Boundless Science Season 2: Citizen WHAT? Science, Technology, and Climate Change

On this episode of the Boundless Science series on the Streaming Science podcast, Hannah Bokor, second-year undergraduate Environmental Science major at the University of Florida, interviewed Caroline Nickerson, PhD candidate in Agricultural Education and Communication at the University of Florida. Caroline discussed her passions of citizen science, citizen technology, and climate change, including her work with SciStarter and Florida Community Innovation. She also shared advice on cold-DMing and other ways she has found unique involvement experiences.  #boundlessscience #season2

Keywords: citizen science, citizen technology, climate change, professional skills, professional advice 

#BoundlessScienceseason2

Transcript

Hannah Bokor: [00:00:00] [Music] Hello and welcome to another episode of the Boundless Science series on the Streaming Science Podcast. I'm your host, Hannah Bokor, a second-year undergraduate student studying Environmental Science at the University of Florida. In the following interview, I was joined by Caroline Nickerson, PhD candidate in Agricultural Education and Communication at the University of Florida. 

We discussed citizen science, citizen technology, and climate change, Caroline's primary areas of interest. We also have some advice sprinkled throughout the discussion about how to put yourself out there and network in these fields, as Caroline shared some personal experiences, including info about internships and jobs.

Caroline, I know you've worn a lot of hats, but can you introduce yourself to the listeners, especially with your work with SciStarter and Florida Community Innovation? 

Caroline Nickerson: Yeah, definitely. So, hello everyone. My name is Caroline Nickerson. I view myself as a friend to all. I have [00:01:00] had the privilege of being a Gator throughout my college career.

So, I graduated from the University of Florida in 2017 with a double major, I majored in history as well as East Asian languages and literatures with a focus in Chinese. And then I also worked for the University of Florida Psychiatry Department while I was an undergrad on this thing called the Christensen Project, where I helped develop textbooks and curriculums related to homeless and underserved individuals.

And I looked at Dr. Richard Christensen's articles, especially about how to help these folks with different psychiatric methods. And that was really fun. I think it gets at my ethos of public service. I was really involved with the Graham Center in undergrad as well. And I'm still a friend to the Graham Center to this day, the public service center on campus.

And then after that, I went to Washington, D.C. So I went to American University for my Master's in Environmental Policy where I was a Riley Environmental Policy Scholar. I got to work with Bill Riley, the former director of the EPA, and Dan Fiorino up there, and they were super [00:02:00] inspirational. I was really grateful.

And while I was there, I did a little bit of time in the policy lab and the executive office of the mayor in D.C. But I also started consulting full time for this organization called SciStarter, which is a global citizen science organization. And citizen science is any way a member of the public can move scientific research forward.

Often that's by collecting or analyzing data, and data is just information for different projects: that can be, you know, inches of rainfall, that can be pictures you take of different plants and animals, that can be observations you write down about different climate impacts, like extreme heat.

All that information is valuable for researchers trying to understand our increasingly complicated, but beautiful world. So, SciStarter was very transformational for me. I helped manage their corporate volunteer programs, their Girl Scout program, their general project finder database that anybody anywhere in the world can use to find different real scientific research projects where they can turn their curiosity into impact. [00:03:00] And I still actually work with SciStarter; I eventually—  I started off just writing for SciStarter and I eventually became a senior program director there; now I'm an advisor which gives me a little bit more freedom flexibility as I finish this PhD.

While I was up in D. C. as well, I became Florida's Cherry Blossom Princess, and Cherry Blossom season's coming up, which I will be back up there. I'm going to be a keynote speaker at the Cherry Blossom Princesses Women's Conference this year. I always like telling people about my Cherry Blossom Princess work as well as my pageant work because I think it helps make the scientific topics I am so passionate about more accessible to people and also more fun.

I think it really invites people in. After D.C., after finishing my Master's, I was able to come back to the University of Florida to come home. I loved my time up in D.C., but home is where the heart is. And I'm very grateful to be a PhD candidate at UF and I get to study climate change communication. I know Hannah's gonna ask me more questions about that and some of the research I wrapped up recently.

And then I also have a non-profit, Florida Community [00:04:00] Innovation, that my friends and I started. That's a little bit about me. 

Hannah Bokor: As I said when I introduced you, you wear a lot of hats, and it's very impressive. I think that for our listeners, to avoid any confusion, we can maybe divvy up your work between SciStarter and Florida Community Innovation.

So, starting with SciStarter, I know you already sort of covered it, but can you just give another brief overview of what SciStarter is exactly? 

Caroline Nickerson: Definitely. So SciStarter is the world's biggest citizen science organization. So we define citizen science. It's real science that anybody can do. And part of the reason why SciStarter exists and why our founder, Darlene, created SciStarter— Darlene Cavalier— is because it can be really hard for interested people to find citizen science projects. So traditionally, when we think of science engagement as an adult, we think about going to the science center or, you know, maybe you engage your kids in like a [00:05:00] little at-home experimental kit. You don't think that you can actually move science forward. 

But I think citizen science really reframes that in a way that is very helpful, because rather than science being some esoteric thing that you have to be a genius to understand, it's just a method. Anyone can use science to answer questions about things. Anyone can collect data according to a protocol, analyze that data, and come to some sort of conclusion about the world.

Before SciStarter, there wasn't a large searchable database of its type where people could go to find an opportunity and where the people who run these projects could go to find volunteers. And then SciStarter, I think the real genius of it is in addition to that big project finder database, they have an events database where librarians and library staff can add meetups for people to come together and do these projects.

We also have a Girl Scouts program where Girl Scouts can do a project and get a badge. Or even in schools SciStarter has a partnership with Broward County Schools where those students [00:06:00] can be assigned citizen science projects, and that's been a real joy to work with them as well. So, SciStarter is very global, you know, it’s a project finder where you can find a project anywhere on earth, even Antarctica, and then we have citizen scientists from all over the world who use the platform to find projects that they can do and also track their participation.

SciStarter: I feel so grateful that they've been with me through the years. I think I've been with them over six years now in various capacities. I mentioned to be able to finish my PhD, or do the PhD to begin with, they let me transition to advisor status. I feel very, very lucky that I get to make an impact with them.

Hannah Bokor: Yeah. I think citizen science in general is so important because a lot of people get this idea that scientists are just these people holed up in their labs and it's so beyond just the average person, but to be able to take the community and actually benefit from their involvement, but also help them be engaged in the science, is so important.

And then you said you've been at SciStarter for [00:07:00] six years. How did you find out about that? 

Caroline Nickerson: Yeah, I think this is good for the students who are listening. I mentioned I majored in history and Chinese at UF, and I love those majors. I tried a bunch of different stuff at UF. I had worked at the med school, and I was DMing UF alums on LinkedIn, which I really recommend doing.

So if you're a student, people want to help you or if you're a recent grad or just a young person in general. And I would message these UF alums and I would say, "Hello, my name is Caroline. I noticed that you do really cool work. I'm a fellow Gator. Could we hop on a call, and could I just learn more about you?"

And I hopped on a call with a UF alum who was an executive at NASA. She was head of their small business innovation research program, Jen Gustetic, a really inspirational person. Definitely look her up, learn from her. She was a keynote speaker at graduation for the College of Engineering last year.

So I'm just a huge fan, and you all should watch her talks on YouTube. I was so grateful that [00:08:00] she agreed to speak to me, and it was just a random DM out of the blue. And after talking, we had a good rapport. I asked for her advice. I got a lot of really good advice. And then at the end I said, you know, “I really enjoy our conversation.

Are you hiring? I'm moving up to D.C. And you know, I'd love to work with you at NASA.” And she said, “I'm not hiring, but my friend Darlene is.” So she connected me with Darlene. Darlene hired me as a blogger at SciStarter. Part time, of course, very part time just to, you know, probably see how I was just to make sure I was good.

I did more and more work. I knocked every additional job out of the park. And then eventually, I became senior program director. 

Hannah Bokor: That's so awesome. I had no idea that you cold-DMed to get that. I've never done that. I'm so scared of it. 

Caroline Nickerson: I mean, if they don't want to talk to you, they'll just ignore it.

Hannah Bokor: That's true. 

Caroline Nickerson: Yeah. 

Hannah Bokor: Yeah. I guess you have nothing to lose. 

Caroline Nickerson: Nothing to lose [laughing]. 

Hannah Bokor: All right. So now that we've talked about SciStarter a bit, I was hoping to move into Florida Community Innovation. I think it's so cool that you're a [00:09:00] co-founder of this. Can you go into some more specifics about how exactly you and your friends founded it?

Caroline Nickerson: We had a whole group of people helping us with this, but it was really Chris and my's idea. And we had the idea— we met at the Future of Florida Summit at UF. So that's a Graham Center program. So I always like to shout that out because you never know who you're going to meet at a random weekend conference who will change your life.

But Chris and I met at the Future of Florida Summit, and then we had both moved up to D.C. We both really have a heart for public service. And Chris graduated from UF with a mechanical engineering degree, but he does all sorts of things. And we just wanted to get our friends together to bring some evidence-based techniques to get to the forefront in relation to fighting COVID.

So we realized in Florida, people weren't masking, for example. So we thought maybe we could use behavioral nudge techniques— a subset of psychology research— and deploy that in different advertisements to get people to start wearing [00:10:00] masks. We got in touch with other local connections we had: people I knew from starting the commission on local debates like the Central Florida Foundation, and they helped us broaden our horizons a bit because we realized that the problems facing Florida were a lot bigger than just COVID.

COVID's a huge problem. It's still a problem today. But we also have resource access. People aren't able to find the resources they need, like food banks, employment resources, things like that. There's all sorts of different barriers that face Floridians. And some of them can be solved with technology and, you know, programs accompanying it as well.

So we started scoping out, based on the Central Florida Foundation's input, the Florida Community Resource Map. Because they pointed out to us, there are for-profit versions of resource directories and, you know, 2-1-1 is a phone number and a great phone access point and non-profit access point for resources, but we don't have a real digital access point run by a non-profit for people to find the resources they need.

So FCI stepped up, and because we love research and evaluation, and we also love [00:11:00] education. We think making things student-driven really infuses a lot of passion and innovation into things. We enlisted different schools. So we worked with the Graham Center to set up a UF internship program where people could get course credit and a stipend to work on the resource map and actually build it.

And then we worked with the University of Michigan, American University, Georgetown, and now we're partnering with Berkeley as well. So, and UCF has worked with us at various points as well, which we're very grateful for, and we're working on doing more with UCF in the coming months, but we worked with all these different universities in addition to having the UF students building the map to have evaluation to help scope the map and make it better, and I think that's also what really distinguishes the Florida Community Resource Map is that it's been optimized for social workers to use it on behalf of their clients.

We have a team from American University working to figure out how we can really optimize it for educators so educators can use it as part of the school system because students often need resources as well. [00:12:00] Maybe their parents need food banks, job resources, whatever it might be. So we have iterated the resource map over time.

It has changed a lot based on our community listening sessions. I also think that's what makes FCI's model different, that we're not just building a solution in search of a problem. We iterate it and we put community listening at the forefront and we really bring a research mindset into it with all the different schools, University programs, graduate and undergraduate students that we work with. The Florida Community Resource Map is our flagship project, but we have others too.

And many of them have been started by students. And I love seeing the students get grants to run their own projects. So right now, the only folks who are paid at FCI are the students. So I do everything as a volunteer. I think it's really important and an ethics issue to pay your students. So that's what we did first before we had any paid staff.

And, you know, after I graduate with my PhD, I'm hoping I get to take a salary from FCI. We have some good grants coming down the pipe that could be promising. But it's a big org. You know, we have over I think 50 students now at all the different [00:13:00] schools and a lot more volunteers than that.

But so one of our students- I'll give an example of Anna. She was really interested in connecting people to the past. She was a UF computer science grad. And now she's at Berkeley. And she wanted to work with the city cemetery in Miami, which is one of the first interfaith and interracial cemeteries in the South, and tell a unique story of Florida's past.

And I was really familiar with the cemetery as well. When you're there, it's a beautiful place, a very thoughtful, reflective place, but it's at risk of climate change. Sometimes when you step on the ground, you can truly feel the water. So I thought it was important to, you know, do as much as we could to digitize this past now and try to preserve it for future generations, no matter what happens to the cemetery, but also bring more attention to the cemetery too.

So people can appreciate it. And now we're going to be able to, with the grant that Anna just got, even give them some funding. But basically, Anna's building this app called GoBituary. It's like an obituary, but on the go. And she has a team of UF students as [00:14:00] well who are compensated to write histories of people buried in the cemetery.

We have a mentor who's a retired history professor from South Florida, Paul George, and he's proofreading those histories. And then in the next year, people are going to be able to visit the cemetery, scan the graves, and learn about the people buried there and read engaging histories that use the power of storytelling to connect us to Miami's diverse past.

I think by telling these unique stories, we're going to make people more engaged in Miami in the present. Anna's going to be using it as her final project for her master's at Berkeley. And I've been loving the Berkeley partnership. You know, we have this work with Anna, but we're also working with their cybersecurity clinic right now to amp up FCI cybersecurity across projects. 

 That's FCI in a nutshell. If you ever want to work with us, go to floridainnovation.org anyone can volunteer, you know, we bring in paid students a few times a year. So if you're a UF student, especially, we'd love to loop you into the internship program.

Please consider applying and you know, no matter where you are, you can work with us. [00:15:00] 

Hannah Bokor: Awesome. Thank you for sharing all of those projects, but that got me thinking. Do you have any future projects or plans coming up? 

Caroline Nickerson: We're always scoping new projects because it's very from the ground up. So the way we work is- I'm the executive director so I view myself as the "buck stops with me" person.

 You know, I have to do our taxes. 

Hannah Bokor: Oh.... [laughing]

Caroline Nickerson: If no one wants to update the website; I'll update the website [defeatedly; laughing], but everyone— I get a lot of help. I am definitely— it's not me alone. It's a huge team. And that's why it's flourished. Cause I don't put the pressure on myself to run these projects. I really view my role as just empowering other people to shine, and they take it to the next level.

So I'm the executive director, so I'm kind of like that quality check. But we have a really active board. Most of them are recent grads from UF, actually. We have a very, very young board. I'm actually trying to get some older folks on there as well, but we have a very young, active board who are in the trenches, mentoring the students, empowering them, [00:16:00] empowering our volunteers.

And then we have a mix of, you know, students, at all of those universities I mentioned. So Code for America was this well, they still exist, but they had a program called the brigade program where they used to have software engineers, data scientists, people with those types of jobs who would volunteer on social good projects, similar to FCI.

And they dissolved their brigade program and left a bunch of those volunteers without a home, or a place to do their volunteer work. So we absorbed Gainesville's Code for America Brigade. We rebranded them as Code GNV, and now we're their parent organization and they mentor our students and work on our projects.

So, we operate across the state of Florida, but we do have a critical mass in Gainesville because of all the UF students who work with us and Code GNV. But that being said, I love how we see more and more FCI action in Miami, and in Orlando, and Jacksonville, and in the panhandle too— the United Way of Northwest Florida in Panama city is a partner.

Hannah Bokor: Awesome. I think we're about done here, but was there anything else that [00:17:00] you wanted to add, you want the listeners to know? 

Caroline Nickerson: I feel duty bound to talk about my PhD research. 

Hannah Bokor: Oh yeah. Of course. 

Caroline Nickerson: Because I think that's really cool, too. And I'm very grateful to Dr. Loizzo for all the mentorship as my advisor.

But so I'm in the Agricultural Education and Communication department. And I'm very passionate about climate change communication. Climate change is something that keeps me up at night. And I wanted to reach out to other people who might be scared and not know what they should do and provide some evidence-based best practices about ways to engage people.

 This semester I was able to partner with a really inspiring group of UF IFAS extension agents from the climate change working action group that extension agents in Florida have to run these things called digital field experiences. Basically, those are webinars with live demos, Q and A, think of it as like a webinar plus out in the field.

I did them in Escambia County. So that's in the panhandle. I did them in Sarasota, in Brevard County, in Cape Canaveral, specifically, which was really cool. All these were [00:18:00] really phenomenal experiences for me. I went down to Miami Dade County, and also I ended up in Monroe County in Key West.

So I worked with extension agents in all these counties to do these one hour programs, each spotlighting a different climate hazard and what individuals can do. And I also gave a citizen science call to action as well, if people wanted to document the hazard more thoroughly, in addition to engaging in the adaptation or mitigation calls to action we gave them in relation to the hazard.

I think these programs were very joyous. We're still getting the survey results in, so I'll have more data soon about how these programs actually impacted people and their behavior. And then once I graduate, I look forward to deploying these evidence-based practices and this research mindset at FCI, at SciStarter, and wherever else I may go.

I'll likely be running for office in the near future. So yeah, I think having someone with that research-based mindset in public life is always important. I know you all got my highlight reel here, but I just want you to know, like, let's say you make a mistake or you don't do as [00:19:00] well at something as you think you did, just pick yourself back up.

America loves a comeback story. You can always keep trying, and how you're doing today doesn't have to determine how you do tomorrow. So just know, even though you heard about all the things I do, I definitely make plenty of mistakes. But the main thing is I just keep going and keep trying, and I do my best to have a positive impact on people.

Hannah Bokor: Oh my goodness. What a good ending. Thank you. I'm so excited to see what you do in the future. And I have been thinking about how much I could see you as a politician, so that that makes a lot of sense. All right. I think that's all. So thank you so much for joining me! 

Caroline Nickerson: Yay. Thanks for having me. 

Hannah Bokor: [Music] Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Boundless Science Series to learn about citizen science, citizen technology, climate change, and advice in the professional world with Caroline Nickerson. I'm your host, Hannah Bokor, and I hope you have a lovely day. Be sure to give the other episodes in this series a listen, as they can all be found on the Streaming Science [00:20:00] website.