Wrapping Up: Reflections from Ankita Mandelia
It has been an amazing year!! My fellowship with the International Joint Commission Great Lakes
Regional Office was incredible. A lot
has happened over the past several months, so you’re in for a long one….
The IJC Semi-Annual Meeting (or culmination of all working parts of the IJC)
The
last time I wrote was right before the Fall 2015 IJC Semi-Annual Meeting. This meeting was a major turning point in the
fellowship for me: it was when the large-scale picture of exactly how the IJC
works finally became clear. Up until that
meeting and advisory board meetings associated with it, I had worked with IJC
advisory boards, staff and Commissioners but didn’t recognize how they all fit
together. Seeing everyone assembled in one place and the order in which
meetings took place helped me to understand how science is shared from the
experts on the IJC advisory boards to the IJC staff, to the IJC Commissioners,
and finally to the governments. It is
one thing to know that the work in academia makes a difference, but it is
another thing entirely to watch that expertise being used to provide advice to
the governments of two countries. I am
excited that I had the opportunity to witness this process twice over the
course of the year.
The semi-annual meetings also provided an excellent opportunity for
networking and to spend time in the Canadian and U.S. capitals. I generally
only communicated with the Health
Professionals Advisory Board (HPAB) and the Research
Coordination Committee (RCC) members over the phone; at their board
meetings during the semi-annual meetings, I was able to meet them in person,
which helped me better understand how they think. On top of being brilliant, the IJC advisory
board members are some of the nicest people I have ever met. I had never been to Ottawa before. I did get a chance to explore a little bit,
and it is a nice city. In April, the
reception was held in the Benjamin Franklin Room of the U.S. Department of
State building, which was a bit like a museum. That was when I realized the full weight of the fact that I was witnessing
science turn into international policy, and just how lucky I was to be there.
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| HPAB Fall Meeting (Around the table from front left: HPAB Canadian Co-Chair Dr. Tim Takaro, HPAB member Dr. Elaine Faustman, Former HPAB member Dr. John Dellinger, HPAB U.S. Co-Chair Dr. Seth Foldy, HPAB members Dr. Laurie Chan, Dr. Matthew Keifer, Dr. David Buckeridge, IJC Physical Scientist Dr. Jennifer Boehme and Guest Speaker Dr. Taha Kass-Hout, FDA) |
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| Parliament Hill, Ottawa |
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| RCC presenting to Commissioners at Spring Semi-Annual Meeting |
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| My supervisor, Dr. Jennifer Boehme, and me on the balcony at the top of the U.S. State Department of State building for the Spring Semi-Annual Meeting Reception |
Other Activities
Over the course of the year, my primary responsibilities were to
assist the Secretariats of the HPAB and RCC with routine activities such as running
the board meetings. I also had the opportunity to help these two boards with
some science activities.
With the HPAB, I conducted a biweekly news digest focused on topics
of current interest to the HPAB. This
particular activity helped me to stay updated on current events, and also focus
more on the human impact of environmental issues. One interesting project I worked on was a
project that aims to use social media to understand the relationship between major environmental
events/issues (such as the development of harmful algal blooms in an area) to
the physical, mental and economic health of communities. Though this project is still in its very
beginning stages, it was interesting to learn about sets of expertise that I am
not familiar with – the nexus of health informatics, social media and computer
science.
With the RCC, I helped to facilitate the Future Indicators
workshop. Future Indicators are
potential means to measure changes in the Great Lakes ecosystem. These means are not currently used because
not enough data is available, but the potential to develop that data
exists. The goal of the expert workshop
was to determine the relative importance of the indicators to prioritize which
indicators data collection should focus on in the near future. I found this project exciting because I again
had the opportunity to witness experts making decisions that would be
communicated to the governments – and this time the discussion was much more
technical (which made the engineer in me geek out quite a bit).
I attended several meetings, workshops and conferences in addition
to the IJC semi-annual meetings. Two
stood out in particular. One was a workshop
that the IJC hosted in Windsor about microplastics. This workshop was incredible – it brought
together experts from Canada and the U.S. in government, academia, citizens’
groups and industry. The discussion was
how to tackle the issue of microplastics pollution from research, application
and policy standpoints. I was amazed at
how constructive the discussion was despite vastly differing viewpoints. How to handle microplastics pollution is a
deeply complicated issue.
The other conference that stood out was the International
Association of Great Lakes Research conference. This was my third time attending the conference, but my first time not
attending as a student. This time, I
knew more people and was familiar with more research, which makes the whole
experience slightly less overwhelming – there’s a lot of information shared at
this conference! I realized how much
I’ve learned and grown since I was a student. That being said, I was very excited to see and
hang out with the Michigan Tech crew this year, including one of my master’s
advisors. I also presented my research
over the course of my IJC fellowship on life after delisting for the Great
Lakes Areas of Concern (more on that below).
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| Commissioner Glance giving opening remarks at the IJC Microplastics workshop |
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|
Michigan
Tech students, alumni and friends at IAGLR 2016 (R to L: Hang Wang, Dr. Lauren Fry, Dr. Mark Rowe, Colin Brooks, me, Joeseph Smith, Ashley Hendricks) |
Major Accomplishments
My major accomplishments over the year involved deviating quite a
bit from an engineer’s way of thinking. I learned to communicate science in a way that can be more generally
received, and I dabbled in social science research.
I had an opportunity to contribute to the IJC Great Lakes Connection
Newsletter – I wrote an article about the Great Lakes Communications Indicators (French
version translated by IJC Staff). This was the first of many lessons by IJC staff on how to communicate
complicated concepts in a simple and engaging manner.
I gave two professional presentations. The first presentation was a personal milestone
– I was invited to give a brown bag presentation at NOAA-GLERL on my master’s
research on PCBs and metals contamination and remediation at the Torch Lake Area of Concern. I worked extensively with IJC Great Lakes Regional
Office staff to turn my master’s defense presentation into a story. I am honored that not only did I get to give
this presentation, but that it was well-received.
I used my newly-acquired skills to develop a presentation on my
Great Lakes Areas of Concern Life After Delisting work, which I presented at
IAGLR. This presentation was
particularly fun to give because it was on my current work, and I was able to
present it to a fairly broad audience, including mentors and colleagues from
IJC, Michigan Sea Grant, and Michigan Tech.
This presentation was the culmination of the largest accomplishment
of the year for me: to go through the process of investigating a topic that can
be turned into advice to the governments of Canada and the U.S. Over the course of the year, I completed a
policy research project that examined what happens to the Great Lakes Areas of
Concern (AOC) after they have been delisted. Findings discussed how communities of delisted AOCs conduct
post-delisting monitoring, maintenance and community involvement activities, as
well as how these activities are funded. Recommendations made out of this work are directed to both communities
of currently listed AOCs and the governments of Canada and the U.S, and focus
on steps each can take to maintain improved conditions at delisted AOCs, and
how communities can keep environmental stewardship alive. In addition to the value of the research
findings to me and to the IJC, conducting this project was my first real
experience conducting social science research.
I produced an approximately 84-page
report that will be used by the
IJC to provide advice to the governments of Canada and the U.S., as well as AOC
communities whose sites are ready to be delisted. The report was recently posted on the IJC website. I also briefed the IJC
Commissioners on the report at the June 2016 Executive Meeting. The Commissioners were satisfied with my work
and recognized me for my service, which is a huge honor.
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| Me presenting my AOC Life After Delisting work to the Commissioners (L to R: Commissioners Glance, Morgan and Bouchard, and me) |
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| GLRO Director Trish Morris presenting me with a certificate recognizing my service to the IJC during my fellowship |
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| Me with Commissioners (L to R: Commissioners Dereth Glance, Richard Moy, U.S. Chair Lana Pollack, me, Canadian Chair Gordon Walker, Commissioners Benoit Bouchard and Richard Morgan) |
You’re still
reading? Thank you! The end is near….
Before I get to my final remarks, there are a couple of things I
want to mention. The first is that over
the course of this year, I completed my master’s degree in environmental
engineering from Michigan Tech. NOTE FOR
PROSPECTIVE FELLOWS: if you can avoid overlapping school with this fellowship,
do so. That being said, given the
content of my thesis,
my fellowship actually enhanced my work. I’m proud of the fact that I earned my degree this year, because of the
next thing that I want to mention…
…which is that through this fellowship, I was able to secure my next
position: next week, I will be joining the Northeast-Midwest Institute. I am very excited about this position because
I will be able to combine my technical background from my degree with the
policy advisory experience gained through this fellowship. I’m going to help develop advice to the U.S.
Congress!! I’m going to live in
Washington DC!! (Did I mention I’m very
excited?)
Overall, my year at the IJC has been a milestone career experience
for me. I came into this fellowship
wanting to figure out how to combine my interest in policy with my engineering
background and communication skills, and I got exactly what I wanted. I had the opportunity to work with extremely
accomplished people who are making a real difference in the world, and to learn
about how different pieces of the science-policy puzzle work together. I even got to participate in this process
with a large milestone project. I am
extremely honored and grateful that the International Joint Commission and
Michigan Sea Grant took a chance on me to be the first IJC- Sea Grant fellow.
Congratulations! You’ve
reached the end. Thanks for reading, and
if you’re looking at this fellowship next year, good luck!
Cheers,
Ankita
ajmandel@mtu.edu
