The West Coast ResilienSeas team is comprised of five Master’s students from the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Courtney Cochran, Kelly Ferron, Madison Harris, Rae Taylor-Burns and Courtney Thomas are specializing in Coastal and Marine Resource Management and are excited to work with the West Coast Ocean Data Portal on this project.
Courtney Cochran grew up in a military family and had the privilege to live in many parts of the country growing up. She completed a Bachelor of Science in Biology at Texas Christian University. Her thesis studied the concentrations of methylmercury in fish from the Gulf of Mexico. Her interest in marine ecological research also led to her complete an internship sponsored by the National Science Foundation at Rutgers University focusing on the impacts of fisheries on size of maturity for the common whelk. She is now pursuing a Masters in Environmental Science and Management at the Bren School at UCSB, focusing in Coastal and Marine Resource Management and Strategic Environmental Communication and Media.
Kelly Ferron is a Pacific Northwest native. She graduated with a bachelor of science in Environmental Science from Santa Clara University and since then she has worked in solid waste management in the Seattle area. Kelly has worked to pass local plastic bag bans, plan zero waste city initiatives, and foster education and outreach to incentivize recycling and composting programs. Her love for connecting people to nature, especially the ocean, led her to work as a naturalist for the Seattle Aquarium and as a Naturalist and Kayak guide in the San Juan Islands over her graduate school breaks. Kelly hopes to continue her career by working with coastal communities to help them mitigate and prepare for the impacts of climate change.
Courtney Thomas grew up in California’s Central Valley and developed a love for the ocean through family vacations and field trips to the central and southern coast. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Environmental Geosciences and Oceanography from Texas A&M University and then worked as a consultant in the Texas natural gas fields. She went on to perform water quality outreach around Arkansas’ second largest drinking water reservoir for a small nonprofit organization. While in this role, she also served on the board for the Arkansas Environmental Education Association. Courtney recently returned to California to obtain a Masters degree and further her passion for protecting marine resources.
Rae Taylor-Burns studied environmental engineering at Yale College, and she wrote her undergradaute thesis on erosion due to rising sea levels in the Cape Cod National Seashore. Since then she has explored various aspects of coastal resource management through a position at the National Seashore North Atlantic Marine Lab, a summer spent in the planning phase of an offshore wind farm, freelance writing for an environmental consulting company specializing in erosion mitigation, and an outreach position for a marine science non-profit organization in Massachusetts. After finishing her studies at Bren, she hopes to continue working with coastal communities and planners to adapt to changing conditions in an era of climate change.
Madison Harris grew up in Southern California, where her passion for marine biology and oceanography developed. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Science from USC. During her undergraduate career, she worked for the Aquarium of the Pacific and Heal the Bay, focusing on environmental education and policy. She is an AAUS Science Diver and has worked as a student researcher on Catalina Island and in Palau, Micronesia. She moved to Santa Barbara to pursue her Masters, focusing on Marine and Coastal Resources and Strategic Environmental Communication. At Bren, she is interested in learning more about Marine Spatial Planning and community engagement around environmental solutions.
Our SchoolThe Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UCSB has earned a reputation as one of the top schools of its kind in the nation. It is among a handful of schools in the United States — and the only one in the West — that integrate science, management, law, economics, and policy as part of an interdisciplinary approach to environmental problem-solving.
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Headline Photo Source: Island Packers
Bottom Photo Source: UCSB
Bottom Photo Source: UCSB