Teaching And Communication

Communication Experience

In addition to the specific links on this website, I have given hundreds of lectures on marine debris to diverse audiences, including innumerable classrooms (K-undergrad), groups of teachers, Sierra Clubs, engineers, birdwatchers, and many more.

In the process of giving so many talks about my research, I have become passionate about scientific communication itself, and have also given talks about how to best communicate your science. I gave a talk at the 2016 ASLO Ocean Sciences Meeting in New Orleans, in a session on Outreach and Education, about some of the tips and techniques I have learned about outreach over the years (pictured above). I gave a talk at the Aquarium of the Pacific about communicating science without alienating your audience, recorded here. I have spoken on panels at Birch Aquarium for high school students about pursuing a career in STEM (pictured below), as well as on a panel at the 2020 ASLO Ocean Sciences Meeting in San Diego for a group of early career scientists on communicating their science.

Teaching Experience

During my Price Postdoctoral Fellowship, I gained formal teaching experience. I co-taught a course called COSIA, or Communicating Ocean Science to Informal Audiences. We taught both undergraduate and graduate Scripps and UCSD students. We taught the students communication and teaching skills, and let the students build an interactive activity on the floor of the Aquarium. We then let them redesign the activity throughout the quarter, as they learned more about what resonates with informal audiences. Below is a picture of me teaching the public on the floor of the aquarium, exactly as I had the students do.

I also taught day-long teacher professional development workshops, teaching San Diego teachers about the California Current, the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, and marine debris. I was able to pass on my research through NGSS-aligned activities that can be used in middle school classrooms around San Diego. 

I also helped San Diego teachers write open source NGSS-aligned curriculum based on my research through a three day workshop called Project Phenomena. Through that workshop, we wrote marine debris curriculum for elementary, middle, and high schoolers. My research has also been incorporated into the Ocean School online curriculum for middle and high schoolers.

Museum Exhibit Experience

I have helped build and design multiple museum exhibits, allowing me to bring my childhood dreams of becoming an Imagineer (at least somewhat) to life! As a postdoc, I was able to work on multiple exhibits at Birch Aquarium. I was by far most involved with Oddities: Hidden Heroes, our exhibit about the superpowers of the animals that are housed in Scripps’ famous collections. We built the exhibit to look like trading cards, action figures, and other collectibles in order to showcase the superpowers of the animals of the ocean. Having worked extensively in the collections for my PhD, this exhibit was near and dear to my heart. As part of the exhibit, I also got to build a mad scientist’s eclectic desk, that looked an awful lot like my actual desk from graduate school! (photo below).

I have also helped inform exhibits around the world, from an exhibit on Water and Civilizations in Prague to the tiny installation Mmuseumm in New York City, which is currently displaying some of my plastics samples.