The following continuing education workshops will be offered during the 2022 Annual Meeting:
An Introduction to R for Fishery Researchers
Course Date: Friday, February 25 and Monday, February 28, 2022; 9 AM – 5 PM (1.5 hr lunch)
Course Location: Virtual workshop
Instructor: Justin Priest, ADF&G Fisheries Researcher; justin.priest@alaska.gov
Cost: $70; Minimum attendance is 5; maximum 20 students
Description: Whether you have never opened R or are looking to brush up on your R skills, this course will provide helpful tools and tips to improve how you manage and analyze fisheries data. By the completion of the course, students will be able to recognize basic R commands, know the how and why of what code does, create a professional publication-level visualization, perform basic statistical analysis, and have a series of easily perusable resources for future reference. To incorporate different learning styles, we will go through presentations, show demonstrations of how / when to use the code in a fisheries context, use hands-on coding practice, and offer an interactive tutorial to walk students through coding knowledge. The latest (and simplest) coding practices will be taught so that students will have a cutting edge understanding of R. To this end, we will use “tidyverse” techniques and other modern tools. Plotting will be shown using ggplot2 to create beautiful graphics in a simple and fast way. Your instructor will work with each student to ensure that we overcome any obstacle and complete the course with a useful knowledge of R. Though this course does not require any prior R use and will start with no prerequisites, it is recommended that participants are very experienced with computer file / folder structure. Previous knowledge of statistics is very beneficial.
Instructor Justin Priest is the Southeast Alaska Coho Salmon Research Biologist for ADF&G. Justin specializes in quantitative ecology and using modern computing tools to help guide management. Despite these advanced uses, he still remembers his struggles of first learning R and put together this course to make R fun and straightforward for beginners.
If you have any questions about whether this course would be beneficial or a good fit for you, please email the instructor.
Designing Flawless Research Posters in InDesign
Course Date: Monday, February 28, 9 AM – 1PM
Course Location: Virtual workshop
Instructor: Kelly Ireland, UAA/UAF Ph.D. student; ksireland@alaska.edu
Cost: $40; Minimum attendance is 10 people; maximum 25 students
Description: Are you tired of posters with misaligned content boxes? Text alignment that looks just slightly off? Fidgeting with a PowerPoint slide to make a poster? Want to take your research poster or print publication to the next level? This half-day course will walk attendees through Adobe InDesign to design posters and other scientific print publications. Adobe InDesign software is the creative/newspaper industry standard for creating layouts for print publication. The first part of the course will cover tips for layout and design, high-quality printing, and the basics of Adobe InDesign before attendees will walk through starting to design their posters using Adobe InDesign.
Instructor Kelly Ireland is a joint UAA/UAF Ph.D. student in biology studying the toxic effects of crude oil on fish. Kelly has professionally used Adobe InDesign since 2013 for layouts of newspapers, restaurant menus, event posters, scientific research posters, reports, and more. Kelly’s research posters have even won the best student/grad student poster awards three times, and the Alaska Press Club recognized her layout design for The Northern Light newspaper.
To optimize time in the course, please come with figures and text written up that you would like to include in your poster.
Please download and install the latest version of Adobe InDesign from https://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/free-trial-download.html; this will get you a 7-day free trial to InDesign, so if you would like to just use the software for the event, wait to download till the morning of the event. There will be some time to do so at the beginning of the course.
You can also download an old version of Adobe InDesign (CS6) if you have a University of Alaska login from https://www.alaska.edu/oit/services/software-downloads/licensed-software/software-index/index.php it’s recommended that if this option is chosen that InDesign is downloaded before class.
If you have any questions about whether this course would be beneficial or a good fit for you, please email the instructor.
Science Communication – Tips from a Former Journalist Turned Scientist
Course Date: Monday, February 28, 2:30 PM – 6 PM
Course Location: Virtual workshop
Instructor: Kelly Ireland, UAA/UAF Ph.D. student; ksireland@alaska.edu
Cost: $40; Minimum attendance is 10 people; maximum 25 students
Description: Science means nothing if scientists cannot communicate it to the masses. This course will give scientists tips and tricks for making their science more accessible to the general public and scientists alike. The course will discuss how to simplify complex ideas, know your audience, and story structure in scientific writing using participants’ abstracts. The course will then go over examples of successful scientific communication to the general public and then brainstorm ideas to best share your work. Finally, the course will cover interacting with news media to share your science – from contacting the news for coverage to answering news interview questions like a pro.
Instructor Kelly Ireland has a double B.A. in Biological Sciences and Journalism and Public Communications and M.S. in Biological Sciences and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in biology. Kelly spent seven years in the news and communications world before pursuing science full time and hopes to share her insights on successful communication with participants during this half-day course.
If you have any questions about whether this course would be beneficial or a good fit for you, please email the instructor.
GitHub for Fishery Scientists
Course Date: Wednesday, February 23, 2022; 12 – 1:30 PM
Course Location: Virtual workshop
Instructors: Sara Miller, ADF&G Biometrician, sara.miller@alaska.gov
Justin Priest, ADF&G Fisheries Researcher; justin.priest@alaska.gov
Cost: Free! Minimum attendance is 5.
Description: GitHub is a website and software that can greatly assist scientific researchers. For those scientists that use R and RStudio, adding git and GitHub to their workflow has many benefits for collaboration and sharing results. The short presentation, demonstrations, and discussion will review the potential improvements and advantages of GitHub, while demonstrating its ease of use! The main impediment to not using GitHub is the initial startup and trying to figure out how to begin. We will demonstrate how to get started and how to use the RStudio features daily. This presentation will be highly valuable for researchers that collaborate on analyses and want to improve their data management practices.
Instructor Sara Miller is a salmon and herring Biometrician for ADF&G. Sara uses GitHub and other websites and software such as GitLab to collaborate and facilitate sharing code with her fellow colleagues and other fisheries researchers.
Instructor Justin Priest is the Southeast Alaska Coho Salmon Research Biologist for ADF&G. Justin specializes in using modern computing tools to help guide management and enjoys sharing this knowledge with others.
If you have any questions about whether this course would be beneficial or a good fit for you, please email the instructors.
WESPAK-SE 2.0 Orientation
Course Date: Thursday, February 24, 2022; 9 AM -11 AM
Course Location: Virtual workshop
Instructor: Khrystl Brouilette, SAWC/SEAKFHP Project Associate; khrystl@sawcak.org
Cost: Free! Minimum attendance is 5; no maximum
Description: The Wetlands Ecosystems Services Protocol for Southeast Alaska is a rapid assessment tool with a web mapping application designed to help answer ecosystem-based questions as posed in the WESPAK-SE office form. The original application was a product of collaboration between the Southeast Alaska Land Trust and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and was hosted by the Southeast Alaska GIS Library at the University of Alaska Southeast. The original application has been updated and is now hosted by the Southeast Alaska Fish Habitat Partnership in ArcGIS online. The new WESPAK-SE 2.0 is designed to be informative and user-friendly. This presentation will give an overview of the WESPAK-SE 2.0 application and will discuss how to access the tool, the layers available, and different use case scenarios for the tool. There will be time for a Q & A session so participants can ask specific questions they may have pertaining to the use of the application. WESPAK-SE 2.0 can be accessed here: https://psmfc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=c30e56d5e1514219ae1cfa7bb30b674f. For more information on this application, please contact khrystl@sawcak.org.
Instructor Khrystl Brouillette is SEAKFHP’s Data Project Associate and has been working to rebuild the WESPAK-SE data archive and mapping application.
Please contact Sara Miller, sara.miller@alaska.gov, if you have questions about workshops at the 2022 meeting.