Community-Engaged Fellowship spotlight: Deagen Carey

Deagen Carey, a recent graduate with a degree in environmental science from the University of Portland, returned to her home town of Anchorage this summer. She looked at how environmental changes are impacting coastal communities in Kachemak Bay and Lynn Canal in Southeast Alaska.

Carey is a Community-Engaged Fellow, working under the mentorship of Alaska Sea Grant’s coastal community resilience specialist, anthropologist Davin Holen. Their work is a part of a National Science Foundation-funded EPSCOR project, Interface of Change. 

Carey’s role on the project’s human dimensions team was to develop a protocol for upcoming community workshops, where participants will share what they are observing in their communities, including observed changes, gaps in resources that aid in adaptation strategies, and identified causes of change.

“My passion is environmental conservation and community engagement,” Carey said. “I believe that research is strengthened when community members contribute, whether it is being an additional hand in the field, providing traditional and local knowledge, or helping with the development of research questions.”

Insights from the workshops will be used to create Socio-Ecological System (SES) models for how society interacts with ecological systems and how changes in one can impact the other. The goal is to make the results available to communities to inform future adaptation strategies to changes in the environment.

“This was a special opportunity for me because my long-term career goal is to research the effects of sea level rise on socio-ecological systems in Alaskan communities,” Carey said. 

Carey was able to experience coastal communities first-hand during visits to Klukwan and Haines. Through the fellowship, she said she has learned a lot about herself and even more about a region of Alaska that she knew little about before this summer experience. 

“Being part of a research project that worked with community members shifted how I look at a future in research,” Carey said. “I now see that it is possible to work on pressing issues, such as riverbank erosion or landslide risk, and to integrate social and natural sciences to engage communities directly and serve community needs.”