Our Team
Sarah Inman
Sarah is a recent PhD graduate from the Human-Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington. During her dissertation research, she ethnographically studied how scientists instrument scale. Through her empirical engagement with three field sites, she developed a general language for working with scale in big data initiatives. This study was in the context of a 3-year project called the State of Alaska’s Salmon and People (SASAP). While working as the COASST Social Science specialist, Sarah received the Barclay Simpson Scholars in Public award to develop Coastal Stories, a project exploring how citizen scientists connect to place, and what kind of change they notice on their beaches.
Ben Haywood
Trained as an environmental geographer, Dr. Haywood's scholarship focuses on place attachment and sense of place, environmental education and learning, public engagement in science, and conservation behaviors. He currently serves as the Assistant Director of the Faculty Development Center at Furman University where he utilizes insight from the learning sciences to enhance teaching and learning practice. He first was awestruck by the pacific coast while conducting research in 2012 and has collaborated with COASST since that time. This coastal stories project first emerged from a desire to contextualize research outcomes on place attachment and learning in citizen science in an approachable, relatable, and visually engaging format.
Julia Parrish
Julia started COASST in 1998, after spending years discovering dead birds on beaches along the outer coast of Washington state. Currently the COASST Executive Director, she has received a NOAA Environmental Hero award, a Champions of Change award from The White House, and a partner of the year award from the Alaska U.S. Fish and Wildlife office, for her work on COASST. When not in the classroom at the University of Washington, Julia works with coastal residents, COASST staff, and scientific collaborators across the world to keep the pulse of the nearshore marine ecosystem in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, and translate local findings - dead birds and marine debris on the beach - to cutting edge science and resource management.
COASST (Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team)
COASST is a 20-year old citizen science organization led by Julia Parrish.
COASST is focused on curating a long-term data set on bird mortality up the Pacific Coast of North America. Through dedicated volunteers, a highly detailed field guide, and hands-on training, the program boasts one of the longest-term data on dead birds.
National Science Foundation (NSF)
The NSF funded the academic portion of this work through the Advancing Informal Science Learning (AISL) grant. This project was funded to build off of Julia Parrish and Ben Haywood’s prior research looking at how place attachment influences participation. In this project, we looked at the development of critical thinking skills and its intersection with attachment to place.
Simpson Center for the Humanities
The Simpson Center supported this project, particularly the public outreach aspects of the project. This support was through the Barclay Simpson Scholars in Public award, which facilitated the design and development of the audio and visual portions of this work. This award also provided the opportunity to collaborate with a community of scholars also working on public scholarship. This work was also supported by the University of Washington’s Office of the Provost.