2025 Candidate Pamela Templer

Pamela Templer (CV)
Professor
Boston University

Candidate for: ESA President-Elect

Pamela Templer is a Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Biology Department at Boston University (BU). She received a B.A. with a double major in Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz, a Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Cornell University, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California Berkeley. Her research focuses on how plants, soil microbes, and biogeochemical cycles are impacted by climate, air pollution, and urbanization. Her projects integrate across environmental science and policy and include collaborations with governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector. She has been a member of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) since 2005 and was elected as an ESA Fellow in 2019. In 2024, she was invited to be a member of the U.S. National Committee for the International Union of Biological Sciences and an author of the first U.S. National Nature Assessment.

Pamela will bring her experience in leading large teams to being President-Elect. For example, she was Vice President for Education at ESA (2018-2021). At BU she has served as Director of the URBAN Graduate Program, an NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program (2017-present). She has also served as Co-Director of the BU Stable Isotope Laboratory (2007-present), Director of the Biogeoscience PhD Program (2014-2021), as well Associate Chair (2014-2020) and Chair (2022-present) of the Department of Biology. She co-leads the NSF-supported Hubbard Brook Long-Term Ecological Research Site (2022-present) and the Youth Environmental Alliance in Higher Education (YEAH) and Climate Leaders Academy (2020-present), in which students are trained in environmental science and international diplomacy.

How would you support ESA’s mission, including the career aspirations and full inclusion of all ecologists?

As President-Elect, I would bring lessons I have learned with ESA and in other leadership roles to help ESA continue to promote excellence in ecology and to grow as a welcoming place and resource for all ecologists. I believe everyone deserves a positive workplace environment and I would bring that passion to all aspects of this position, including when representing ESA with the public, media, and other organizations, and when providing leadership to ESA members, officers, committee members, and staff.

My work as President-Elect would build on my previous work as an ESA member and my role on the Governing Board as Vice President for Education. In that role I led listening sessions with ESA members, managed the selection process for ESA scholarships, and organized ESA luncheons and forums at annual meetings, including panel discussions about “Stories of Belonging” and “Reflections on Becoming an Ecologist.” I was part of a team that surveyed ESA members about their workplace experiences, which resulted in a published report in Frontiers in Ecology & the Environment and included recommendations for how institutions can improve workplace environments.