career diary, wisconsin chapter

I spent a wonderful morning yesterday with two staff from the ERC at the University of Wisconsin
http://www.uwex.edu/erc/

I met with Jake Blasczyk and Astrid Newenhouse, who were both very generous with their time and interest in my work and queries, our experience (at Roberts) and who were wonderful tour guides.. think indian burial mounds, stem cell discovery centre and then we ended up dancing around the perimeter of the new university Discovery Centre to trigger the inlaid fibonacci chimes that form a part of the 'collaborative science' landscape.

My hour long conversation with Jake took part in his favourite garden at the University - a wonderful feast for the senses at this late stage of summer, and let us easily fall into discussion about woodland owners and extension, buddism and social media platforms, Dillman's survey methods, ethnography in evaluation, the limitations of indicators and the sector of the profession here that makes up natural resource evaluators. He has been doing some interesting work with a colleague on engagement of woodland owners - theorising engagement with attention to four factors including attachment and a review of the place literature - I am keen to follow up on this.

It was encouraging, he provided some feedback on the CV I had forwarded to him, and advised me to keep talking with people like I have been doing. I left energised after a dispiriting week in Pittsburgh.

Lunch with Astrid and Jake was equally entertaining and illuminating, and I got to learn more about their individual projects, some wonderful longitudinal studies, about the effectiveness of various survey methods, we debated the use of incentives, and talked about the value of control studies where budget permits.

Musings in the public domain, is this how the modern job hunt proceeds or is this advanced procrastination now that I have returned home....