Written by: Maren Hale
April 25th marked an important milestone for the SoCal Extreme Heat Research Hub: our first community partner workshop. The event, which was hosted at the San Diego Natural History Museum, provided an opportunity for community partners from across the county to learn about Hub research priorities and opportunities for input and support.
The event started with an opportunity for attendees to network and build connections before leading into a welcome and overview of NSF’s Coastlines & People program given by Hub PI Mark Merrifield. Next, Maren Hale provided partners with a summary of the SoCal Heat Hub’s motivations, structure, research themes, and overarching goals, focusing on where Hub outcomes could be relevant for community partners. Finally, partners heard brief talks from representatives of each of the science research teams (Sasha Gershunov, Tarik Benmarhnia, and Morgan Levy) and the education team (Nan Renner).
Three of our presenters from the event. From left to right: Tarik Benmarhnia, Nan Renner, and Maren Hale.
The highlight of the workshop was the Network & Asset Mapping exercise led by our engagement team, including Darbi Berry, Emily Young, and A-bel Gong, which followed the presentations. During the exercise, partners broke up into small teams and worked with Hub engagement leaders to identify opportunities to expand our impact network and identify ongoing or existing synergetic projects and spaces for expanded research and engagement. The information gained from this exercise will be invaluable for strategizing and developing the Hub’s research and engagement activities over the next few years.
This was only the first of many partner events that will occur over the lifespan of the Hub. For anyone who is interested in staying up to date with ongoing Hub events and activities, you can sign up for our newsletter at this link. Finally, the hub would like to thank all of the partners who attended the workshop as well as the staff at the Natural History Museum for generously providing the space for this event.
Participants gave feedback and discussed opportunities in small break out groups. Here, education team member A-bel Gong is pictured leading the group in the foreground.
Header image source: Wikimedia Commons by user Rhododendrites. Used under Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 4.0. Original image has been cropped and colors saturated.
