UC Davis Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior: Post-doctoral Fellowship in Evaluation of Nitrogen Management Extension and Outreach

Position Description

Nature recently published a perspective "Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?"  In discussing faculty discontent with academia and shifting to "non-academic" jobs, one factoid they cite is "Forty-one per cent of mid-career researchers — compared with 32% of early-career scientists — reported that organizational politics or bureaucracy frequently or always frustrated their efforts to do a good job".  What is it about the corporate

This report summarizes the results from a survey of California Bay-Delta science enterprise stakeholders conducted in 2021 by researchers from the University of California-Davis, University of Colorado-Denver, and University of Arizona.  You can download the full report here.

In the global economy, COVID seems to have triggered the Great Resignation, which is a transformative event. A punctuated equilibrium. I think a similar phenomena might be happening in the culture of higher education, and I will name it: The Great Disengagement. What are it symptoms? What are its causes? What are its consequences? Is there a cure? I can only offer some speculations here but it think we need global reckoning in the entire higher education system.

UC Davis Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior: Post-doctoral Fellowships in Environmental Governance  

Position Description

As a member of the Delta Science Program's Science Advisory Committe, I'm currently engaged in a planning process called the "Science Needs Assessment" (SNA).

As I promised to the CEPB community in the spirit of #shutdownstem, and also to support the actions in the CEPB statement on Black Lives Matter, I took some time today (tonight...) to read Carolyn Merchant's article "Shades of Darkness: Race and Environmental History."  I wi

The faculty, students, researchers, and staff of the UC Davis Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior stand in solidarity with the Black community. We condemn white supremacy, police brutality, and the politics of racism, fear, and hate. Black Lives Matter. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery are the most recent illustrations of the systemic racism and injustice that permeate every aspect of our society--including academia.

Does the science enterprise in large-scale ecosystems like the California Delta provide a policy laxative, or contribute to policy constipation? This was a perspective offered by a Delta science enterprise stakeholder during a recent workshop facilitated by me and my CU Denver colleague Tanya Heikkila.

Happy New Year 2020!  I went to San Francisco last weekend and saw the amazing musical Hamilton. You should definitely go!  I also spent half of Dec 31, 2019 editing a paper on the spread of conflict in polycentric governance systems, where we are particularly concerned about how conflict and cooperation within one policy forum may spread like a virus to other forums.  I think the idea of "seconds" in the duels performed in Hamilton, may help us think about conflict in polycentric systems, along with the role of "collaborative" governance.