{"id":5578,"date":"2016-07-26T21:51:32","date_gmt":"2016-07-27T04:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/history\/?p=5578"},"modified":"2022-02-09T20:14:17","modified_gmt":"2022-02-09T20:14:17","slug":"williams-jack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/history\/2016\/07\/williams-jack\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From an \u201cEcologist Directory\u201d maintained by the ESA Education Office about 2004-2005. Profile circa 2004.<\/em>
Degree<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ph.D.
Position<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Assistant Professor
Department<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Geography Department
Organization<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 University of Wisconsin \u2013 Madison
Dr. Williams and his colleagues Drs. Bryan Shuman and Thompson Webb III are the 2004 recipients of the William S. Cooper Award<\/strong>, for their 2001 paper, \u201cDissimilarity analyses of Late-Quaternary vegetation and climate in eastern North America\u201d, published in Ecology 82:3346-3362. The Cooper Award is made annually for an outstanding contribution in geobotany, physiographic ecology, plant succession, or the distribution of organisms along environmental gradients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"jwilliams\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve always been interested in ecology, but didn\u2019t develop a serious research interest in ecological topics until I started graduate school. As a matter of fact, both my undergraduate and graduate degrees are in the geosciences, but during graduate school I really became interested in understanding vegetation dynamics and vegetation-climate interactions at timescales (100-100,000 yr) that are long for ecologists and short for geologists. So a lot of the methodology is borrowed from geology (e.g. coring lakes, identifying fossil plant remains, establishing chronologies), but the key questions are fundamentally ecological in nature: what is the nature and rate of plant community and ecosystem responses to climate change? What are the important feedbacks between coupled atmosphere-biosphere systems? I\u2019m fortunate to have a fairly broad training, because a critical research need now is to understand how the biosphere operates as one component of the earth system. Ecologists and Quaternary scientists each have much to offer here.
My most influential guide into ecology was Tom Webb, my dissertation advisor. I left college knowing that I wanted to continue working in the sciences, and that I wanted to do work relevant to current environmental and societal issues, but unsure just how to apply my undergraduate degree in geology towards these goals. Tom is also broadly trained \u2014 was trained in a meteorology department, is housed in a geosciences department, and has made a career of studying the spatial and temporal patterns of late-Quaternary vegetation and climate dynamics. I didn\u2019t know much about ecology at that point, so a lot of my graduate education was spent catching up on ecological theory and practice, with a heavy emphasis on the paleoecology. My postdoc at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis allowed me to continue my arc of ecological training by exposing me to an incredibly diverse and wide range of ecologists and ecological questions. I couldn\u2019t have asked for a better finishing school \u2014 and at the same time, I was able to contribute a relatively long-term and synoptic perspective to NCEAS.
I\u2019m about to start at a position as an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin \u2013 Madison \u2014 but, interestingly enough, in the geography department. It will be a good home to pursue my multidisciplinary research \u2014 geography departments have a good tradition of supporting cross-cutting research interests.
Not sure what advice I have for students, since my own experiences represent a sample size of one! Much depends on whether they plan to pursue a career in the sciences or at the science\/policy, science\/education, or ecosystem management nexuses. If they\u2019re still deciding on a career, I recommend contacting established professionals to ask them how they got their start and the training they had, or wish they had. Meetings like ESA are a great place to do this, or at least learn who\u2019s out there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From an \u201cEcologist Directory\u201d maintained by the ESA Education Office about 2004-2005. Profile circa 2004.Degree\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ph.D.Position\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Assistant ProfessorDepartment\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Geography DepartmentOrganization\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 University of Wisconsin \u2013 MadisonDr. Williams and his colleagues Drs. Bryan Shuman and Thompson Webb III are the 2004 recipients of the William S. Cooper Award, for their 2001 paper, \u201cDissimilarity analyses of Late-Quaternary vegetation and climate in eastern North…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11106,"featured_media":5555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,155,165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biographies","category-ecologist-directory","category-personal-accounts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}