NEWS & EVENTS

MCC Hosts Coproduction Sessions at 2016 National Climate Science Center Student and Early Career Training

November 2-3, 2016

In November 2016, a National Climate Science Center Student and Early Career Training was held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Our Manager Climate Corps team chaired the development of two knowledge coproduction training sessions and facilitated them at the event, which included panel presentations and small group break out discussion that linked to Alison Meadow’s (Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions) keynote talk on knowledge coproduction. For more details on the conference, you can check out their conference booklet.

Goals of the National Climate Science Center Student and Early Career Training:

  • Encourage broadly relevant skills related to climate science and the co-production of science;
  • Showcase research and tools that have been funded by USGS through the CASC network since the onset of the program five years ago; and
  • Provide opportunities for early career scientists to network with and learn from each other, scientists, and stakeholders, as well as contribute ideas toward future directions of the CASC enterprise

In the first afternoon session, the MCC program was highlighted as an on-the-ground example of a knowledge coproduction program and an effective method for increasingly connecting interdisciplinary university research with local communities and natural resource manager networks toward actionable science products. The second session will stimulated fellows to actively and collaboratively engage the process of knowledge co-production (KC) according to the diverse skills and experiences within each small group.

Round table discussions addressed these 5 basic questions:

  1. Who are the stakeholders your group would like to address (e.g. what scale do they interact with natural resources and communities?)
  2. Who are the knowledge producers you would like to involve?
  3. How will you engage the stakeholders and develop iterative reciprocal interactions between knowledge producers and stakeholders?
  4. How will you establish long-term relationships between stakeholders and knowledge co-producers?
  5. How can we stimulate “rewards” to increasingly incentivize KC networks and longer term thought/action toward community resiliency and adaptation?