Fighting plant blindness any way I can.Since 2009 I have been an active member of the Botanical Society of America and the American Society of Plant Taxonomists. These two societies and their members have allowed me to find excellent ways to promote plant education and research at many different levels. At each annual meeting, I help organize the talks and judges for presentations of botanical research.
Currently, I am very active in public policy issues regarding plant science funding and education. In particular, I am an active member of the Nagoya Protocol Action Team. Where we discuss and tackle the difficult issues of benefit sharing of biological materials in international collections. |
Mentoring and public education in plantsI have also participated in public education programs for plant taxonomy and botany. I do this in various ways both by giving tours of the Botany Garden and Greenhouse, where I am the Director, in the Botany Department here at University of Wisconsin-Madison. I also conducted formal workshops such as those offered from the Friends of Jepson Workshops with University of California Berkeley. I co-taught a Jepson Workshop with the expert mustard taxonomist, Ihsan Al-Shehbaz and led my own Jepson Workshop to teach the Flowering Plant Families of California.
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Congressional VisitsRepresenting ASPT, I participated in a visit to Washington, D.C., to assist the lobbyist group, AIBS (American Institute for Biological Science) to help promote funding for the Bio-Directorate of NSF. I also have arranged tours of local representatives to my facilities both in California and in Wisconsin to help them understand the importance of collections based research and training.
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