and tools for facilitating open and reproducible science.
How would you support ESA’s mission? How would you plan to promote DEIJ in ESA membership and activities if elected?
ESA’s mission and values align closely with those I have established within my own lab group at the University of Washington. In my current role as an academic faculty member, I have organized career panels to showcase the breadth of non-academic options open to students and postdocs after they finish. More broadly, I have served as a mentor in ESA’s Early Career Ecologist Mentorship Program and in the EcologyPlus Program from NSF INCLUDES (Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science). Recently, I began mentoring students through the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science. As a board member, I would support similar efforts and propose better engagement with other scientific societies. I have also served on the national DEI committee of the USGS Cooperative Units program, and I have been the co-chair of my department’s DEI committee for the past 3 years. In general, I strive to use my position of privilege to give voice and standing to others who are less fortunate, while advancing policies, initiatives, and trainings intended to improve equity and inclusion, which hopefully increases diversity in science.