Patrick Shirey, a third-year graduate student in the Department of Biological Sciences and a fellow in Notre Dame’s interdisciplinary Global Linkages of Biology, the Environment, and Society (GLOBES) program, is one of three winners of the 2010 Graduate Student Policy Award from the Ecological Society of America (ESA).
Shirey, who also holds a law degree, studied the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow as a master’s student. His current doctoral research focuses on stream ecology and natural resources policy in Prof. Gary Lamberti’s stream ecology laboratory. Shirey and Lamberti recently published a policy paper in the February 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Conservation Letters, describing management options for relocating endangered species threatened by climate change. He also studies the fish community in Juday Creek on Notre Dame’s Warren Golf Course and the fish habitat history of the Namekagon River in northern Wisconsin. Shirey’s policy experience includes internships with Pennsylvania’s Bureau of Forestry, Bureau of State Parks, and Department of Environmental Protection in addition to participation in an array of policy and communications training workshops as a GLOBES fellow.
Shirey shares the 2010 Graduate Student Policy Award with two other students: Alexis Erwin of Cornell University and Colin Phifer of the University of Hawaii. All three will travel in April to Washington, D.C., where they will participate in two days of science policy activities, including meetings with congressional offices, briefings by policy leaders on federal funding issues, and meetings with other scientists from across the country.
Launched in 2005 by an IGERT (Integrated Graduate Education, Research, and Traineeship) grant from the National Science Foundation, GLOBES is a ground-breaking interdisciplinary Notre Dame Ph.D. program in which teams of student scholars, faculty, and researchers from throughout the University’s College of Science, College of Arts and Letters, and Law School work together to seek innovative solutions to interrelated problems of infectious disease, invasive species, and environmental degradation.
For more information on the GLOBES program, visit: http://globes.nd.edu.