Extension Leader Kris Stepenuck participates in White House citizen science forum

Burlington, VT - Lake Champlain Sea Grant Extension Leader Dr. Kristine Stepenuck has been invited to talk about stream monitoring and volunteer citizen scientists during a live webcast public forum at the White House. The event is hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Domestic Policy Council.

Dr. Stepenuck leads the Extension Program of the Lake Champlain Sea Grant at the University of Vermont and maintains a research program in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. Previously, she directed the Volunteer Stream Monitoring Program at the University of Wisconsin-Extension and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and  built the program from a purely educational endeavor to a broader program addressing education, management, and research needs. At the live webcast forum, she will present on her experience with volunteer water monitoring programs across the U.S. and the positive outcomes they have achieved.

The live webcast, “Open Science and Innovation: Of the People, By the People, For the People,” will be held on September 30, 2015, 8:00am – 12:00pm at wh.gov/live. You can also participate in the forum by sending in your thoughts, comments, and questions to @WhiteHouseOSTP using the hashtag #WHCitSci.

For more information on Stepenuck's research, refer to the following 2015 publications in the journals Ecology and Society and Issues in Ecology: "Individual- and community-level impacts of volunteer environmental monitoring: a synthesis of peer-reviewed literature" and "Investing in citizen science can improve natural resource management and environmental protection."