Patty: Welcome to Sagecast, the podcast at Pomona College. I'm Patty Vest. Mark: And I'm Mark Wood. This season on Sagecast, we're discussing mentoring stories with Pomona students, professors, coaches, and staff who work closely together in the classroom, in the lab and in the field. Patty: Let me introduce today's guests, Nina Karnovsky, the Willard George Halsted Zoology Professor of Biology and Charlotte Chang, class of 2010 who returned to Pomona this year as a David Smith Conservation Research Fellow and Research Assistant Professor. Mark: Welcome Nina and Charlotte. Good to have you with us. Charlotte: Thank you. Good to be here. Mark: Charlotte, let's start with you. You graduated from Pomona in 2010 with a major in biology. What have you been up to since then and how did you find your way back to Pomona? Charlotte: After I graduated from Pomona College with the guidance of fantastic faculty here at Pomona, including Andrea Cavalcanti, of course, Nina, Joe Harden, and others. I was fortunate enough to receive the Downing Scholarship to pursue a master's at the University of Cambridge, so truly phenomenal program. Very grateful for that opportunity. And then I went on to do a Fulbright Fellowship in China where I pursued independent avian ecology research, largely inspired by the types of field and lab based research that I had done with Professor Karnovsky as an undergraduate researcher. Charlotte: And that really showed me that there was a lot that I could add as a conservation scientist working in East and South East Asia and then pursued my PhD at Princeton University, in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, where I was mentored by both a very quantitative ecologist and a more traditional conservation field biologist. Along the way, I developed skills in merging social sciences' data with ecological data to pursue questions at the nexus of human dimensions of conservation and the ecological consequences of how human decision making behavior affects natural resources, affects landscapes, affects species that can or cannot persist under different configurations of human resource use in different landscape allocations. Charlotte: And then I was fortunate enough to receive two postdoctoral fellowships, the first at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis at the University of Tennessee. And the second, which brought me back to Pomona as a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellow. And next year I'll be joining the faculty, which has been a really phenomenal, an exciting opportunity. I look forward to serving my alma mater in a different capacity. Patty: Congratulations. Charlotte: Thank you. Patty: That's great. That's great news. Nina. Nina: Yes. Patty: You've been at Pomona teaching biology since 2004. What drew you to biology and how did you find your way to Pomona? Nina: Well, I had a really circuitous route to coming to Pomona, but I was an undergraduate at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and I really loved liberal arts. I had a great experience testing all different majors. I think I changed my major like every year, at least once a year. But I was- Mark: [crosstalk 00:03:27]. Nina: Yes, indeed. But this is a confession, but I was really anti-science. I actually petitioned out of the few scientific classes I was supposed to be taking. I was interested in the philosophy of science and felt that if I did science I would be sullied because of the inherent problems with the scientific method and subjugation of all living things through science. And I was really a shrill person at that time, but I really loved the philosophy of science and what I was studying there. I ended up in the science and society program there and never in a million years thought I would become a scientist. Nina: So I ended up teaching kids at a field station up in Point Reyes, which is now called the Point Blue Bird Observatory. Well, it used to be called the Point Raised Bird Observatory and now it's called Point Blue. They changed their name, but studying birds. But my role was teaching kids about the natural world, about birds. I was an education intern. I really loved that. I loved being on the West Coast. That was like a dream come true. And slowly started getting more interested in what the researchers were doing with birds and how they were using birds to understand the environment. So I started begging like an intern for different bird projects. I was a bird bum essentially and I went out to the Farallon Islands and that's where I discovered seabirds, which are a particular type of bird. Nina: They get all their food from the ocean and they're really responsive to any changes in the ocean. So when I was out there, the birds were actually having a really tough year. The chicks I was measuring were getting smaller. There were parents abandoning their nests. There was chicks crawling out of the nest too early and getting eaten by other birds. I mean it was really dramatic and I was really excited because I saw that these birds were telling us what was happening in the ocean in terms of food and climate change. And that kind of set me on a path. Many years later after lots of... I didn't really have a confidence as a scientist. I didn't really think of myself. I was like, I just love birds and I love what they can tell us, but I didn't really think that I could be the principal investigator in a project. Nina: But then eventually somebody who I was working with said to me, "Have you thought about grad school?" And I thought, "Well, maybe I should think about this. I actually have a lot of ideas of my own." I went back to community college to take some of those science classes that I really resisted, but by then I really knew that this is what I wanted to do and so I was really enthusiastic about it. Of course, if you ever want to talk about the philosophy of science and the social construction of measurement and all these other things, which I love to study as an undergrad, I still love to have that perspective and I really also incorporated the ideas that science is not an isolated endeavor and that it's embedded in the society that we're in and it can be fraught. Nina: So I still have those threads in my life and research, but then I went to graduate school and I studied Antarctic birds, which were definitely being impacted by climate change. I did a master's at Montana State. And then I said, "This is not enough for me. I still have a lot to learn and want to do." So then I went to the Arctic to study how climate change was impacting Arctic birds and what they were telling us about changes that were happening in the North. And then I was about to graduate from UC Irvine with my doctorate and there was a position open at the Keck Science Department actually. And I thought, "I really miss teaching in the liberal arts environment. I saw the students at Irvine were so fantastic, but I was teaching a class of 300 and I had to check their IDs for exams. Nina: I actually got to know very few of them and that made me sad. I wanted to be able to do research and teach in an environment where I really had that atmosphere that I had experienced at Wesleyan. So I came here as a sabbatical replacement and taught animal behavior and their Bio-44, which was one of their introductory bio classes over at Keck Science. And then the job at Pomona came open. So I came over here and interviewed and now I'm here. So I really feel like that circuitous path really helped me to get here because in my bird bum days, I guess you could say I was studying birds from all over the world. I was working collaboratively with scientists from all over the world. I also studied elephant seals along the way and other things. Nina: So I think they thought, "Well, you're a Marine person and we're inland." I was hired as a terrestrial biologist here, but they somehow had confidence that I could be able to implement some of the things to study around here because I had had all these diverse experiences. But it really was not directional. I mean, I really feel like that's one thing I tried to tell my students is that nothing is to be regretted. You know that it all will make sense in the end and not be so intentional because try new things. You never know where they're going to lead you. I would never have imagined that I would still be studying seabirds. When I first went out to try it, I thought it was up for the adventure and wow cool- Mark: A long adventure. Nina: A cool island out there, so I wanted to give it a try. So yeah. Mark: So how did the two of you meet and since we're talking about mentoring, how did your relationship become one of mentorship? Nina: All right, which is the first class you took? Was it 41-E or, yeah. Okay. So there's a introductory class called Ecological and Evolutionary Biology and it's a required class for all biology majors and there's a prerequisite of having taken genetics beforehand. So that's where I get to meet some of the younger students and then my upper division classes is where I get to know them even better. So I think we first met in 41-E and then you also were in Advanced Animal Ecology and I can't remember if there was another one. Charlotte: I am not sure. Nina: I don't think so. Charlotte: [crosstalk 00:11:51]. Nina: Yeah. So, that's where we first met. And the second part of your question was about the- Mark: Well it's... Yeah, how you- Nina: How do we develop this? Mark: And that's- Nina: Yeah. Mark: ... Maybe that's the question is more for Charlotte. How did Nina become one of your mentors? Charlotte: So I've found 41-E really exciting and transformative as someone whose family immigrated to the US from a country where the environment is regarded as very much an externality. That is something that we price at zero, when we pollute, we don't pay nature for the damage that it sustains for us. When we harvest wildlife, we don't think about that as a private resource that could be shared by communities instead of something that if I don't take it today, it could be gone tomorrow. Charlotte: But I always enjoyed interacting with birds. I had pet birds growing up. I would watch them do interesting things. I would wonder about what was going on and a little reptilian dinosaur brains. And it wasn't until 41-E that I had these transformative experiences in the field and I realized, "Oh, you can do this for a living." There's actually an academic discipline around the science of ecology, which isn't derived from like the Latin root white ghost, right? In alogia. Like the logic or the philosophy of the homes that animals make in nature or the organisms make and natural systems. Charlotte: If I remember that correctly, caveat is that I might not have remembered that correctly. I don't actually know Latin, but Nina's class was really amazing, and I loved the emphasis on inquiry based project based learning. I found that really empowering, transformative and I reached out I think to Nina after that class, which I believe I took my spring of my first year or the fall of my second year and after that I started working in her lab. I helped analyze some of the sea bird data that her lab had been collecting over the years, and I think at the time though, now I have to dig deep into my memory, which is always difficult for me. I don't have very good recall, unfortunately. Charlotte: I believe that the unique skill that I added to the lab was that I had worked with Andre, so I had some exposure to programming, and I offered that I could help write some scripts to advance some of the analyses that were going on in the lab, analyzing these longitudinal data of sea bird foraging behavior as they dove to different depths at sea and track different individuals using loggers. And that was a really great experience for me, and it really opened my eyes to the types of research that goes on in quantitative field biology. Mark: You mentioned the inquiry based or project based learning. Can you talk to us a little bit about that, both of you? Nina: Sure. So one of the things that the whole Biology Department is really committed to is having our students be able to test their own hypotheses to design their own experiments, whether they be in the lab or in the field to collect data to answer a question they really want to know the answer to. So that's something they get a lot of practice with in 41-E, and it's actually kind of overwhelming and scary for a lot of students initially, because they've come from sort of high school situations where every lab was a canned lab. You're, sort of repeating experiments to show something, but you're not asking your own question. So it's really exciting, and it's something we really try to foster. Nina: And there are some students that just really like that they may have had not really been excited about science but are sort of doing it because maybe they have some professional things they were working towards. But then when they see like, "Wow, I can actually get excited about asking my own question and something I really want to know the answer to and be able to go through the whole process from making your initial observations, testing a hypothesis, designing the experiment, analyzing the data and then presenting the data. We either present them as oral presentations or in posters. That's really what science is all about. And writing it up in the scientific paper format is something that students get a lot of practice with and then they can go on and be able to be empowered to ask their own questions. Nina: That's something that I wasn't able to do until very late in life. So I'm really excited then to see students get real excited about this so early on. I mean, that's what science should be and this is about and is the best part. So that's what the inquiry based is. So with Charlotte, she definitely had this passion for birds and loved the field work and so we would spend our labs for 41-E up at the Bernard Field Station and that's where we were carrying out all of our field experiments. And for a lot of students, that's also a really new, potentially frightening experience. You're out of the lab, you're out in nature, there's a lot going on around you. You have to watch where you're walking because there are cacti, there's poison Oak. Nina: So we try to really make it a positive experience and help students to know like how do you prepare for being in the field? This isn't something that everyone automatically knows, how to dress for the field, how to record your observations in the field. These are all things that we want to make it, so that it's a really exciting and not unpleasant. And it's really hard conditions because it's also so hot here. So we're always trying to show students that this is tough, but the rewards are great. And like Charlotte just really was excited. She just loved being out in this piece of natural California. Nina: And then when she started working in my lab, she is such a typical... Not typical but atypical, but a great example of a liberal arts student, in that she had a real passion for computers, programming, math, and also able to make observations in the field and to ask interesting questions, to dive into the literature, to see what's known about a problem. So she just was getting really excited about all of these problems that we were trying to solve, these questions we were trying to answer. So I think from there you did a summer undergraduate research, SERP program, summer. Nina: So Charlotte and there was one other student, they went off to Montana, which is where I had done my masters. So I'm very attached to Montana. They were working on a project where they were evaluating whether ranches that had riparian areas preserved, which are riparian areas are the vegetation around rivers on the banks of the streams and rivers. And those are the places that get really trampled by cows. So when the cows come down to drink, they trample the vegetation and then it causes a lot of loss in bird diversity but also impacts the water as well. So they were looking for nests of birds in areas where riparian habitat had been preserved and where it hadn't. Nina: So we were collaborating with biologists who were working with the ranchers up in really Northern Montana, like in the Prairie area. So it was really far from anything that they had experienced before out there for... I don't know how much. It like 10 weeks or- Charlotte: Three. Yeah. Like close to three months. Nina: Yeah. Mark: Wow. Yeah. Charlotte: It's great experience. Nina: Yeah. Living in a trailer. Charlotte: Yeah. Learned how to cook. Nina: Yes. Oh yes. We're laughing because... That's the other part about like, I can teach the sort of the theory and some of the methods of recording data, but analyzing data. But there's so much more about life in the field. So when we arrived in this trailer, there were four of us, because I was with my young son who was I think three at the time. Charlotte: Very young. Nina: Yeah. And- Charlotte: Adventures everywhere. Nina: What's that? Charlotte: Adventures everywhere. Nina: Yes. So we were setting up the trailer and unpacking and then I remember we were going to go and get food at the supermarket and came to the realization that we were in cattle country and Charlotte is a vegetarian- Charlotte: Was. Now, I'm far less strict. Nina: So we're like, "Okay, so let's think about what..." Charlotte: And I couldn't really cook. Nina: Couldn't cook. Yeah. Charlotte: I realized that too. After I got there I was like, "Hmm, this is a core life skill. It's going to be interesting." Nina: So the first lesson was like, how to make spaghetti? Charlotte: Yeah. That's right. Survival foods. How do you pack enough calories from something that's not too complex to assemble for a budding chef? Nina: Right. Yes. I actually is- Charlotte: To put it generously. Nina: And I actually remember... Okay, I'm going to say this on the air. There was a moment where my son yells, "No, Charlotte, no metal in the microwave." Charlotte: Yeah. I was pretty clueless because he can tell I didn't grow up doing chores in the kitchen. Nina: [crosstalk 00:23:27] feel so bad. Charlotte: It was a growth experience in multiple dimensions. Patty: It's great. Nina: But I think that's kind of what mentoring is. It's taking students wherever they are and trying to help them really meets challenges and pushing them. I mean that was not an easy summer, but I just knew that they would have the problem solving skills and the grit to get through it. But there was, I think that sometimes I'm a mentor who's kind of hands off and hands on. I was there initially for the experiment and getting everything set up, but then I left. So they were on their own and just try to give them the tools for success. So I was really proud of them, get what they accomplished. So yeah, that was... Charlotte: But Nina is right. It was really great preparation for actually stepping into a more independent role that provides transferable life skills, right? Patty: Great. Charlotte: Like in the real world- Patty: Really. Charlotte: ... you don't necessarily have benign adults there to guide you every step of the way. And it was a tremendous learning opportunity for me, how to manage an independent project where... Sorry, where there were broad parameters about the question about the type of approach, but really we had a lot of independence in how we actually shaped it and forming those types of collaborative interactions and even friendships with the ranchers who are very much the stakeholders who have to pay their private costs for conservation if they choose to enroll their lands in forms of use that are better for biodiversity but may come at a cost for their economic production. In this case, raising cattle to a size where they could sell it to regional distributors. That is a responsibility that they're voluntarily choosing to bear. Charlotte: And that really showed me the importance as a biologist of working with different stakeholders and I really appreciated that growing opportunity as well. Alongside the core element of how do you design an independent research program, how do you see it through, how do you anticipate and adapt to or react to challenges that come up in the fields. A design that you may pick that seems abstractly suitable for the situation might not work. For instance, we had adapt the protocol that we used to search for nests because the initial search process that we were using was really unsuccessful. We weren't finding nests, so we had to go back to the literature, figure out a different approach. And that was really empowering for me. It showed me that science is a dynamic process and there's not one right way to approach and interrogate these questions. Mark: And that failure is just a step towards success, right? Charlotte: Right. Nina: Yes. Charlotte: Yes. Nina: Yes. Absolutely. And I don't know if you remember this, but I think it was when you were at Princeton, you wrote me a letter and I probably still have it somewhere, but it was, "I just really want you to know that I'm a really good cook now." Mark: So who knew that mentorships in spaghetti would [inaudible 00:26:55], right? Charlotte: Yeah, exactly. I had to fledge, so to speak at some point as it is very important life dimension. So the relevant background here I think is that I grew up with an amazing grandmother who cooked and she was like the queen of the kitchen. So we children were not allowed inside. We would just get under foot and make a mess. And then at some point, really this summer Montana showed me, "Oh my God, I have to look into some important life skills like my grandma like on young is not going to be around forever to help provide for me in this important domain." And that was also great. I was like, "Oh, this is a core life skill that I've been neglecting. How do I cook?" Charlotte: I distinctly remember trying to make a vegetable steer fry and I had no idea how you do that. I put the hard vegetables in last, I put the soft vegetables in first. It was a mess, but from that I learned, I grew and that was really great. Patty: The real test for you to cook in front of her son now. Charlotte: Oh, yeah. Mark: [crosstalk 00:27:57], right. Charlotte: That would be the real test. Patty: So, Charlotte, tell us about your current position, the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellow. What are some of your responsibilities and areas of focus? Charlotte: Yeah, so the David Smith Conservation Research Fellowship program is a really fantastic program that was endowed by a farsighted physician, a clinical physician turned conservationist late in life. David H. Smith was the Chair of Biomedical Sciences at his home department. And he realized that there was a huge gap in the market for certain childhood vaccines. And at the time, none of the major producers had the appetite to take on that risk to develop what they thought was a losing product. But he had faith and he persevered and he ultimately sold his company, Praxis Biologics, for a substantial amount. Charlotte: And later in life, he became a volunteer conservation docent and I think even a citizen scientist, with The Nature Conservancy at Martha's Vineyard. And he realized in the '90s, that there was a large gap between the practice of conservation advocacy and outreach and engagement, versus the science that was kind of happening in the ivory tower, so to speak. And he was very interested in bridging that gap and bringing more scientific inquiry into the practice of conservation, how it was applied in the field. Charlotte: So he endowed a fellowship and a foundation that oversees different conservation programs around the US. And I was very fortunate to be selected as a 2019 Fellow. And what that looks like is, I have total independence over my research project. The only constraints are that it has to address an outstanding conservation issue in the United States, and I have to build those bridges between my science and a practitioner partner. So that can look like, in the case of one of the fellows in my year, the staff biologist for the city of Portland. For other folks, that may look like staff scientists or even policy managers at the United States Geological Survey, USGS, for short. Charlotte: For me, I am building connections with the global science division at The Nature Conservancy, which is their science and policy research shop. And I'm also building connections with their less scientifically oriented outreach marketing and donor relations committee. And specifically, my research is analyzing text data on social media platforms. So quite a large step in a different direction from my past training as a field biologist. But it's really been a gradual transformation through my graduate and postdoctoral studies, to analyze the world views of different constituencies online. How do they talk about different priority issues in conservation? What issues are correlated? Charlotte: So when we as conservationists, think about performing outreach, to say address sea level rise for vulnerable communities, we recognize that certain issues can be very contested. And we might try to wrap those issues in other environmental domains that are more broadly supported. But how can we approach that process in a more scientifically oriented fashion? And that's where my project is stepping in and providing tools in an analysis framework to help conservation organizations reach out to new and diverse audiences and digital spaces for the 21st century. Nina: Yeah, I mean I think this is such a perfect example of why we need liberal arts to tackle conservation crises and why it's such a joy to mentor students in a liberal arts institution because they have multiple fields of inquiry that they can bring together to really solve some of these really urgent and difficult problems. And so I think that is just really the exciting part of ... You're looking at data, but from a totally different source and different way of bringing together all these different groups to help solve this problem. And that's really what it's all about and why I love being here. Nina: Because a lot of people say to me, "Oh my gosh, you only have undergraduates to work with you? You don't have graduate students? You don't have..." And yeah, that's true that it is different, but they keep me inspired. So that's why it's really great. Patty: Do you see a difference when you notice... And you mentioned earlier, the kind of nurturing, the answering their own questions that aren't scientific questions that they have to... because you mentioned the difference of having graduate students helping you with the research, not as... And then you went to use a larger university for your PhD. Is there a difference in excitement or how they approach and how they maybe build a career out of it. Do you see a difference? Nina: So I see them at a different stage obviously. And when you're nurturing undergraduates in this field, one of the biggest constraints is that they just don't have the time. So a graduate student is working full tilt on one project and that is their life. And that's a really wonderful part of your life when you're a graduate student because you get to put aside all these other things. And here, yes they are really passionate about a project, but they're working on it a few afternoons or a day in the weekend. But they have all these other commitments and classes, sports, orchestra, all these other things. But I wouldn't them to forgo any of those other things because that is part of the experience here. And part of what will make their projects really bloom in a beautiful and unique way. Nina: And I learn a lot from them. I mean that's the other thing. This isn't a one directional flow of mentoring. For example, with Charlotte... Another confession, I'm not great at computer programming and yet I have these data sets that are enormous and Charlotte was able to take skills she learned in a bioinformatics setting that was really much more about looking at genome type data and applying those skills. And coming to my lab where we're looking at bird diving data and looking for patterns, being able to identify those patterns with a computer program that was from a slightly different purpose. And she was able to do that. And is really amazing at it. And she was teaching me as we were trying to solve some of these problems. Nina: And she ended up writing a senior thesis in my lab where she was applying some of these computer program skills. And you can talk about that. But one of the things I remember... This is such a sort of Pomona moment is that we had kind of gotten stuck. I remember with certain things that weren't lining up the way we thought the model predicted they would. And then you had rehearsed your presentation and you had written your thesis and it was really like the night before you were going to present. And you were really ready to just be presenting and graduating and everything and I was really proud of you. Nina: We hadn't resolved this thing, but it was still an outstanding thesis. And then I'm listening to her presentation and I'm shocked because it's completely different than what she had rehearsed with me. And I'm stunned. And she says, "I had a breakthrough last night and I fixed the problem." And she remade the slides and I thought, that is such a passion, not to let it just sit, but to really be trying to fix it. And it was something I absolutely could not ever help her with. She did it on her own and it was amazing. So Nina: [crosstalk 00:09:08] A little scary to be like, "Wait, what's going on? Where's she going with this?" Yeah. And then for that project, do you remember you were collecting data from Citizen Science? Charlotte: That's right. Nina: That's available online, so yeah. Yeah. Mark : Nina, this conversation is bringing this back to mind. You once said that you teach to give students the tools they need to address the crises of their generation. Can you talk to us about that? Nina: Well, I study a lot of how climate is impacting our planet and seabirds are really like the canary in the coal mine when it comes to telling us that our oceans are in crisis. Our planet is in crisis. And working in the Arctic and the Antarctic has really been a scary time. I would be really kind of a mess if I didn't have the opportunity to teach exceptional undergraduates because I really see that when you're given the skills, when they're given the information, when they have the opportunity to start thinking about how to solve some of these problems. It gives me inspiration and I've seen them go on and do amazing things. And so I'm really more hopeful about the world by being here. Nina: It's kind of selfish because it makes me feel better. Right? But I think it's why teaching here is such a joy. And just looking at the students that have come through my classes and my labs, they keep in touch with me and I'm always really inspired by what they've gone on to do. Some have gone onto grad school, others are working in nonprofits, some have gone to medical school, all kinds of different things. But they're all really critical thinkers, really good at speaking and writing and are all really passionate about making the world a better place. And so that's just been fantastic to see. Some have gone on to work on polar ecology, but that's not what I'm trying to do, is to replicate myself. I'm really just trying to foster in them the ability to have the self confidence to realize I can make a difference and that's what I want to do here. Patty: Charlotte, some of your work, and I think a lot of the conversation that we've had so far is about conservation biology and how to find the answers to the critical issues that our climate faces. Can you tell us a little bit about that and some other rewarding and frustrating parts of doing research in that area? Charlotte: Yeah, sure. So it might be helpful for me to contextualize this in my own journey. That might be illuminating for current and past Pomona students. So after I left Pomona College, I felt like I had a really solid training in quantitative approaches to field biology and field biology itself. And a grasp of how critical and pressing many of the conservation problems that we face are from habitat destruction, for agricultural production around the world, to carbon emissions leading to a novel and potentially uninhabitable planet for ourselves and for the species that we share our global commons with. Charlotte: But I still felt that I wanted to pursue a more ecological dissertation. So my original plan was to work in China and to think about the eco and evolutionary feedbacks between large frugivorous birds. So think like the Asian version of the toucan, the hornbills. And how they selected different fruits and what that meant for the recruitment of future trees and what that would imply for carbon emissions. Well, I got to this landscape, the only part of mainland China that's in the tropics and I realized, oh, these birds are completely hunted out. I worked there for four years. I saw four hornbills. That original project was not going to work, but it was really fascinating to me to consider, why is this behavior of hunting happening in this landscape despite this total collapse of what we call the faunal community or the animal, say the mammal and the bird community in this landscape. Charlotte: If you think about it, hunting in this type of setting, it doesn't have a whole lot of material reward. Well, we might envision in the US, big game hunting, you're going out, you're bagging a big buck. You have something prominent to show for your time in the field. Indeed, people who were going out to hunt in this landscape would return with like tiny little songbirds, which to me seemed really fascinating and just very contradictory to what I had read in the literature around tropical bushmeat or wild meat harvest. Charlotte: And that showed me the importance of integrating human decision making behavior with ecological outcomes and the power to affect conservation from these bottom up communal processes. Because the landscape where I worked did have pretty strict laws against gun hunting, against human entry into protected areas. Most of the animals that are left in this landscape are concentrated in the remaining secondary forest, and yet these policies are just that. Charlotte: They're just rules written on a piece of paper, right? They're not a living, breathing set of norms that inform community and household level decisions. What happens at the community or household level really shapes what the fate of these wildlife populations would be. So that pushed me to expand my skillset into the social sciences, which I had had no training in. But thanks to my liberal arts education at Pomona, I felt very confident. Yeah. I felt like I can tackle this. I can teach myself. I will learn what I need to learn from political science, from sociology, from social psychology. You recognize that there's expertise in these fields that is really relevant to this problem in this landscape setting. And that has really shaped how I approach conservation. So I see conservation as a problem where individuals have to pay a cost to conserve resources that are shared, right? Charlotte: This is the quintessential nature of what is known in economics as a public goods problem, or the tragedy of the commons as it's sometimes been called. If, for instance, you're a landowner and you have a private land, you can make improvements to your land, you can choose to make certain decisions and you can rest assured that because that land is yours, you control the outcome. It's not as though you've put in an investment and it could be drained away tomorrow by someone's poor behavior. On the other hand, most environmental resources that we think about, whether it's the global commons of our air, air quality, right? Air pollution or inhabitable climate or our global bodies of fresh water, the availability of this resource both surface and groundwater. These are pretty classical public goods that I cannot exclude, say Nina from using and Nita cannot exclude me from using. Charlotte: So if I am to pay a cost by forsaking overuse of a resource or by improving the status of one of these resources, the core problem is that my private investment could be overrun by someone else's private choice. And my work really seeks to shift norms around resource use toward more sustainable outcomes by understanding how people approach these resources using both small scale quantitative and qualitative interview techniques. That's what I did in Asia. As well as now large scale text analysis using social media data that translates to multiple settings around the world. And yeah, I think it's an uphill battle, but it's worthy of time and effort. And I do feel optimistic, like Nina, to have had the privilege of working with young people who are really excited about tackling these problems through a different set of skills and questions and approaches. Mark : So you've both been sort of taken to a lot of different places by your research over the years. In your experience, how do public perceptions of conservation differ geographically around the world? Nina: Wow. Hmm. Mark : Is that a fair question, or... Nina: Yeah, that's a fair question. Yeah. Nina: Well a lot of the places... I think sometimes I've been really moved and surprised by some of the places where you wouldn't expect there to be a strong ethos of conservation. So for example, thinking back to Montana, that it's actually that people are really passionate about conservation and also I have seen a sort of a sea change of people being much more concerned about climate change across the world. I think that... It just seems like to me that I wouldn't write off people who are living in really degraded habitats or that I think people do really care. And I do see attempts to really change things. Nina: I also have so many examples of where things are going badly. It's hard to really... I think that that's also, with the liberal arts, being able to work internationally is really another place where I see Pomona students doing really well. They're excellent communicators, and also have an understanding of cultural sensitivity and being able to travel with them and to really work on these international collaborations where Pomona students are actually collaborating alongside with me is, has been really a moving experience and I think really has changed their lives. Nina: So one of the things I've done a lot is taking students into the field in different places and that's a whole nother set of challenges, but I think that's what it's going to take. It's going to take an international effort. It's going to take a global effort. And so making those connections is really important. You have probably a better answer. You can strike my answer. Charlotte: I think Nina's answer was really fantastic because it gives you a sense of what different communities on the ground experience. And I think that the prevailing conception of conservation is that it is the protection of nature despite people, right? It is excluding people from natural settings or the wildest of the wild. And while that is an important part of conserving natural ecosystems, there are indeed species that are super sensitive to any degree of modern industrial anthropogenic impact. For instance, building roads into the wildest places of Alaska or the Himalayas would be devastating for certain species. Charlotte: The field as a whole has increasingly recognized that a lot of conservation happens in the context of benefiting both people and nature. Indeed, there's been some really great research from Imperial College London and from folks like Georgina Mace , who have characterized the different frameworks that researchers, predominantly researchers have around different approaches that we use, different mental models that we have around conservation. Charlotte: Is it fortress conservation where we seek to exclude people from nature? Or is it thinking about more holistically benefiting both people and nature and recognizing that there is resilience in both social and natural systems to tolerate change, but to also guide those interactions into a more optimal trajectory. Charlotte: I also agree with Nina that many communities that we may think, pivoting back to human communities, we may think that certain communities don't necessarily have a strong ethos of conservation stewardship. But research also shows that that's not the case. So there's been really inspiring academic and community partnerships. One example is The Porch Project in Flint, Michigan, which is using porch improvements to benefit pollinators in neighborhoods, to actually increase social justice through the promotion of neighborliness and social connection. And along the way, this ecological improvement of replanting people's yards to track native pollinators has a benefit for both nature and for people by uplifting folks in the community and making them feel more proud of the spaces that they live in and feel included as a voice at the table. Charlotte: So I've seen really powerful examples where increasingly, the current generation of conservation scientists recognizes that we have to work in partnership with communities, particularly those that have been traditionally marginalized. And there's been some really fantastic recent work highlighting, for instance, in a different part of the globe, the contributions, the really amazing substantial contributions of indigenous communities everywhere around the world and conserving aquatic and terrestrial resources. For instance, by deterring illegal loggers or miners from the remotest parts of forest and landscapes. For instance, in Asia, in Sub-Saharan Africa, in the neotropics. So Latin America for instance. And by working in partnership with these local communities, by recognizing that they have views and contributions to make and seeing that our science can also serve that and serve their local environments. This has been a really positive new step that conservation is embarking on. Patty: I want to pivot back a little bit to mentorship and Charlotte, the question for you too. Patty: You've talked a lot about how Nina mentored you and developed you into this field biologist and now into your career. How do you mentor? Because you're talking about a lot about partnering with others and especially in the work that you do with conservation biology. How do you approach that when it's time to have the other role? Charlotte: Yeah, so I've been fortunate to have worked with several super bright early career scientists, a few of whom are undergraduates in research programs. So last summer for instance, I mentored three undergraduates in a theoretical ecology project where they modeled the life history of tropical trees that are harvested. So say acai, where we harvest the fruits and it's core seed disperser is also harvested alongside it. Charlotte: So it might be hunted for bushmeat in this case. And my mentorship strategy is really informed by what I experienced at Pomona. And as well as the good and bad elements of mentorship that I experienced as a graduate student and postdoc lessons in what not to do. Charlotte: I just seek to give my students the space to pursue their own interests and to think about how this question intersects with their own objectives, their own goals for where they want to go next. And to give them the capacity to expand on their learning or growth edges and applying skills that they may already have to a new context or indeed gaining new skills. And I think that one of the things that I really took away from my time at Pomona is the power of having confidence and belief in your students, being hands off when that's needed and being more hands-on when that is called for. Charlotte: And that style of mentorship, of being an engaged and accountable mentor, someone who views your work and collaboration with students rather than overseeing students like a boss to subordinate type of relationship and instead seeing it as a collaborative, almost friendship. That's something that I bring to my mentoring style and that is very much the style that I experienced as an undergraduate here at Pomona and I really appreciated. Mark : Talk to us about some of the more important things you've learned from each other. Patty: Besides cooking. Mark : Besides cooking. Besides spaghetti. Nina: Wow, that's kind of emotional. So, Charlotte will be joining the faculty and I have to say as a professor, to see the trajectory of a student and hearing her speak and how amazing and wonderful and what a great mentor she's going to be. It's really emotional. It also makes me feel really old. Yeah. But, hearing you speak, I see a lot of different elements that you were interested in here at Pomona, really got woven into your work afterwards and continue with. And, I think that's my lesson. I see students with all kinds of different skills and passions and I just want to help foster that and add some knowledge and skills and help them to find opportunities to use those skills. And that's my lesson from watching Professor Chang. Yeah. Come all the way through this long journey. Charlotte: Yeah, for my part, I feel very indebted to the core set of mentors that I had, both academic and extracurricular at Pomona. And Nina, first [inaudible 00:29:06], Nina really showed me the material tools to approach field biology and its intersection with conservation. She trained me in those skills, which was profoundly... I hate to use the word transformative again, but it really changed the trajectory of my life. I think if it wasn't for her class and the experiences that I gained in her lab, I would not be the person I am today. I'd have this vague, inchoate passion for the environment that I probably pursued on the side of some other career. Charlotte: And I think the other more profound thing that I took away from Nina as her student and as her mentee, as a member of her lab was how she approached teaching, how she views it as a process where the instructor and the students are creating meaning in the classroom together. And that is a really tremendous gift that she gave me and indeed to all the students whose lives she's touched. Nina's very humble. She hasn't mentioned that her mentees have gone on to win super prestigious fellowships, to go on to do amazing things and I attribute a large part of that to her mentorship and guidance. And the unique way in which she gives each of us the permission and the support to recognize that, oh, we're independent adults, the world's a messy place. We don't have to know everything to make a contribution and we have something unique and valuable to add to this dialogue, Patty: Did you come into Pomona knowing you wanted to major in biology? What were your plans pre-Nina? Charlotte: Yeah, that's a great question. I had no idea, which is why the liberal arts was so appealing to me. I like mathematics and quantitative approaches. I actually thought that I might want to pursue like a biophysics track and think about, I don't know, drug delivery, but I am horrible at anatomy and I have very little core interest in how human biology works. Indeed, I accidentally revealed in grad school that I thought humans have two livers. We actually only have one. We have two kidneys. So I think that shows you how little of an interest I have as a person in human biology. So I'm very grateful that I didn't pursue that track. I think it would have been super painful and I would have realized I have no passion for this. I'm very glad that brilliant people are working on improving human health, but I'm not going to be one of them. Charlotte: Yeah, I really had no clue what I was going to do when I came to Pomona. I just pursued science classes because I thought, I think I'm interested in this area and I'm really grateful for the broad exposure to different areas of STEM that Pomona provides, as well as the humanities. I was really fortunate to be able to pursue advanced trading and Chinese while I was here, which let me be able to do my Fulbright in China. Without those language skills, I wouldn't have been able to pursue that project. Mark : So for both of you, what advice do you have for students who might want to pursue conservation research in college? Nina: Well I guess... Mark : Other than do it. Nina: Do it. Yes. Come see me. I think it takes all kinds of students in different majors and you don't all have to do biology. But to really explore and to really go deep in your skillset so that you can make a difference. For conservation, it's such a multifaceted field. There's no one track to do it. I think that a lot of people didn't know you could do it in biology and I think that's something that we're still sort of... They think like, well, I came to Pomona, I'm going to do biology and that means I'm going to go in to a health field. And that is a wonderful track for a lot of students and many students who've worked in my lab, gone to the Arctic with me are some of the most amazing doctors right now. I take students who are interested in all the different, even the health related interested students. Nina: So my feeling is, it is helpful to be able to understand social sciences, to have strong language skills, really good writing skills and biology, and to know that there is a place for all of your passion. I think some people think that, well, what can I do in my life? I need a job when I graduate. How can I make this into something? And you can, and it can be secure path, but stick to your passion because the world needs you. Nina: That's really how I feel. And back to the health sciences, I do teach a lot of students who, that is their passion, but they learn so much problem solving and the sort of ecological origins of disease and all of these things are so connected. So don't compartmentalize yourself. Don't define yourself too early. I've come in to Pomona, I see some of my advisees, they've decided absolutely what they're going to be and what they're going to study. And I just kind of want to break down those barriers there. They're closing doors. Come and open the doors and try things you've never thought you could do. I think that will lead you into great places. That's my advice to incoming students. Charlotte: Yeah. I'm not sure that I have that much more to add except that like Nina, I echo that students from diverse disciplinary lived experiences all have something to contribute to this global challenge of living within our planetary boundaries. And that can be from really concrete physical domains, like the limitations on nitrogen overuse or freshwater resources or species responses to anthropogenic land use change. Charlotte: It can also, as Nina mentioned, translate into social sciences or even the humanities. How do we philosophically think about life in the 21st century? There's some core assumptions that we've made as a species. Living in the types of habitats that we have, having the types of conceptual models about our lives that we have. And that poses opportunities and challenges for bright young Sagehens to explore, to contest and add their voice to. So I would say there's many different ways that folks can engage on environmental issues. And it doesn't, as Nina mentioned, just look like one type of pursuit. And I'm, in retrospect, super grateful for Pomona offering the opportunity for me to be really open ended in my own academic pursuits. And I hope that current Sagehens take full advantage of the amazing resources that are here at our college for them to pursue all the different interests that they have as an individual. Mark : So on that note, we're going to wrap this up. Our thanks to Charlotte Chang, class of 2010 and Professor Nina Karnovsky and I should say Professor Charlotte Chang. Nina: That's right. Mark : Thank you both. Nina: Thank you. Charlotte: Thank you. Patty: And to all have stuck with us this far, thanks for listening to Sagecast, the podcast at Pomona college. Until next time.