Welcome back to the new academic year. It’s good to be back after what I hope was a productive summer, and nice to see our beautiful campus busy with activity again.

This year we welcome 24 new graduate students, including 6 PhD students, 16 MS students, and two MFR students. Among the MS students are six students in the “Bridging the Gap” cohort, focused on application of data sciences in natural resources.

We also are pleased to welcome the first of our new cohort of faculty, hired under our Climate Adaptation Cluster Search last year. Sameer Shah, joins us starting October 1 and will be offering a graduate course in Winter quarter on Climate Change Vulnerability, Adaptation, and Societal Transformations and an undergraduate course on Climate Justice in Spring. We look forward to welcoming Claire Willing and Francisca Santana in Autumn 2023, after they complete their post-doc appointments.

Congratulations to our newest Associate Professor Anthony Dichiara on his promotion this year.

A number of our faculty have sabbaticals for at least some of this academic year and we are grateful to several alumni and PhD students who are offering their expertise and offering several of our courses. Thanks also to Cynthia Updegrave, who continues to do such a great job with the Restoration Capstone sequence.

Welcome to our newest staff members Christie Kiefer, who joins the research and grants team, and Nancy Standifer, who joins us as our temp communications specialist. A reminder that our advising team is up and running and Sandra Maddox, undergraduate advisor, can be reached at sefsadv@uw.edu and Liz Collier, graduate advisor, can be reached at sefsgpa@uw.edu.We continue to adapt to life with Covid. The latest guidance is that masks are highly recommended the first 2 weeks. After that, masks will be recommended. Isolation and reporting is required if you test positive.

With those precautions in place, we can look forward to several opportunities to get together.

• Please join us for the Salmon BBQ, Wednesday Oct 5, 5-7 pm in the courtyard. Please RSVP here, if you haven’t already. We recognize that this is scheduled during Yom Kippur, and sincerely apologize to those who celebrate for the scheduling mistake. We will work to avoid similar scheduling conflicts for future events. 
• SEFS Socials are brief opportunities to grab a snack and chat, and will be alternating Wednesday mornings and Thursday afternoons. These will be in the courtyard, weather permitting, and the Forest Club Room (Anderson 207) otherwise.
• Graduate students are invited to a retreat at Pack Forest, Oct 22-23.
• Looking ahead: we are excited to be co-sponsoring the UW Danz Lecture by Robin Wall Kimmerer, expert in restoration, plant ecology, and traditional ecological knowledge, May 11th.

Keep your eye on the events calendar for more information.

Here’s to a great quarter and please reach out (danbro@uw.edu) if you have questions or concerns.