Background/Question/Methods Because of its complexity and scale, climate change is forcing conservationists to consider novel and creative ways for integrating new information and ideas into management.  Bringing together managers, students, and scientists creates a promising environment for finding solutions and for advancing training of new practitioners. Two major challenges in engaging students in ongoing conversations with researchers and managers are fiscal and logistical difficulties of regularly uniting participants. The Upper Midwest region of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is partnering with Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) to permit faculty, students and Service personnel to interact with guest speakers and each other in an exploration of impacts of climate change on fish and wildlife resources, with emphasis on the Midwest. IU students will meet in a distance-education classroom. Weekly guest speakers will remain at their home office, uploading their presentations to a server running data-collaboration software. Remote participants will access a URL to view the presentation, which will be controlled by the speaker or moderator. FWS personnel will have audio via a conference call supported by the Service which the IU classroom will contact at the start of each class. Following a guest lecture, the students and Service personnel will continue their discussion of the topic using the telephone link. Readings and supporting visual material will be available for viewing over the same data-collaboration software that ran the guest presentation.
Results/Conclusions By keeping all participants in their home locations, logistical complexities, economic, and carbon costs of the meeting will be minimized. So-called “webinars” already permit a guest speaker to make presentations and lead discussion over telephone and Internet. Our extension of that technology into the classroom will permit students and Service personnel to have meaningful and repeated discussions of a significant environmental problem. The FWS gains access to SPEA’s science and policy expertise, to broaden its perspective on conservation solutions to climate change. SPEA benefits through new partnerships and access for its students to the training and experience of Service personnel as well as to their understanding of how climate change is affecting practice and policy on the ground. Both groups will work together with guest speakers to identify information gaps important to practitioners and solutions that can be implemented with current information. An assessment of the Service’s new Strategic Habitat Conservation process will serve as a unifying thread through the topics of the seminar.