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Main Menu : RAE Highlights : Highlights November 2008 Newsletter :
Perspective from a Scholarship Recipient
Thomas J. Mozdzer, University of Virginia, Department of Environmental Sciences
As a scholarship recipient of Restore America's Estuaries, I am very honored to have received funding to attend the national meeting in Providence, Rhode Island. With limited travel funding as a graduate student, this was a great opportunity to attend such a specialized meeting. I believe that the Restore America's Estuaries meeting is one of the most appropriate venues for a graduate student looking to communicate real-world applications for their results and receive feedback on proposed restoration tactics/strategies. While other conferences I have previously attended may have only a session or two dedicated to restoration, having the entire meeting dedicated to estuarine restoration was the perfect venue to learn about the trials, tribulations, and successes in estuarine restoration. This was my first Restore America's Estuaries Meeting, and overall I was very impressed by the breadth of research, the quality of the work, and the integration among academics, policy-makers, and the private sector.
As a person interested in becoming involved in future restoration projects, attending the Restore America's Estuaries meeting was the ideal "crash-course" in estuarine restoration. From learning about restoration in an urbanized environment, to the challenges of tidal marsh restoration in the context of accelerated climate change, I intend to implement the lessons learned from case studies in my future work. Additionally, not only did I have the opportunity to learn first hand from the experts, but I was also able to contribute by presenting the results of my collaborative research for controlling introduced common reed, Phragmites australis. I enjoyed talking to and meeting new colleagues within the restoration community, and several people informed me that they intend to use the results from my research in their future projects. Hearing that my research may help others in their restoration efforts and may have potential impacts in the "real world" was a personal highlight of the meeting. Also, I was able to make a number of professional contacts in academia and in the private sector, which I am confident will help me as I transition from graduate student to Ph.D. and beyond.
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Thanks to our Scholarship Funders
Anonymous Foundation
Trull Foundation
Houston Endowment, Inc.
Dominion
FishAmerica Foundation
PSEG
Washington Foundation for the Environment
Spectra Energy
Gulf of Mexico Foundation