By Tory Boyd
The initial chapter of the recruitment, training and research program to incorporate public policy and stakeholder opinions into fisheries population dynamics education closed with positive student reviews and opportunities for future collaboration.
The PIE Center and its subsidiary, the National Public Policy Evaluation Center, teamed up with fisheries experts from the National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the UF/IFAS Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences program to host the graduate-level summer program.
The goal of the recruiting, training and research program was to provide students with the necessary skills, knowledge and encouragement to continue their education in the field.
The two-week, intensive summer program focused on rehabilitating sturgeon populations in the Apalachicola Bay and Suwannee River basins and allowed the eight students to get hands-on research experience.
The public policy element, or translating research results into useable information for decision makers, is a concept that hasn’t been available to those students before, according to NPPEC Director Alexa Lamm, an assistant professor in the UF/IFAS Department of Agricultural Education and Communication.
“Oftentimes as researchers, we rely on fact and figures from our research to justify decisions but a lot of decisions are made beyond facts and figures,” she said. “We taught them tips for communicating about science so that decision makers want to use science and use it in the right way.”
PIE Center Grants Coordinator Deidra Slough helped oversee the program and was impressed with the variety of experiences the students encountered.
“The students got to meet stakeholders and handle the sturgeon, but then they also got a lot of classroom time,” she said. “They learned about modeling, sturgeon policies and how to put those two together conceptually, so it was a good mix.”
The majority of students rated the overall quality of the program as excellent, according to program leader Jim Berkson. The professor in fisheries and aquatic sciences said that all students said they would recommend the program to others.
“The unique approach to learning not only taught students about the complexity of issues like this but provided an important and unique research study,” he reported.
Students presented research results to scientists in St. Petersburg and are preparing a manuscript for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
The success of this summer pilot program opens up opportunities for future collaborations, Lamm said. NPPEC will continue the partnership with a similar program geared toward undergraduate students in March.
“I think that this is a great example of how the PIE Center and NPECC can collaborate on research and education across IFAS,” Lamm said. “It’s an example of a role we can play in helping students leave here even more prepared for the workforce.”
