Last spring, Lisa Schulte Moore won the chance to speak to a happy hour crowd at the Aster Cafe in Minneapolis, MN, during our Annual Meeting. Schulte Moore came through with flying colors, drawing an audience in from a beautiful, blue, August evening to talk about \u201cAgricultural Change: Making a better Iowa, making a better world.\u201d She reached over the last, short distance between her and her audience, asking them to help her out with her presentation by reading aloud quotes from Iowa farmers and residents. Schulte Moore already spends a lot of time taking with Iowa farmers, a group she says is incredibly receptive to new science, about sustaining their production into the future. This December, she volunteered to write about her new adventures in public outreach at the Science Cafe, and as a fellow in the Leopold Leadership<\/a> program.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cEating is an agricultural act.\u201d (Wendel Berry) \u2013 Lisa Schulte Moore sketched a Leopold- style Message Box in preparation for her Science Cafe adventure last August.<\/p><\/div>\n Being a native of Wisconsin \u2013 land of beer, brats, and polkas \u2013 I\u2019ve always dreamed of delivering a science presentation with a drink in my hand. I\u2019d like to tell you that the realization of that dream was the whole reason I volunteered for a Science Caf\u00e9, but that wouldn\u2019t be entirely true. The real reason has more to do with a serendipity: the email announcing the Ecological Society of America\u2019s sponsorship of a Science Caf\u00e9<\/a> in conjunction with the 2013 Annual Meeting<\/a> showed up in my in-box just as I was embarking on a new journey as a Leopold Leadership Fellow<\/a>.<\/p>\n What\u2019s a Science Caf\u00e9 you ask? Science Caf\u00e9s are popping up all over the world as a means of encouraging greater dialog between scientists and society. The bar or caf\u00e9 setting provides a more informal, personal atmosphere, helping both parties relate to each other as human beings. They may be known by a different name in different places; for example, the usual name for the Science Caf\u00e9 series I was a part of is \u201cSip of Science<\/a>\u201c: a collaboration between the Aster Caf\u00e9<\/a> in Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota\u2019s National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics<\/a>. Elsewhere, they are known as \u201cScience on Tap\u201d or \u201cPecha Cucha,\u201d but the idea is the same: as a society, we\u2019re dealing with a lot of complex problems that science and scientists could help solve. People are not going to turn to science, however, if the investigations we conduct are inaccessible to them. Furthermore, people are more likely to trust the results of a scientific study, and to use the results in their decision making, if they know a scientist. The aim of Science Caf\u00e9s is simply to lower, if not eliminate, such cultural barriers.<\/p>\n Lisa Schulte Moore answers audience questions at ESA\u2019s inaugural Science Cafe. Aster Cafe, Minneapolis, MN, 7 August 2013.<\/em> Credit, Nadine Lymn.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n Translating scientific knowledge into societal action also happens to be the primary goal of Stanford University\u2019s Leopold Leadership Program. Founded over a decade ago, the program seeks to equip midcareer environmental scientists with better communication and leadership skills. While well equipped to weigh in on contentious environmental issues, highly knowledgeable environmental scientists have historically not been well trained to make science accessible. Formal educational programs tend to be highly focused on helping students learn the foundations of our fields, rigorous scientific processes, and communication to other scientists \u2014 and rightly so, because students need to be adept at these things to find employment in competitive fields. Also, the reward structure for tenure and promotion at many institutions does not prioritize outreach and engagement. My experience has been that, while many students voice interest in receiving training on outreach and engagement, these skills get pushed to the back burner and sometimes off the range as funding, usually in short supply to begin with, runs out.<\/p>\n I applied to Stanford\u2019s Leopold Leadership program because I recognized this deficit in my own training. As a landscape ecologist at Iowa State University<\/a>, I study the causes, consequences, and design of land-use change in the U.S. Corn Belt<\/a>. This region faces several environmental problems important to society, including how to maintain the region\u2019s historically high agricultural productivity in light of ongoing soil degradation, how to improve the safety of recreational and drinking water supplies, and how to evaluate the sustainability of different renewable energy pathways. Basically, the region is facing issues regarding food, water, and energy: those fundamental to our human endeavor. I have knowledge and skills that can help inform discussions and decisions on these topics, but my time is limited. How do I find and engage with communities that are committed to environmental progress? How do I make my efforts most impactful? How do I make my messages stick?<\/p>\n I applied to the Leopold Leadership Program to learn the answers to these questions \u2013 and as a member of the 2013 Leopold Leadership cohort, did I ever. In a week long session at the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread<\/a>, I and 19 other fellows received intense, in-depth training in strategic thinking (thank you, Barefoot Thinking<\/a>) and communications (thank you, COMPASS<\/a>). I applied for ESA\u2019s Science Caf\u00e9 because I knew it would offer a great venue to put these new found skills to use. Here are a few of the newly learned elements that I specifically incorporated into the presentation:<\/p>\n Was I successful at using these in my Science Caf\u00e9? I\u2019m not sure, but my father-in-law, who by any Wisconsinite\u2019s standards is a typical, hard-to-thaw Minnesotan, was pretty enthused. I\u2019ll also say I found the preparation and delivery to be fun and enlightening\u2026and I\u2019d do it again in a heartbeat. Especially if I can have a beer in hand.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Being a native of Wisconsin \u2013 land of beer, brats, and polkas \u2013 I\u2019ve always dreamed of delivering a science presentation with a drink in my hand.” — Lisa Schulte Moore writes about her new adventures in public outreach at the Science Cafe, and as a fellow in the Leopold Leadership program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":9705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,48],"tags":[110,437,300,1566,1268,1575,1627,20,1576,1409,22],"class_list":["post-9700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-posts","category-ecology-and-society","tag-agriculture","tag-aldo-leopold-foundation","tag-annual-meeting","tag-esa2013","tag-iowa","tag-lisa-schulte-moore","tag-minneapolis","tag-minnesota","tag-science-cafe","tag-science-communication","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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