Smith Fellows Spring Retreat Lawrence/Kansas City, Kansas

The Kansas City/Lawrence, Kansas retreat was a great success. It was co-hosted by 2023 Fellow Caroline Kisielinski, who will soon be wrapping up their Smith Fellowship at Kansas University in Lawrence. Caroline provided a lot of insight into the history of Kansas and the unique dimensions of practicing conservation in this region. This was the first retreat for most of the 2025 Cohort, and they received a warm welcome from their peers! We also celebrated the outgoing 2023 Cohort with a recognition ceremony on Tuesday evening at dinner.

We started out the week in Lawrence, Kansas, and had a blast exploring the midwest college town. Smith Alumni Ben Sikes, who splits his time between the KU Field Station and teaching at KU, participated in much of the retreat with us, and provided a tour of the field station and medicinal plant garden on Monday afternoon. On Tuesday morning, we met up with the Kansas Land Trust staff at one of their conserved prairie properties, and got to learn about the ecology of prairies and witness a healthy prairie ecosystem in action. It was a beautiful day! On Wednesday, we hosted a Nonprofit Fundraising workshop, which included some active practice sessions to support the Fellows in seeking funding sources for their work beyond federal grants. On Thursday, Fellows Meixi Lin, Cinnamon Mittan-Moreau, and Caroline Kisielinski provided an overview of conservation genetics/genomics, before we headed over to the Ancient DNA lab at KU for a tour by Caroline and colleagues.

We then headed over to Kansas City, where we met up with Debra Moniz of the Cedar Tree Foundation and Smith Alumni Morgan Tingley and Clare Aslan, who flew in for the program advisory board meeting. We heard an overview of ways to get involved with SCB from the staff over Zoom, had a conversation about biodiversity treaties led by Diego Ellis Soto and Nicole Crane, and then had an impromptu career/job negotiation conversation between Morgan, Clare, and Ben. Many of the Fellows reflected that this was one of the most valuable conversations on this topic that they had ever heard! Friday the Smith team gathered for a hybrid program advisory board meeting, while the Fellows self-organized to explore Kansas City and collaborate on group projects.