2010 Conference June 17–20 Portland, Oregon
Theme: Many Shades of Green

A number of professional and general-interest workshops will be available on Thursday June 17, immediately before our opening plenary session on Thursday evening. Workshops are offered in the morning or afternoon following the same schedule as that for our field trips so you may participate in both (make sure to include Thu lunch when you register so you can grab some food in between activities).  All workshops will be held on Lewis & Clark campus.  There is a limit of 25 participants per workshop, so make sure to register for them as a part of the conference registration.  For further information on these workshops, please contact the workshop organizers listed below or Phil Camill, AESS Program Committee chair.

• The Publication Process for the Forthcoming Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences (Walter A. "Tony" Rosenbaum, tonyros@ufl.edu). Publication of the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences (JESS) is a primary mechanism by which the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences advances scholarship that crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries and integrates knowledge and practice to advance environmental theory and problem solving.  In this workshop, members of the JESS editorial team will outline the complete process of publication. We will address determination of journal scope and emphasis, the review process and editorial decisions, and production of cohesive volumes. We will highlight ways that authors can increase the probability of publishing in JESS as well as options for serving in an editorial capacity. With our publisher, we also will touch on current issues and trends in the publishing industry.  We are particularly interested in introducing early-career professionals to the process by which manuscripts are evaluated for scope, merit, and relevance in JESS. This is applicable to the publication process more broadly. Senior-career professionals also may wish to better understand similarities and differences among JESS and other journals in which they have published.
• CAMEL Climate Education (David Hassenzahl, david.hassenzahl@unlv.edu).  The purpose of this workshop is to identify contributors to the emerging CAMEL (Climate Adaptation and Mitigation e-Learning) resource. The workshop will (1) introduce CAMEL; (2) provide an opportunity to contribute to the development of CAMEL; (3) provide an opportunity to develop climate education materials to use and share.  CAMEL is a three-year effort, funded by the National Science Foundation and through the National Council for Science and the Environment. Its intent is to improve undergraduate education on climate change causes, effects, and solutions. It will do so by developing an extensive, vetted collection of climate related content, as well as educational materials that incorporate that content; build a community of climate researchers and educators; facilitate faculty development for interested individuals, and develop cyberinfrastructure to access to content, and participate in community and faculty development. Participants in this workshop will be provided with an orientation to CAMEL and opportunities to provide feedback on its content and design.
• Many Gateways to Green: Building Engagement with an AESS Cafe (Cassandra Hemphill, cassandra.hemphill@umontana.edu).  Increasing participant engagement is a goal for environmental teaching, scholarship, and public policy. World Cafe is a recognized solution to rich, engaging dialogue that is as fruitful at conferences as in the classroom, on a campus, in an organization, or at public participation processes. This workshop will teach the World Cafe method by using it to open conversations about the Many Shades of Green available at this conference. The questions proposed for the AESS cafe include (1) How do we benefit from many shades of green ideas? (2) What are the most powerful conversations our community in environmental studies and sciences can visualize ourselves having? (3) How will AESS / this conference contribute to green thinking and practices? This experiential learning workshop offers dual value: it both teaches a widely used communication tool and applies it as we begin the rich conversation of an interdisciplinary conference. Participants will engage with each other and explore the potential of the many sessions ahead; meet new and old friends and strengthen their networks of colleagues; and actively shape the dialogue that will continue throughout the conference and wrap up with the Roundtables scheduled for the final morning.

• The OpenGeo Suite: A Fully Open Geospatial Stack (Mike Pumphrey, mike@opengeo.org).  Attendees will learn and use the five components that comprise the OpenGeo Suite:  PostGIS, a robust spatial database built on PostgreSQL; GeoServer, a spatial data server; GeoWebCache, a tile cache server; OpenLayers, a browser-based map renderer; and GeoExt, a library for creating rich browser applications. Also showcased will be GeoExplorer, a browser-based map composer and publisher, and Styler, a graphical style (SLD) editor.  The purpose will be to show how the OpenGeo Suite stack allows users to open, publish, and share geospatial data, facilitating greater collaboration.
• Training Tomorrow’s Leaders: Academic Courses in Adaptive Management for Conservation Projects (Vinaya Swaminathan, vinaya@fosonline.org).  This workshop emphasizes the importance of teaching the practical skills and theory behind adaptive management of conservation projects to students in environment-related graduate programs. All conservation projects, occurring across ‘many shades of green’ benefit from the rigorous and systematic planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and learning called for by the adaptive management process.  As such, sound training in adaptive management is essential for any conservation practitioner.  The Conservation Measures Partnership’s approach to adaptive management – the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation – provides the guidelines around which an academic course can be developed. Foundations of Success and the University of Maryland now offers a course in adaptive management that combines hands-on group work on real projects with traditional classroom lectures. To help meet the growing demand for information on teaching adaptive management, Foundations of Success has established a network that serves the environmental studies and science community by providing an open forum for sharing the tools, lessons, and contacts for incorporating adaptive management training into graduate environmental programs. This workshop focused on highlighting the new network could result in an informed group of university students and professors who will hopefully champion implementing an adaptive management course for environmentally-focused projects at their home institutions.
• Examining ESS Career Issues and Interdisciplinary Scholarship (Susan Clark, susan.g.clark@yale.edu).  There are many issues facing new interdisciplinary scholars, including finding graduate programs, hiring, job interviews, research and publishing, tenure advancement, administrative/leadership issues, and evaluation of interdisciplinary scholarship.  In this workshop, AESS members will address these issues in an effort to (1) learn how to acquire academic positions focusing on interdisciplinarity, (2) define standards for professional advancement for promotion and tenure, (3) evaluate best-practices and criteria with which to evaluate interdisciplinary scholarship in an effort to support junior faculty, and (4) develop clarifying principles and support networks for aspiring interdisciplinary faculty to be successful in their home departments (which may be largely disciplinary).