Photo courtesy of Bipartisan Policy Center

What should we, as environmental and social change professionals, expect from the incoming Trump administration?  How will it affect our work, our funding, our ability to get things done?  The Switzer Foundation is committed to sharing as much information as we can with Fellows as the new administration and Congress take shape.  We are on the lookout for briefings, webinars, etc., from external sources as well as from our own Fellows and will share these opportunities with you as we hear about them.  If you know of any such briefings that might benefit Fellows across the board or by issue area, please let Erin know.  Two such discussions are coming up, so please put them on your calendar:

• Thursday, December 13th, 2 pm ET - All Adaptation is Local: Will Changes in DC Affect the Adaptation Movement?, with Lara Hansen of EcoAdapt.
• Thursday, January 19th, 1 pm ET - Policy Briefing, with Jason Grumet, Founder and President of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, DC.

We will also be inviting Fellows' suggestions for specific action-oriented discussions at our topical networking calls for the coming year (see schedule below, in the events section).   

If you've been thinking about someday taking that intensive leadership training but haven't yet committed the time or expense, we have the opportunity for you!  This is a critical time to do it, when environmental and social change leadership will be at its most challenging but most needed.  Rockwood Leadership Institute is offering 10% off the sliding scale for tuition for its five-day Art of Leadership trainings for Switzer Fellows applying through January 30, 2017.  Just type in the code SWITZER in the "coupon" field in the online application.  Contact Erin if you have questions.

We have a number of Fellows attending the upcoming American Geophysical Union conference, December 12-16th in San Francisco!  If you are attending and haven't yet added your name to the list, please do!  You can go to the Google spreadsheet and add your name and contact info, and we can help facilitate getting together with other Fellows while you're there.  Please feel free to add a conference to the list if you're attending one that isn't on there!  Or, let Erin know your plans and we'll make sure you're added to the list.

As many of you know, we suspended the fall cycle of our Leadership Grant program this year.  However, the spring cycle will go on as scheduled, with concept letters due February 1st.  If you are interested in applying for a Leadership Grant for this upcoming cycle, please contact Erin if you haven't done so already.  We will likely be able to fund only one grant (or, perhaps, two small grants) and so it will be unusually competitive, even by our standards!  All incoming concepts must meet each of the main criteria - providing a clear and direct elevation of the Fellow's leadership skills and career trajectory (we repeat - clear and direct, and preferably near-term); building the capacity of the organization to address the issue; and addressing a critical environmental issue.  We anticipate inviting proposals only from a subset of concept letters.  Contact Erin with any questions, or to discuss a potential concept letter.

In the latest installment of their Working Shift series, WBEZ in Chicago talked with the sustainability manager of Chicago's Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Fellow Kristen Pratt, about the work she does both inside the museum and in Chicago neighborhoods to promote the principles of sustainability.

Read more

Nicole Ardoin and Christy Merrick are collaborating on a major new initiative to coalesce and analyze the existing research base on environmental education and its effects on student achievement and environmental outcomes. Drawing on this research base, the initiative will focus on communicating its findings to a variety of audiences including policy makers, educators, parents, and funders.

Read more

Photo: P. Batty/Flickr

Australia has some 8,300 islands, many of them home to threatened species.  But humans have introduced rodents and predators such as feral cats and foxes to many of these islands, devastating native wildlife and changing entire island ecosystems.  Removing invasive mammals has proven to be a very effective tool for protecting island species, Fellows Chris Wilcox and Erin McCreless discovered.

Read more