education | ConservationBytes.com

University rankings are questionable at best

23 09 2019

university-ranking Measuring educational performance is difficult at any stage, especially since most school-level performance indicators are based on ‘standardised’ tests of a few select students in particular years. But if you think that is questionable, you can rest assured that it is a hell of a lot more objective and better quantified than how we rank our universities.

In fact, it is rather stunning how superficial the criteria are for ranking universities, for there are no standardised exams or measures of teaching quality that have been applied to a large-enough section of universities across the world to make any meaningful comparisons. Instead, we tend to rely on brute metrics like the number of high-level academic prizes that employees of a university have won, how many citations they received for their academic papers, and other, highly subjective survey questions regarding the perceived ‘reputation’ of an institution.

As a result, a sceptic might in fact think that all the existing metrics are utter nonsense, especially considering how much advertising from universities appears to be incorporated in the online literature (one could be justified in being concerned about the possibility of undue influence and corruption in this regard 🤔).

While there are many types of university rankings, possibly the three most-recognised and reportedare the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the (Shanghai) Academic Ranking of World Universities, and the QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) University Rankings. The first purports to Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Academic Ranking of World Universities, flawed metrics, prizes, QS University Rankings, Quacquarelli Symonds, reputation, research, Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities, teaching, Times Higher Education World University Rankings, university rankings
Categories : education, research

My interview with Conservation Careers

10 04 2018

The online job-search engine and careers magazine for conservation professionals — Conservation Careers — recently published an interview with me written by Mark Thomas. Mark said that he didn’t mind if I republished the article here.

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As we walk through life we sometimes don’t know where our current path will take us. Will it be meaningful, and what steps could we take? Seeking out and talking to people who have walked far ahead of us in a line of work that we are interested in could help shape the next steps we take, and help us not make the same mistakes that could have cost us precious time.

A phrase that I love is “standing on the shoulders of giants” and this conversation has really inspired me — I hope it will do for you as well.

Corey Bradshaw is the Matthew Flinders Fellow in Global Ecology at Flinders University, and author to over 260 hundred peer-reviewed articles. His research is mainly in the area of global-change ecology, and his blog ConservationBytes critiques the science of conservation and has over 11,000 followers. He has written books, and his most recent one ‘The Effective Scientist’ will be published in March (more on this later).

What got you interested in ecology and conservation?

As a child I grew up in British Columbia, Canada, my father was a fur trapper, and we hunted everything we ate (we ate a lot of black bear). My father had lots of dead things around the house and he prepared the skins for the fur market. It was a very consumptive and decidedly non-conservation upbringing.

Ironically, I learnt early in life that some of the biggest impediments to deforestation through logging was the trapping industry, because when you cut down trees nothing that is furry likes to live there. In their own consumptive ways, the hunters were vocal and acted to protect more species possibly than what some dedicated NGOs were able to.

So, at the time, I never fully appreciated it, but not having much exposure to all things urban and the great wide world, and by spending a lot of time out in the bush, I ended up appreciating the conservation of wild things even within that consumptive mind-set. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: advice, biodiversity, careers, comfort zone, conservation, multidisciplinarity, science, The Effective Scientist, transdisciplinarity
Categories : blog, conservation, conservation biology, ecology, education, environmental science, media, science, science communication, science writing, scientific publishing, scientific writing, statistics

The Effective Scientist

22 03 2018

What is an effective scientist?

The more I have tried to answer this question, the more it has eluded me. Before I even venture an attempt, it is necessary to distinguish the more esoteric term ‘effective’ from the more pedestrian term ‘success’. Even ‘success’ can be defined and quantified in many different ways. Is the most successful scientist the one who publishes the most papers, gains the most citations, earns the most grant money, gives the most keynote addresses, lectures the most undergraduate students, supervises the most PhD students, appears on the most television shows, or the one whose results improves the most lives? The unfortunate and wholly unsatisfying answer to each of those components is ‘yes’, but neither is the answer restricted to the superlative of any one of those. What I mean here is that you need to do reasonably well (i.e., relative to your peers, at any rate) in most of these things if you want to be considered ‘successful’. The relative contribution of your performance in these components will vary from person to person, and from discipline to discipline, but most undeniably ‘successful’ scientists do well in many or most of these areas.

That’s the opening paragraph for my new book that has finally been release for sale today in the United Kingdom and Europe (the Australasian release is scheduled for 7 April, and 30 April for North America). Published by Cambridge University Press, The Effective Scientist. A Handy Guide to a Successful Academic Career is the culmination of many years of work on all the things an academic scientist today needs to know, but was never taught formally.

Several people have asked me why I decided to write this book, so a little history of its genesis is in order. I suppose my over-arching drive was to create something that I sincerely wish had existed when I was a young scientist just starting out on the academic career path. I was focussed on learning my science, and didn’t necessarily have any formal instruction in all the other varied duties I’d eventually be expected to do well, from how to write papers efficiently, to how to review properly, how to manage my grant money, how to organise and store my data, how to run a lab smoothly, how to get the most out of a conference, how to deal with the media, to how to engage in social media effectively (even though the latter didn’t really exist yet at the time) — all of these so-called ‘extra-curricular’ activities associated with an academic career were things I would eventually just have to learn as I went along. I’m sure you’ll agree, there has to be a better way than just muddling through one’s career picking up haphazard experience. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: academia, academic writing, advocacy, authorship, Cambridge University Press, coauthorship, conference, conferences, diversity, editing, funding, gender, grant management, journalism, mathematics, media, presentation skills, publishing, reviewing, science, stress management, The Effective Scientist, work-life balance, writing, Writing Skills, writing tips
Categories : author order, authorship, bad grammar, blog, book, co-author, conference, education, Endarkenment, ethics, Flinders University, gender, jobs, journalism, mathematics, media, modelling, research, science, science communication, science writing, scientific publishing, scientific writing, statistics, writing tips

Giving a monkey’s about primate conservation

12 12 2017

Urban monkey living (Macaque, Gibraltar) small

Concrete jungle. A Barbary macaque sits in a human-dominated landscape in Gibraltar. Photo: Silviu Petrovan

Saving primates is a complicated business. Primates are intelligent, social animals that have complex needs. They come into conflict with humans when they raid rubbish bins and crops, chew power cables, and in some cases become aggressive towards people.

Humans, however, have the upper hand. While 60% of non-human primate species are threatened, humans grow in numbers and power, building roads through forests, hunting and trapping primates, and replacing their habitat with farms and houses.

To help primatologists choose the most effective conservation approaches to resolve these problems, researchers in the Conservation Evidence project teamed up with primate researchers to produce a global database on the effectiveness of primate conservation solutions. This free database, which can also be downloaded as a single pdf, summarizes the evidence for 162 conservation interventions — actions that conservationists might take to conserve primates. The data come from searches of over 170 conservation journals and newsletters, and each study is summarized in a single paragraph in plain English, making it possible for conservationists without access to scientific journals to read the key findings.

So what works in primate conservation? Well, the picture is rarely straightforward — partly due to the lack of data — but there are some interesting trends. Reducing hunting is one area where there seem to be a range of potentially effective approaches. Community control of patrolling, banning hunting and removing snares was effective in the three studies in which it was tested, all in African countries.

Further emphasizing the importance of involving local communities, implementing no-hunting community policies or traditional hunting bans also appeared helpful in boosting primate numbers. In other places, a more traditional approach of using rangers to protect primates has proved a winning strategy. Training rangers, providing them with arms, and increasing ranger patrols all worked to protect primates from poachers. Identifying the circumstances in which community led approaches or ranger patrols work will be key to implementing the most appropriate response to each conservation challenge. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: conservation evidence, conservation intervention, hunting, macaques, monkey, primates, PRISM toolkit
Categories : biodiversity, conservation, conservation biology, decline, deforestation, development, education, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, habitat loss, harvest, implementation, logging, management, monitoring, planning, research, restoration, software, threatened species, tropical

World of urban rangers

2 08 2017

Bridging the gap between an urban population and the wildlife we love.

The world continues to urbanise. According to the Population Reference Bureau, the developed nations of the world are 74% urban, and it is expected that by 2050, 70% of the entire world will be ‘urban’. Besides all the other consequences, people’s connection to nature will become more and more distant. With more people living in concrete jungles, a faster pace of life and a barrage of things competing for their attention, we cannot expect that nature, wildlife protection, ocean sustainability, et cetera will be high on the list of their priorities. Other than when the most sensational of news stories are released, how many of them will even think about wildlife, let alone take any personal steps that would make a difference to its survival?

If these are the people who define consumer behaviour and impact policy decisions, they are the ones who will also unwittingly drive the wildlife-conservation agenda. The conservation sector must therefore make a more concerted effort to connect with city dwellers and to do so, understand the motivations and desires of the greater public.

The good news is that despite the grander evidence against it, people do love animals. As children, we are surrounded by animals. Many of our favourite books, movies, clothes, and toys are associated with animals. Even as adults, 163 million of us have watched a video of a panda clinging to its caretaker, 100 million of us went to see Jungle Book, and 700 million more of us visited zoos last year. Marketers play into our love of animals and use the sympathetic or iconic nature of animals on a massive scale in advertising and branding.

If you threw practicality out the window, the most impactful thing you could do to convert that love of animals into a love of conservation would be to airlift those hundreds of millions of people into the Amazon, Serengeti, or Alaskan wilderness for a week. While the experience wouldn’t make all of them conservationists, it would certainly change the way they thought about the importance of nature.

Given this impossibility, the next best thing is to bring nature to them and entice them to explore more within their own means. Shows like BBC Planet Earth or Wild Kratts do a fantastic job of revealing the awesomeness of nature in a way that most everyone appreciates.

But TV shows are still a passive experience where the viewer takes in what he/she is being shown.

Our work at Internet of Elephants is to supplement this type of programming with games about wildlife that can actively be played every day. Our goal is to get people to think about wildlife for five minutes every day and convert the urban world into wildlife addicts. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: augmented reality, conservation, emotion, gamer, games, gaming, Internet of Elephants, marketing, smart phone, smartphone, wildlife
Categories : biodiversity, biowealth, conservation, conservation biology, decline, education, extinction, science communication

Multiculturalism in the lab

23 02 2017

8294047fabf352ce46f4fd9a89d4a93d With all the nasty nationalism and xenophobia gurgling nauseatingly to the surface of our political discourse¹these days, it is probably worth some reflection regarding the role of multiculturalism in science. I’m therefore going to take a stab, despite being in most respects a ‘golden child’ in terms of privilege and opportunity (I am, after all, a middle-aged Caucasian male living in a wealthy country). My cards are on the table.

I know few overtly racist scientists, although I suspect that they do exist. In fact, most scientists are of a more liberal persuasion generally and tend to pride themselves on their objectivity in all aspects of being human, including the sociological ones. In other words, we tend to think of ourselves as dispassionate pluralists who only judge the empirical capabilities of our colleagues, with their races, genders, sexual persuasions and other physical attributes irrelevant to our assessment. We generally love to travel and interact with our peers from all nations and walks of life, and we regularly decorate our offices and with cultural paraphernalia different to our own.

But are we as unbiased and dispassionate as we think we are? Do we take that professed pluralism and cultural promiscuity with us to the lab each day? Perhaps we could, and should, do better. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: diversity, international students, multiculturalism, overseas
Categories : demography, education, research, science, science writing, scientific publishing, scientific writing

How things have (not) changed

13 04 2015

The other night I had the pleasure of dining with the former Australian Democrats leader and senator, Dr John Coulter, at the home of Dr Paul Willis (Director of the Royal Institution of Australia). It was an enlightening evening.

While we discussed many things, the 84 year-old Dr Coulter showed me a rather amazing advert that he and several hundred other scientists, technologists and economists constructed to alert the leaders of Australia that it was heading down the wrong path. It was amazing for three reasons: (i) it was written in 1971, (ii) it was published in The Australian, and (iii) it could have, with a few modifications, been written for today’s Australia.

If you’re an Australian and have even a modicum of environmental understanding, you’ll know that The Australian is a Murdochian rag infamous for its war on science and reason. Even I have had a run-in with its outdated, consumerist and blinkered editorial board. You certainly wouldn’t find an article like Dr Coulter’s in today’s Australian.

More importantly, this 44 year-old article has a lot today that is still relevant. While the language is a little outdated (and sexist), the grammar could use a few updates, and there are some predictions that clearly never came true, it’s telling that scientists and others have been worrying about the same things for quite some time.

In reading the article (reproduced below), one could challenge the authors for being naïve about how society can survive and even prosper despite a declining ecological life-support system. As I once queried Paul Ehrlich about some of his particularly doomerist predictions from over 50 years ago, he politely pointed out that much of what he predicted did, in fact, come true. There are over 1 billion people today that are starving, and another billion or so that are malnourished; combined, this is greater than the entire world population when Paul was born.

So while we might have delayed the crises, we certainly haven’t averted them. Technology does potentially play a positive role, but it can also increase our short-term carrying capacity and buffer the system against shocks. We then tend to ignore the indirect causes of failures like wars, famines and political instability because we do not recognise the real drivers: resource scarcity and ecosystem malfunction.

Australia has yet to learn its lesson.

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To Those Who Shape Australia’s Destiny

We believe that western technological society has ignored two vital facts: Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: Australia, carrying capacity, ecology, ecosystem services, environment, politics
Categories : agriculture, Australia, biodiversity, climate change, conservation, decline, deforestation, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, education, environmental policy, habitat loss, human overpopulation, poverty

Australia’s perfect storm of negligence

17 03 2015

If, for the purposes of some sick and twisted thought experiment, you were to design policies that would ensure the long-term failure of a wealthy, developed nation, you wouldn’t have to look farther than Australia’s current recipe for future disaster. I’m not trying to be provocative, but the warning signs are too bold and flashy to ignore. Let’s just run through some of the main ones:

1. As the lambasted and thoroughly flawed 2015 Intergenerational Report clearly demonstrates, our current government has no idea about the future threats of climate change. Dragged kicking and screaming into only a symbolic recognition of some ‘distant and currently irrelevant problem’, the Abbott-oir and his intergenerational criminals are well known for killing the carbon-pricing scheme, dismantling the Department of Climate Change, pulling out of major international talks on climate-change mitigation and installing a half-arsed, ineffective policy that will do nothing to stem our emissions. Combine that with comments like “coal is good for humanity“, and it’s easy to see how our current leaders have little idea about the future mess they’re creating.

2. Not content just to kick the shit out of any meaningful climate action, our government has also turned its back on any renewable energy target, and facilitated the fossil-fuel barons to dig more coal out of the ground. While South Australia’s Royal Commission on the nuclear fuel cycle is a welcome candle in the climate change-mitigation darkness here, it is far from becoming a national priority any time soon.

3. As has been well documented, the Abbott-oir ship of fools has also done whatever it can to turn back decades of environmental protections in less than six months of taking office. Everything from opening up national parks for exploitation, failing to protect marine sanctuaries, limiting environmental checks to promoting logging in World Heritage Areas, there is little room for hope that our crumbling environmental system will improve at all in the near to long term. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 6 Comments »
Tags: Abbott, Abbottoir, Australia, climate change, Education, environment, farming, foreign ownership, Intergenerational Report, manufacturing, mining, over-population
Categories : agriculture, alien species, anthropocene, Australia, biodiversity, carbon, climate change, conservation, corruption, deforestation, economics, education, environmental economics, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, habitat loss, health, human overpopulation, logging, management, South Australia

Innate cruelty and exploitation: does biodiversity stand a chance?

11 11 2014

Earlier this year I took my daughter to the South Australian Museum, as I often do on weekends. We usually have lunch at the Art Gallery, and then wander the various levels of the Museum at a pace suitable for a 7-year old. The South Australia biodiversity floor is her favourite.

Of course I’m a little biased in my opinion because I live in Adelaide, but in my attempt to be as objective as possible, I think we’re particularly fortunate to have this excellent museum at our doorstep. Not only are the exhibitions and displays top-notch, it is one of the most research-active museums in the country. In my opinion, it’s one of the best museums in Australia. To top it all off, admission is free.

However, this post isn’t about spruiking the museum – it’s about something deeply disturbing I experienced there during that visit earlier this year. In addition to the normal free displays, the Museum often has a special exhibition that one must pay to view. I often don’t bother with this, but on this particular occasion, the temporary exhibition called Ngintaka was free of charge.

Ngintaka was an eclectic mix of song, story, dance, painting and carving from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY Lands) as told by Anangu Traditional Owners. While most of the displays were great, there was one that stood out in particular. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 5 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, children, cruelty, ethics, museums, respect, South Australian Museum, values
Categories : Australia, biodiversity, conservation, education, exploitation

Australia should have a more vibrant ecological culture

13 10 2014

Another great social event bringing ecologists together

I’ve always had the gut feeling that Australia punched above its weight when it comes to ecology and conservation. For years I’ve been confidently bragging to whomever might listen (mostly at conference pub sessions) that Australians have a vibrant academic and professional community of ecologists who are internationally renowned and respected. However, my bragging was entirely anecdotal and I always qualified the boast with the caveat that I hadn’t actually looked at the numbers.

Well, I finally did look at the numbers – at least superficially. It seems that for the most part, my assertion was true. I will qualify the following results with another caveat – I’ve only looked at the smallest of samples to generate this rank, so take it with a few grains of salt. Looking at the 200 most-cited ecologists in Google Scholar (with some licence as to who qualifies as an ‘ecologist’ – for example, I ditched a few medicos), I calculated the number of ecologists in that range per 100,000 people for each country. Of course, even the country of designation is somewhat fluid and imprecise – I did not know where most had received the bulk of their training and in which country they had spent most of their time, so the numbers are (again) only indicative. Excluding countries with only one highly cited ecologist in the top 200, the sorted list comes out as: Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 5 Comments »
Tags: Australia, conservation biology, Ecological Society of Australia, ecology
Categories : Australia, conference, conservation, conservation biology, conservation scholars, ecology, education, environmental science

I still fucking love biodiversity

2 06 2014

ifuckinglovebiodiversity © Bastien Laurent

One year ago, I launched the Facebook page “I fucking love biodiversity” (IFLB) with a post here on ConservationBytes. My goal was to get people talking about biodiversity in a positive and light-hearted way (absolutely no ‘doom and gloom’). Today, IFLB now has about 17500 fans/followers across three social media platforms. It has been an amazing experience.

I will start by admitting that I created IFLB under the assumption that “if you build it, they will come”. I thought a catchy name, goodwill and a few bells and whistles would land me a huge audience. I was wrong. It took some very serious work. And IFLB is still pretty small in the global social-media landscape.

Gladly, I don’t have to manage IFLB by myself. I have a crack team of admins that share the load. Kudos go to Laure Cugnière, Phoebe Maund, Lydia Tiller and Romina Henriques and our own in-house designer, Hannah Conduit, all of whom work on a totally volunteer basis. Thanks everyone – IFLB wouldn’t be possible without you.

During this last year, I estimate we have invested in IFLB the equivalent of nine working weeks to put out 2-3 posts every single day (yes, xmas and New Years included). That was the first lesson I learned: being part of an effort like this requires serious dedication. Not only because you need to find the most interesting content and the best photos to go with it, but because you also need to ensure all photos have copyright information, that what you are posting is not the result of Photoshop wizardry and of course, that your fans’ comments and messages don’t go unanswered. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: appreciation, biodiversity, IFLB, IFLS, marketing, science communication
Categories : conservation, education, science, science communication

School finishers and undergraduates ill-prepared for research careers

22 05 2014

Having been for years now at the pointy end of the educational pathway training the next generation of scientists, I’d like to share some of my observations regarding how well we’re doing. At least in Australia, my realistic assessment of science education is: not well at all.

I’ve been thinking about this for some time, but only now decided to put my thoughts into words as the train wreck of our current government lurches toward a future guaranteeing an even stupider society. Charging postgraduate students to do PhDs for the first time, encouraging a US-style system of wealth-based educational privilege, slashing education budgets and de-investing in science while promoting the belief in invisible spaghetti monsters from space, are all the latest in the Fiberal future nightmare that will change our motto to “Australia – the stupid country”.

As you can appreciate, I’m not filled with a lot of hope that the worrying trends I’ve observed over the past 10 years or so are going to get any better any time soon. To be fair though, the problems go beyond the latest stupidities of the Fiberal government.

My realisation that there was a problem has crystallised only recently as I began to notice that most of my lab members were not Australian. In fact, the percentage of Australian PhD students and post-doctoral fellows in the lab usually hovers around 20%. Another sign of a problem was that even when we advertised for several well-paid postdoctoral positions, not a single Australian made the interview list (in fact, few Australians applied at all). I’ve also talked to many of my colleagues around Australia in the field of quantitative ecology, and many lament the same general trend.

Is it just poor mathematical training? Yes and no. Australian universities have generally lowered their entry-level requirements for basic maths, thereby perpetuating the already poor skill base of school leavers. Why? Bums (that pay) on seats. This means that people like me struggle to find Australian candidates that can do the quantitative research we need done. We are therefore forced to look overseas. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: Australia, grammar, mathematics, maths, school, skills, training, university
Categories : Australia, bad grammar, conservation, education, environmental science, mathematics, modelling, research, science, science communication, scientific writing

Making science matter

14 10 2013

I’ve been home from my last overseas trip now for nearly two weeks, but despite not feeling caught up, it’s high time I report what I was up to.

Some of you who follow my Twitter feed or who saw a CB post about cartoonist Seppo Leinonen know that I was visiting the University of Helsinki to participate in a three-day short course for PhD students entitled ‘Making Science Matter‘. I was so impressed with how well Mar Cabeza and Tomas Roslin put together the course, that I thought I’d share the format with CB readers (just in case any of you out there can be convinced to design a similar course at your university).

I think it’s important first to discuss the philosophy of the course and what it hoped to provide those early-career researchers.

Most science PhD students will tell you once they’ve completed their degree that they feel completely unprepared to launch themselves into the extra-curricular world of communicating their science beyond the ‘traditional’ (peer-reviewed journals) outlets. Swamped with learning how to write concisely and clearly, getting up to speed with the entire body of theory on which their projects are based, mastering advanced modelling and statistical approaches and learning how to apply efficient computer code, it’s no wonder that many students find precious little time for anything else (including families, good food and proper hygiene).

Once they do land that precious post-doctoral fellowship though, they are immediately expected to interact professionally with the media, embrace social media and give fantastic public lectures to engage the uninformed. Right. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 6 Comments »
Tags: Citizen science, Ilkka Hanski, Mar Cabeza, PhD student, policy, policy makers, press releases, science communication, Seppo Leinonen
Categories : cartoon, economics, education, environmental policy, environmental science, implementation, journalism, media, research, science, science communication

I fucking love biodiversity

18 06 2013

A corker of an idea, and post, from Diogo Veríssimo.

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I don’t like biodiversity. I like beef lasagna, I like the British museum and I like everything Jules Verne ever wrote. When it comes to biodiversity, it’s different. I think about it all the time, try to be close to it and suffer emotional distress when I think of it going irretrievably away. This is LOVE.

Understanding how to get this passion across effectively has always been one of my main goals. That is why my research has focused on the links between marketing and conservation. But recently I started feeling a bit more empowered to take this mission seriously, and all thanks to the Facebook page I fucking love Science. This page became an internet sensation amassing more than 5 million fans and engaging frequently over 4 million users in any given week. Forget the New York Times and National Geographic, this is the real deal.

So I wondered, why can’t I do the same for biodiversity? The idea lingered in my head until I read a recent paper by McCallum and Bury on Google search patterns, which shows how even during the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity we are failing to mainstream biodiversity and its associated issues. If fact, people seem to be less interested. Whatever we are doing is clearly not working. So why not give this concept a try? And so I fucking love Biodiversity (IFLB) was born.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 11 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, I fucking love biodiversity, I fucking love science, IFLB, science communication
Categories : biodiversity, cartoon, celebrity, conservation, conservation biology, ecological literacy, education, science, science communication

Advice for getting your dream job in conservation science

4 12 2012

A few weeks ago I heard from an early-career researcher in the U.S. who had some intelligent things to say about getting jobs in conservation science based on a recent Conservation Biology paper she co-wrote. Of course, for all the PhDs universities are pumping out into the workforce, there will never be enough positions in academia for them all. Thus, many find their way into non-academic positions. But – does a PhD in science prepare you well enough for the non-academic world? Apparently not.

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Many post-graduate students don’t start looking at job advertisements until we are actually ready to apply for a job. How often do we gleam the list of required skills and say, “If only I had done something to acquire project management skills or fundraising skills, then I could apply for this position…”? Many of us start post-graduate degrees assuming that our disciplinary training for that higher degree will prepare us appropriately for the job market. In conservation science, however, many non-disciplinary skills (i.e., beyond those needed to be a good scientist) are required to compete successfully for non-academic positions. What are these skills?

Our recent paper in Conservation Biology (Graduate student’s guide to necessary skills for nonacademic conservation careers) sifted through U.S. job advertisements and quantified how often different skills are required across three job sectors: nonprofit, government and private. Our analysis revealed that several non-disciplinary skills are particularly critical for job applicants in conservation science. The top five non-disciplinary skills were project management, interpersonal, written communication, program leadership and networking. Approximately 75% of the average job advertisement focused on disciplinary training and these five skills. In addition, the importance of certain skills differed across the different job sectors.

Below, we outline the paper’s major findings with regard to the top five skills, differences among sectors, and advice for how to achieve appropriate training while still in university. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 11 Comments »
Tags: Communication, conservation biology, Doctor of Philosophy, employment, management, PhD, Project management, Students, writing
Categories : conservation, conservation biology, education, environmental economics, environmental policy, environmental science, governance

Why do conservation scientists get out of bed?

1 10 2012

1*Zd2mpLgOIbJuLg3CqH8BQw I have, on many occasions, been faced with a difficult question after giving a public lecture. The question is philosophical in nature (and I was never very good at philosophy – just ask my IB philosophy teacher), hence its unusually complicated implications. The question goes something like this:

Given what you know about the state of the world – the decline in biodiversity, ecosystem services and our own health and welfare – how do you manage to get out of bed in the morning and go to work?

Yes, I can be a little, shall we say, ‘gloomy’ when I give a public lecture; I don’t tend to hold back much when it comes to just how much we’ve f%$ked over our only home, or why we continue to shit in our own (or in many cases, someone else’s) kitchen. It’s not that I get some sick-and-twisted pleasure out of seeing people in the front row shake their heads and ‘tsk-tsk’ their way through my presentation, but I do feel that as an ‘expert’ (ascribe whatever meaning to that descriptor you choose), I have a certain duty to inform non-experts about what the data say.

And if you’ve read even a handful of the posts on this site, you’ll understand that picture I paint isn’t full of roses and children’s smiling faces. A quick list of recent posts might remind you:

And so on. I agree – pretty depressing. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 12 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, failure, hope, science, success
Categories : climate change, conservation, conservation biology, ecological literacy, ecosystem services, education, environmental policy, environmental science

Arguing for scientific socialism in ecology funding

26 06 2012

What makes an ecologist ‘successful’? How do you measure ‘success’? We’d all like to believe that success is measured by our results’ transformation of ecological theory and practice – in a conservation sense, this would ultimately mean our work’s ability to prevent (or at least, slow down) extinctions.

Alas, we’re not that good at quantifying such successes, and if you use the global metric of species threats, deforestation, pollution, invasive species and habitat degradation, we’ve failed utterly.

So instead, we measure scientific ‘success’ via peer-reviewed publications, and the citations (essentially, scientific cross-referencing) that arise from these. These are blunt instruments, to be sure, but they are really the only real metrics we have. If you’re not being cited, no one is reading your work; and if no one is reading you’re work, your cleverness goes unnoticed and you help nothing and no one.

A paper I just read in the latest issue of Oikos goes some way to examine what makes a ‘successful’ ecologist (i.e., in terms of publications, citations and funding), and there are some very interesting results. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: Australian Research Council, citation, ecology, funding, h-index, impact, impact factor, publication, science
Categories : conservation biology, ecology, education, impact, investment, science, scientific publishing, scientific writing

Biodiversity begins at home

20 01 2011

A few months ago I was involved in a panel discussion entitled ‘Biodiversity begins at home’ held at the Royal Institution of Australia in Adelaide and sponsored by the Don Dunstan Foundation.

The main thrust of the evening was to have both academic (me & Andy Lowe) and on-the-ground, local conservationists (Sarah Lance, Craig Gillespie and Matt Turner) talk about what people can do to stem the tide of biodiversity loss. The video is now available, so I thought I’d reproduce it here. We talked about a lot of issues (from global to local scale), so if you have a spare hour, you might get something out of this. I did, but it certainly wasn’t long enough to discuss such big issues.

Warning – this was supposed to be more of a discussion and less of a talkfest; unfortunately, many of the panel members seemed to forget this and instead dominated the session. We really needed 4 hours to do this properly (but then, who would have watched the video?).

Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Andrew Lowe, biodiversity, Craig Gillespie, Don Dunstan, Matt Turner, RiAus, Royal Institution of Australia, Sarah Lance
Categories : biodiversity, climate change, conservation, conservation biology, ecological literacy, ecosystem services, education, environmental economics, environmental policy, environmental science, extinction, habitat loss, human overpopulation, management, planning, prioritisation, protected area, restoration, science communication, South Australia, The University of Adelaide

They always whinge about the maths

18 11 2010

“If you don’t know what a differential equation is, you are not a scientist” – Hugh Possingham 2009

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At the end of 2009 I highlighted a new book edited by good mates Navjot Sodhi and Paul Ehrlich, Conservation Biology for All, in which Barry Brook and I had written a chapter. Now, despite my vested interest, I thought (and still think) that it was one of the best books on conservation biology yet published, and the subsequent reviews appear to be validating my subjective opinion.

I’ve given snippets of the book’s contents, from Paul Ehrlich‘s editorial on the human population’s rising negative influences on biodiversity, to a more detailed synopsis of our chapter, The Conservation Biologist’s Toolbox, and I’ve reproduced a review printed in Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

The latest review by Nicole Gross-Camp of the University of East Anglia published in Ecology is no less flattering – in fact, it is the most flattering to date. So this is by no means a whinge about a whinge; rather, consider it an academic lament followed by a query. First, the review:

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Reaching higher in conservation

If a book could receive a standing ovation—this one is a candidate. Sodhi and Ehrlich have created a comprehensive introduction to conservation biology that is accessible intellectually, and financially, to a broad audience—indeed it is Conservation biology for all. The book is divided into 16 chapters that can stand alone and are complementary when read in sequence. The authors make excellent use of cross citations of chapters, a useful and often overlooked feature in texts of this nature. In the introductory chapter, Sodhi and Ehrlich eloquently summarize the gravity of the conservation crisis and still retain an optimistic outlook that encourages the reader to continue. I particularly found their recognition of population growth, consumption, and ethics in the conservation arena refreshing and a step toward what will likely become the next major issues of discussion and research in the conservation field. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Barry Brook, biodiversity, conservation biology, Conservation Biology for All, environment, Hugh Possingham, Navjot Sodhi, Paul Ehrlich, review
Categories : Australia, bad grammar, biodiversity, conservation, conservation biology, ecosystem, education, environmental science, human overpopulation, mathematics, modelling, monitoring, scientific writing, The University of Adelaide

Make your conservation PhD relevant

23 04 2010

The other day I was approached by two PhD candidates from James Cook University in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies who requested I publish a short article they put together on making conservation PhDs relevant while achieving academic excellence. I’m delighted to say that I found the article very well written and topical, so I am pleased to present it in full here.

© J. Cham

Make your conservation PhD relevant – bridging the research-implementation gap

Duan Biggs & Tom Brewer

ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia

A recent paper, in Biotropica’s special issue on bridging the research-implementation gap (Duchelle et al. 2009) included examples of postgraduate students in the University of Florida’s Tropical Conservation and Development Program contributing to knowledge exchange with local stakeholders. The authors argue that this experience, during training, enables postgraduate students to develop their skills to confront the elaborate set of management and policy issues that will be present through their careers. We agree with Duchelle and her co-authors’ arguments, but believe that further discussion is required on finding the balance between the requirements of academic training and knowledge sharing with conservation stakeholders at the PhD level specifically.

Earning a PhD requires a novel theoretical contribution to a specific field of knowledge, and the practical value or contribution of that knowledge is of secondary importance, or irrelevant. Therefore, finding synergies between the requirements of academia and knowledge sharing can be particularly challenging at the PhD level. Yet, we believe that in an applied science like conservation, the quality of research and training will be enhanced through being more explicit about how to synergise a scientific contribution worthy of a PhD degree with related practical skills like knowledge sharing. In support of our argument, we propose the following six questions that PhD candidates, together with their academic supervisors, can consider during research design to enhance their contribution to knowledge exchange whilst meeting the requirements of academic training: Read the rest of this entry »