FieldSafe

Ryan Cassotto

Ryan is a Research Scientist in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder. He integrates remote sensing measurements with field-based observations to research geophysical changes at the surface due to glaciological and natural hazards processes. Ryan has completed several remote field campaigns in Alaska and Greenland. He is passionate about creating positive team experiences and diverse, equitable, and safe field environments for future generations of geoscientists.

Mylène Jacquemart 

Mylène is a postdoctoral researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. Her primary interest is to understand how climate change affects natural hazards in high mountain environments. Fieldwork frequently takes her and her team to remote and high-elevation parts of Alaska, Colorado, and the European Alps. During and after her Master's degree, Mylène installed monitoring systems for natural hazards in alpine environments. Born and raised in the Swiss Alps, Mylène has been exploring wild and preferably icy places for over two decades, and is certified to co-guide backcountry skiing and mountaineering trips. She has been engaged in youth-centered outdoor education for over two decades and is passionate about making STEM fields more welcoming and safer for people from all backgrounds.

Alice Hill

Alice is a hydrologist with New Zealand’s National Institute for Water and Atmosphere (NIWA) researching hydrology of data scarce, remote mountain environments. She is also an experiential educator and team builder.  Alice is a senior field expedition instructor at the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). There she works with populations managing high-risk environments to develop high functioning teams in adverse or uncertain situations including NASA astronauts, Navy SEALs, and Ivy League business schools.  She also applies risk management-related frameworks while teaching for Wilderness Medicine of NOLS.

Anne U. Gold 

Anne is the Director of CIRES Education & Outreach and a Senior Associate Scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where she focuses on science education for educators, students and the general public around climate, water, polar regions and general geoscience education. She is interested in understanding and studying effective ways of teaching and learning and is dedicated to grounding her education work in solid research and evaluation. She is a climate scientist by training with a doctoral degree in Paleoclimatology from the University of Regensburg in Germany.

Emily Ward

Emily Geraghty Ward is an Education & Outreach Associate with CIRES with expertise in curriculum development, discipline-based education research, and evaluation. As a geoscientist by training and a former college professor, she focuses her research and development work on the design and assessment of place-based geoscience curricula, course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) and field experiences. She also has experience evaluating research experiences in formal and informal learning environments and broadening participation efforts.

Mariama Dryak (she/her) is the Director for the Polar Science Early Career Community Office hosted by CIRES at the University of Colorado Boulder. Prior to joining the Outreach and Education team at CIRES she coordinated programming for and taught in informal environmental education spaces at non-profits across North America, centering place-based educational techniques. Mariama is passionate about working towards building accessible Earth and polar sciences spaces for all.

FieldSafe was originally created in 2019 as an in-person workshop, the Risk Management Workshop for Field Scientists (RMWFS), and was aimed to respond to the growing awareness of equity, inclusion, and harassment problems in field research environments. It was developed by then post-doc Alice Hill with support and leadership from ESOC Director, Professor Kristy Tiampo, as well as CIRES Education and Outreach Director, Anne Gold. Funding for the workshop was provided by the National Science Foundation. 

The in-person RMWFS took place twice with cohorts of field scientists across the CU-Boulder campus.  Alice was joined by Mylene Jacquemart (then CIRES graduate student) and several outside-of-CU facilitators to run the workshops. You can read more about the RMWFS workshop in "Changing the Culture of Fieldwork in the Geosciences," published by Eos, May 2021. 

In the midst of the pandemic’s online meeting and learning boom, the RMWFS team proposed to convert the workshop into a virtual space. CIRES leadership funded this proposal, and FieldSafe was born.  

The first hybrid virtual+live facilitation FieldSafe workshop is in August 2022.

AdvanceGEO workshops

FieldSafe is excited and grateful to collaborate with AdvanceGEO. As leaders in the field of improving workplace climate conditions in the geosciences, the team at AdvanceGEO have state-of-the-field expertise on many of the topics addressed in FieldSafe. The AdvanceGEO bystander intervention training is included as part of the FieldSafe curriculum.

Click on a question below to see answers to frequently asked questions about the FieldSafe workshop.

If you are interested in attending this workshop, or want to run one for your organization please contact Claire Waugh.