Yikes – haven’t posted for the last week and a half, now! Things have been busy in the best way, though, and this week has seen an explosion of interviews after a long period of time spent emailing and scheduling. In the last two days, alone, I’ve had conversations with seven different people.

Speaking with research personnel has been interesting because I’ve identified a sort of spectrum pertaining to their interests in outreach and engagement. At one end lie the researchers whose work could be called “hard science” that isn’t motivated by public interests and for which outreach and engagement activities don’t come as naturally. On the other end lie researchers whose work is inherently driven by societal relevance and lends itself readily to outreach and engagement work. Talking to people along that spectrum has been interesting in that they have very different experiences to speak to.

In my interactions with people, there continues to be a lot of discussion about terminology. Last week, someone introduced me to the importance of collaboration versus cooperation in research planning processes with the “general public”. Additionally, someone else outlined the differences between outcomes and impacts, related to the products of engagement activity. And, of course, everyone keeps asking me what I mean when I introduce my project as an “engaged research evaluation” because of the breadth of that terminology. Some of this doesn’t come naturally to me in the way I speak with people, but those that have focused their energies on these subtleties and differences in their own work have helped me work through some of them and, in the end, try to make myself more clear when interacting with people across the board.

After a long week, I’m looking forward to our Summer Scholars Mid-Summer Check-In tomorrow in Newport! And then I think the rest of my weekend will be occupied playing transcription-catch-up seeing as we’re almost halfway through the summer–whoa!

Finally, a quick note on Oregon life outside of work in the last week: I had the opportunity to go surfing for the first time and had a great day out at Otter Rock! I also met with the low tide at the end of the day and got to check out some of the marine gardens at that site. I was especially excited to see my first chiton, I don’t know that I ever saw any of those on the central California coast, growing up. It was a great day and I’m looking forward to future opportunities to explore the coast. The biologist in me has been missing some of that, but I’m armed with an identification guide for next time!