Emily Pappo
Postdoctoral Climate Fellow, Smithsonian Institution
About Me
Hello! My name is Emily Pappo. I just completed my PhD in Interdisciplinary Ecology at the University of Florida and am beginning a postdoctoral fellowship with the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) and Tropical Research Institute (STRI) this May. My path to this point in my career is actually thanks to a decades-long interest in coffee – for about a decade before I began my graduate studies, I worked in the coffee industry as a barista, roaster, farmer, and green coffee buyer. Seeing all the facets of this complex global industry and the vulnerability of coffee production systems to a changing climate made me curious to learn more and be part of solutions for improving resilience in agricultural communities. And in my free time, when I'm not thinking about/drinking coffee, I love to mountain bike, rock climb, and read. I look forward to meeting new colleagues and collaborators at this event!
Focus of current FEW-Nexus-based education work
My research interests center around the development of climate resilient agroecosystems and working landscapes, that is, agricultural systems, communities, and landscapes that can continue to function and thrive in the face of more frequent or severe disturbances. Effective education is critical for achieving that goal, so a key element of my past and current research program has been to work towards developing integrated frameworks to center local food-energy-water issues in secondary and post-secondary educational curricula. For example, I collaborated with local high school teachers to develop a framework for effectively integrating local agricultural case studies into a unit on climate change, an effort that was published in the journal American Biology Teacher (Pappo et al. 2022). I also am currently in the process of testing the ideas in this framework with research conducted in major and non-major Environmental Studies classes at the University of Florida, where we are testing the effect of local relevance in case studies at the Food-Energy-Water nexus on student learning outcomes and attitudes towards Environmental Science.
My interest in participating in the FEW-Nexus-based education community stems from the alignment between my research goals and the goals outlined in the visioning document, and my desire to integrate my research with the broader interdisciplinary community that is working on related problems. Specifically, while I can relate to many of the challenges outlined in the document as an interdisciplinary researcher working on FEW-Nexus issues, my education research directly addresses the challenges related to a lack of educational resources (support) and the individual level barriers (particularly the need to identify locally relevant FEW-Nexus phenomena and connect with local expertise), as I am working towards developing effective interdisciplinary frameworks for leveraging local FEW-nexus issues to teach complex topics (e.g., climate change, other natural resource use issues) and identifying effective teaching strategies for use towards that goal. I am excited about the opportunity to contribute towards the development of this community vision and to learn from and with the other researchers working in this space.
FEW-Nexus-based education experience, expertise and interests
I have experience conducting research assessing and developing strategies for integrating FEW-Nexus issues into secondary and post-secondary STEM education. Through this research and my training as a CIRTL (Center for Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning) Associate and Practitioner, I have developed the background and skills that would be useful for generating case-based education research examples of FEW-Nexus-based education and would be an enthusiastic and supportive collaborator in hypothesis generation, study design, analysis, and presentation for projects that aim to expand the education resources (support) for FEW-Nexus-based education. Specifically, my research has focused on developing materials and support for connecting classrooms with locally relevant FEW-Nexus phenomena to teach complex environmental issues more effectively, and I would hope to work with the other researchers in this community to expand these resources and continue working towards developing effective strategies in this space.
Regarding the collaborators that would be needed to execute this work, I believe that it is important to collaborate across disciplines and backgrounds and to have local stakeholders contributing to projects where local expertise is being leveraged. For example, if a particular agricultural system is being taught as an example of a locally relevant phenomena, collaborating with local farmers or extension agents brings valuable knowledge and trust to the endeavor. Additionally, I am beginning a postdoctoral fellowship without teaching responsibilities in May 2023 and will therefore not have easy access to secondary or post-secondary classrooms for a two-year period, so I would seek collaborators who would be interested in facilitating the practical testing of hypotheses in a classroom setting.
Publications, presentations, and other references
- Pappo, E., Wilson, C., & Flory, S. L. (2022). Enhancing Climate Change Education through Links to Agriculture. The American Biology Teacher, 84(4), 207-212. https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2022.84.4.207