Karen Schlatter, Water Center Director Interview Recording

March 3, 2025

10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. MST

Announcer: Hello. Thank you all for being here online and in-person. We’re here to listen to the presentation of Karen Schlatter, who is our other candidate for the Director of the Colorado Water Center. Before we start, I want to check and ask the people online if they can hear us okay. I just need a thumbs up or something. Okay, we’re good. We had a hiccup last time, and so I just wanted to check. And with that, I’m going to let Karen pretty much introduce herself, and welcome.
Karen Schlatter: Thank you. All right, well, thank you everyone for being here. Thanks to the folks online. My name is Karen Schlatter. I’m the Interim Director of the Colorado Water Center and very excited to have the opportunity and the privilege to be considered as a candidate for the Director of the Colorado Water Center. I’m excited to share my future vision of the Colorado Water Center with you all. First, I just want to say again, thanks to our past leaders. I see one of them in the room today. Our staff, OEE, our search committee, and the CSU water community and our external partners for participating in the search. It’s a lot of time and effort, and I do truly appreciate your contributions to shaping the vision of the Colorado Water Center. So I’m going to start off with, what are our challenges for water in the west and in Colorado specifically, and how would I go about approaching those? And that’s going to link directly to my vision for advancing leadership in water research, education, and outreach through the water center. And then if I have time, which there might not be much time, but I’d like to share just a little bit about my background and what I would bring to the position. So, challenges for water in the west. This first one comes as no surprise. I’m framing it as varying levels of preparedness for a more water-scarce future. This is both in Colorado, the west, globally as well. So with increasing temperatures, increasing aridification of water in the west, changing hydrologic patterns, are we prepared for that reality? I would say in many cases, we are not quite prepared for that reality. And we need to be thinking about impacts to water quality. Think about salinity on the South Platte River Basin. Thinking about really, truly, what is the future of agriculture in Colorado and how are we shaping that future? If we continue to have transfers of water rights from agriculture to municipalities, what are the economic impacts of that? And then, this is all tied together, this is all related. The cost of water and impacts to our economies. When we have increasing competition for water in Colorado and the west, how are we dealing with that? And how is that impacting our economies? And then, making sure we have an appropriate allocation of water that’s matching our societal values, which are constantly changing. Secondly, the second challenge, and I’ve got three of them. So number two is increasing siloization and polarization. We are in an environment where there are incentives to defend your own perspectives and your self-interests. And institutions are siloed. There’s barriers to interdisciplinary work, cross-boundary work. There’s information, disinformation. And as we all know, scarce resources such as water can lead to conflict. And so how can we break down those silos and break down that misinformation, particularly when it comes to water? Then lastly, the last challenge I’ll share is the Silver Tsunami in the water workforce. So, you can see in this graph here on the left, we’ve got fewer and fewer youth coming into water occupations. So the blue bar is the water occupations, the gray bar is all occupations nationally. And we’ve got higher level, higher percentages of older folks in the water workforce. And as we get those retirements, we’re seeing a lack of water education in our youth, a lack of awareness of water careers, and then a gap in student education and skills versus what the workforce really needs. And so this is critical. We need a robust workforce that’s driving innovation in water management and policy that’s meeting those urgent infrastructure and other needs in our state, and in the west, and in the nation. I’ve heard this already today, so water is life. This is a problem that is not going to go away. We do not have silver-bullet solutions. This requires collaborative, ongoing stakeholder engagement and management. And this is not just Colorado, the west, it’s the US and the globe. These problems are complex. They’re multi-faceted. There’s many stakeholders involved. Water, I mean, everyone is a stakeholder on the entire planet, and the environment, and our economy. So how do we bring in diverse perspectives, bring people along in helping to solve these problems? So our mandate is to drive innovative, interdisciplinary research, foster community engagement and collaboration, and really train the next generation of water leaders to address these issues. Which brings me to my vision for the Colorado Water Center. So under my vision, we would serve as the preeminent institution for engaged, interdisciplinary water scholarship and education in the nation. And Jessica and I were just in DC last week, meeting with other water resources, research institutes, as part of an annual meeting. And just listening to the experience of those institutes and sharing across, we have a real strength in Colorado, where we do have strong stakeholders that are engaging in water conversations already. There’s already a lot of these platforms here. The water center’s job is to drive innovation and work with those platforms, build new ones, and really listen to the needs of our stakeholders in the state and the west. And we are a critical connection between water science, education, policy and practice. We must span disciplines, campuses, and geographies. And we’re looking to elevate the work of CSU faculty, extension, staff, and our external partners. So we cannot do this work in isolation. We must partner to increase and multiply our impact, because if we work in isolation, we’re not going to get very much done. And part of that is really building on the past work of the Colorado Water Center as well. There’s a lot of great work that has been done. Let’s learn from that and build into the future. So I’m going to center my talking about the vision with engagement. Engagement is the centerpiece of the Colorado Water Center. We are at a land grant university where community engagement is first and foremost. We are here to serve the needs of our communities. We’re housed under the Office of Engagement and Extension. We’re also the state’s designated Water Resources Research Institute, which again, gives us that statewide mission of water education, research, and outreach. If that weren’t enough, we also have a legislative statute that directs our mission to fulfill water education and research and outreach needs in the state. And for those of you who have read that bill, it’s pretty explicit about what we are required to do in terms of engagement with stakeholders. But what it does not tell us what to do is the how. So how do we do engagement? And to me, this is the most critical piece of work that the Colorado Water Center can bring to the discussion. So engagement has to be seeped into our very being of the water center. We must build programs, processes, staff talent that are designed to engage diverse water user groups across the state. We must listen to understand. So we’re not listening to transact, we’re listening to understand needs and issues and ideas and values, and represent those in other conversations that we’re having across the state. And we can’t just listen, because if we just listen and we don’t do anything, not very effective at the work that we’re doing. So we have to translate those needs into action. And that is a difficult process. So we need trained staff to be able to do this, and partners that are doing this work as well. So we’re taking our stakeholders along in a process of co-design and co-development of research, tools, information, education. In addition, when we’re doing that process, we get stakeholder buy-in on the process, the data, the results, and the solutions. So we’re not just coming top-down and saying, hey, here’s this information, good luck trying to figure it out. We’re taking them all the way along and we’re saying we’re developing collaborative solutions along with them. That will increase our applicability and impact of our work. And in addition, we’re building these long-term relationships and trust. So this is not one project. This is an ongoing management of water resources in our state and the west. And so the long-term relationships that we build are critical. In addition, the Colorado Water Center really serves as that bridge organization between the water user groups in our state and research and education and higher education institutions. So I’m going to just talk through some of the key priorities that I see falling under this and then I’ll get into some more specifics for engagement, research and outreach under the vision. So how do we increase our impact through engaged water scholarship? I believe we can’t necessarily just do this with Colorado Water Center staff. I think we need to build in training and education to extension and also faculty so that they become excellent at engaged water scholarship and some of them already are. And so, you know, highlighting those success stories but also providing support and training for those who are interested in taking on this work. That’s not just a one-way street. We need a two-way street so that as a water center, we’re offering up a process by which faculty can then easily connect to stakeholders and serve those research needs and providing the support that they need along the way in those relationships. We need to increase water literacy for all ages in Colorado, build partnerships and collaborations to scale up our work and successful initiatives to increase impact. This is a big one, is just getting the word out about the work that we’re doing. We need to increase the visibility of the Colorado Water Center and our faculty and extension that are doing water-related work. And then very importantly at this time is to strengthen and diversify our funding portfolio for resiliency of the water center in the future. So now I’m going to get more into the weeds on how exactly we do this. What are some activities or programs that we’re gonna be implementing to really get this work done. So I’m starting with engagement and then I’ll go to research and then I’ll go to education. Engagement starts, I think internally. So we need to be focusing in on partnerships at CSU and I’ve listed a few key ones here, but whenever you put a bunch of things on a page, then you’re obviously leaving others out, but in general, just building relationships with centers and departments and colleges at CSU, I also threw in maybe some not so obvious ones. So the Center for Public Deliberation does great work in facilitation training and stakeholder engagement. I think we can be partnering with them on that. And then the Center for Science Communication, let’s partner with them to get some students, which we’re already doing, employed at the Colorado Water Center. Let’s look at other campuses and leverage those resources as well. They’re doing some really good work at the Sturm Collaboration campus on kind of the pipeline program development, and then CSU global partnerships as well. How do we engage with all of these groups? Well, first and foremost, faculty advisory committee. When you think about trying to keep up to date with all of the things that are going on in water across the campus and across CSU, the most efficient way to do that is to have a faculty advisory committee where you’re sharing what’s going on with the water center, you’re sharing what’s going on in all of these departments and colleges, and you’re also collaboratively brainstorming on potential research that needs to be done, helping to inform activities or events. In addition, engagement on the Office of Engagement Leadership team will be important. So this is comprised of CSU Online, Extension, 4-H and other leaders in OEE. And so, participating in those conversations so that the water center’s strategy is in line with OEE’s strategy, which is in line with CSU’s strategy and we’re building on our work collaboratively. Also hosting some opportunities for casual engagement and relationship building. So having things like an open house, which I had last October for CSU faculty and students, and making sure we’re building relationships in addition to listening to needs. Then we need to have an effective listserv. So we have a water faculty listserv, but making sure that’s open to anyone who wants to participate and making sure we’re getting our information out to the right groups. In addition, let’s create some events that are featuring CSU water research and extension, and I’ll talk a little bit about one of those opportunities in a second. Participating in the OEE forum. So bringing kind of water education and training to OEE during an event in which all of extension comes to Fort Collins is a great way to do that. Then looking for partnerships in terms of student employment and training opportunities, having more regular interactions with deans, department heads and centers that are involved in water. I have a whole page for Spur because there’s so much that we should be doing here. And really what it comes down to is just better defining and formalizing this partnership to maximize the impact of our shared mission areas, which are extensive. So first and foremost is water education for the public. Break that down into other components. So youth education, workforce development. They now are going to be offering a one-year program at Spur where students can start their first year at Spur and then transition into CSU. Can we get some water coursework in that first year programming? Continuing to collaborate with water in the west, joint fundraising initiatives. Then there’s this idea that was developed by Reagan Waskom and others, external partners as well, to establish a Western Water Policy Institute at Spur. Then COVID happened and everything got put on hold. But the ideas and kinda background information is there. This could be a really important opportunity. I think the need for this is pretty great. And when we look at our water policy expertise at CSU, it’s an area where we could really build upon. So this would potentially distinguish CSU as the leading water policy institute in the west. I think there’s, you know, we have to kind of gather and review this existing information, see if we are going to move forward with it, then get the appropriate partners and develop an action plan and fundraising strategy because that is going to be key to having this be a successful institute. So exciting things there. In addition, so how are we engaging with our external partners? And I could just basically call external partners everyone in Colorado. So this is Colorado communities, water user groups, management agencies, research institutions, et cetera. I call out our specific higher education water centers and K through 12 partners as well. And how do we engage these external partners and do so effectively? First of all, it’s through our staff. Everyone is an ambassador for the Colorado Water Center and for water. And so having folks participating in conferences, participating in all of our critical mission areas is key. And that’s how we get a lot of that engagement done. Our water resource specialists, so Perry and Joel, in making sure we’ve got adequate number of folks and adequate representation of those water resource specialists across the state and giving them support that they need to do their work. And then as I mentioned previously, let’s integrate extension into this picture. And so now we have extension offices in every single county that have water education resources that they can provide to their communities as well. And maybe they have some water education programming that they can deliver to their communities. So a lot of potential there. In addition, our external advisory committee is critical to this engagement process. We’ve got representatives from a variety of sectors and geographies across the state. So having a truly functional advisory committee is key and having them, you know, hearing from them to help guide our research priorities and direction of our programs is important. Then continuing to meet every semester, this is something we started a year or two ago. Meeting with our higher education partners across the state and looking for collaboration opportunities. Just hearing what other people are doing and sharing that out, making sure students are aware of all the opportunities that exist in the state. We’re already collaborating with folks on some water education and workforce development initiatives. I think there’s potential for research collaborations as well. And then bringing people together for water-related events and Norm Evans Lecture Series, symposium, summit. One of the things I’ve been working on is trying to put together an Ag Water Summit because we’ve been hearing that people don’t know what CSU is doing in that space and we need to get the word out and be engaging more with producers and others in the region. So making sure we’re ear to the ground and we know the needs and we’re hosting those forums for discussion and then participating in other conferences and events. Participating in roundtables, the Basin Roundtables are a great place just to listen and hear what’s going on across the state, hear what the needs are, participating in workshops, tabling, basically just showing up and being present and listening to the needs of our water users in the state. And if we can facilitate field trip opportunities as well, that’s a good way to get people really engaged on what’s happening on the ground. Okay, I’m going to transition now into research. And I’ll just first mention our research support programs. These are grants that we currently administer. We’ve got three of them. They’re all geared towards primarily research, but also extension and education. So the first is our internal competitive grant program. The second is funded through our USGS 104 Program. There’s a variety of those involved. And then the third is our Colorado Water Conservation Board. It’s a research seed grant program. And the reason I bring these up is more just to highlight, this is an opportunity where we take those stakeholder needs and then we reflect them back into these RFPs as research priorities. And so, you know, the more we’re interacting with stakeholders, the more we can then drive research that’s going to meet those needs. How do we do engaged interdisciplinary research? And this gets at the second challenge that I mentioned, I think, which was how are we breaking down silos? How are we breaking down those polarized conversations? So it can be hard in a university setting, especially where departments are particularly siloed and there’s not a lot of incentives for faculty to go beyond their disciplines. How do we foster that? So one of the things I started this spring is to hold a lightning talk series where we’re gathering together research and extension, staff on key water topics that they’ve identified themselves. So, we just held our first one back in February and it was on water governance and environmental impacts, climate variability. And it’s great because we’re not only kind of sharing their research out to the broader CSU community and to external participants as well, but we’re bringing this group of faculty and staff together and extension together to learn about what they’re doing and form those interdisciplinary partnerships and then say, hey, I know who I can partner with on this project for climate change related information. So that’s been really exciting and I think we’re going to continue that for as long as we see a need there. In addition, I’d like to hold some collaboratory events to build relationships and interdisciplinary teams. This is kind of a similar thing where we have water-related themes. Folks can select which theme they come to, they talk about their research that’s related to that and we build some interdisciplinary partnerships there. And then thirdly, I’ll mention, I’d like to establish kind of an award program where we’re recognizing excellence in interdisciplinary water research, extension and education. This would be both to distinguished and early career faculty. There’s multiple other research partnerships and opportunities out there. I’ll just mention a few of these because I’m going to run short on time. There’s great work being done in the TAPS program, Irrigation Innovation Consortium, Master Irrigator. How can we promote and support that work across the state and across the west? Because a lot of those programs are being picked up and really expanded throughout, actually, the whole nation. This other opportunity that I’ll mention is the National Center for Ecologically Sustainable Water Conservation and Management. This is in the proposal development phase, but it’s an interdisciplinary, essentially training and research center. We would be an affiliate of and bring together faculty to deliver training and do research on instream flows and water-level conservation, which we have a very strong grounding in at CSU and some of the research was started here. Other partnerships with our water resources networks and then looking internationally, you know, what can we do with water professionals in universities internationally and is there an appetite for that here at CSU? I’ll just mention a few specific research opportunities or research needs I see as critical and this relates back to my challenge number one. We need to really dive a little bit deeper on these ag to municipal water transfers and get some more alternative water policy approaches out there. If we continue to kind of things go as they are, what will be the future of irrigated agriculture in Colorado and what is the impact to our economies? Additionally, kind of the impacts of the cost of water on housing affordability, policy implications of that, how that affects Colorado’s growth. I’d love to see an evaluation of the municipal and agricultural just kind of planning efforts around what happens in multi-year droughts, what is being used currently to plan for drought scenarios in the future and look at kind of the standardization across municipalities and agricultural water users. Are there best practices that we can share out with that? Because it seems in what I’ve experienced, it seems highly variable and there’s not really a standard for doing this work. And so when the next multi-year drought comes, because it will come, are we truly prepared for that? Can we support better integration of climate data into utilities supply and demand forecasting? And for small utilities who may not have resources to do this work, can we share methods and share modeling or at least share some simplified versions of that to help them get on the right track for preparing for a more arid future? And then projected economic impacts of declining water quality in the South Platte River Basin in terms of salinity increases and mitigation scenarios. So I think there’s a lot of research opportunities there. Okay, transitioning now into education and I’m going to go rather quickly. So we have a lot of great educational programs that we already have in place. Our Interdisciplinary Water Resources Graduate seminar, Water Sustainability in the Western US. What can we do to increase student enrollment in these? And also, what can we do to build online platforms and make these more accessible to both students and professionals? We have a lot of interest in our Grad 592 class from professionals and they want to receive a professional development, you know, some sort of recognition for that. And we don’t have anything right now. So work on that. Our Water Fellows program has been very successful. We’ve gone from 8 to 20 at CSU Water Fellow students and now we’ve expanded to five other institutions in the state of Colorado. The next step for that is really thinking about how is this program sustained over time and sustained with funding over time. And I think we’ll be working on that in the coming year or so, but really great work being done there. And this program really does need to be highlighted and expanded not just within Colorado, but other states in the nation. We got a lot of interest actually at the National Institutes of Water Resources for other universities adopting this model. In addition, our Sustainable Water Interdisciplinary Minor, this is a very successful minor and we have students enrolled in this continually. I think it needs a little bit of a revision and update perhaps in its curriculum. So we’ll be working with SOGES, our partner on that in the coming months to assess what needs to be done. And then in terms of our Water Literate Leaders program, this is a program that provides water education to community leaders in northern Colorado. We’ve heard from other regions in the state that they want this. And so, how can we build this, expand it to other regions? How can we also include some online programming to make sure this is more accessible to people? New programs that I’ve developed and others have developed under my leadership. So Colorado Project WET, we are now the host institution for this K through 12 water education programming, which is very exciting, but it is a big lift. And so, we need to be developing partnerships with extension, particularly 4-H and water agencies to effectively implement this program and make sure we’ve got again, the sustainable funding model to support this in longevity. We developed the annual Water Workforce Career Fair. So this is connecting students, specifically to job opportunities in water employers and internship opportunities, which we just held our second one a couple weeks ago. And it’s spur, very successful, very exciting day that day. And then we’re having this Water Workforce Summit every other year. The first was last April in order to really better understand the needs and gaps around water workforce. So bringing together educators, students and industry to have that conversation. And after we had that summit, again, it’s about listening and then translating to action. So we’ve taken away from that a lot of actionable steps that we’re working on right now, and then we’re going to work on those and we’ll come back again next year. We’ll have that conversation, see where things are at, what more needs to be done, and it’s this iterative process. In addition, partnering with our local and state agencies to implement water education. So an example is the Larimer County Water Education Series that I co-organized in fall of 2023 for the general public. And then I’m participating in this Sonoran Institute’s Growing Water Smart program as a facilitator. This is a great program that focuses on, it brings community leaders together who typically are not in the same room. They come together to develop an action plan for better integrated water and land use planning, which is critical for Colorado communities, particularly, along the front range as we continue to grow. So helping to facilitate that program has been really enjoyable. What’s coming down the line for education? I’ve got a lot of stuff here, I’m going to click them all and probably not talk about all of them, but one of those action items that came out of the Water Summit was this Online Water Education Resources Hub. So we’ve got a one-stop shop for kind of our educational resources from K through 12 all the way up to higher education, all the way up to, you know, job opportunities, internships, contacts, different kind of pathways for water careers. So that is in development. We’re working on securing funding for that and very excited to see that kind of getting it off the ground. In addition, kind of hosting different web… Oops, webinars and training opportunities both for employers and students, highlighting students, creating networking events for students. So partnering with Colorado Water Congress, I’ve been in conversation with some folks from OWSI, actually about having a reception with Water Congress at the Hydrology Days this year and providing students that networking opportunity. But then where are other ways we can feature student research and encourage those networking events? There’s been talk of a shared water curriculum or certificate program with other higher education institutions in Colorado, that needs to be explored more, but could be a great opportunity for CSU. I already mentioned the national center and I’ll just say with that opportunity, there’s potential to develop kind of these professional development courses and certificates and that can be for credit or not for credit, but we’re reaching a different audience of water professionals. And then the Spur campus through Western Water Policy Institute, there’s an opportunity for a Master of Water Policy degree program. Again, this would be kind of evaluated to see if that need is still there, but in partnership with SOGES, that would be hosted. And then are there potential for other courses with SOGES such as the climate and water management. Other professional development opportunities, I think I mentioned most of these. And then including partnership building to increase our impact. So working with extension, working with all of these partners to leverage and scale up what folks are already doing on the ground, but to scale up those opportunities and make them more accessible. Okay, so another key part of this is increased visibility and impact and how do we do that work? Again, if no one knows what we’re doing, it’s hard to really build momentum on what we’re doing and it’s hard to engage with all the folks that we need to be engaged with. So it’s our 60th anniversary this year, which is pretty cool. I’d like to host an event in the fall potentially, to really celebrate what we’ve done and where we’re going in the future and partner with a lot of the folks that have been long-term partners, bring in our new partners and have this be kind of a 60th celebration for the water center. Additionally, I’ve been talking with quite a few people about this idea of an Ag Water Summit. The idea is to really bring together the research, extension and water professionals and producers to have a conversation about the latest in agricultural water management. And I’ve been talking with the Colorado Ag Water Alliance. We will likely partner on this event sometime later this year and hopefully, really feature kind of the CSU research and extension work and get that word out more to these audiences. In addition, just to be present and collaborate on conferences and events, listen and dialogue, but also bring conversations together. So making sure if we’re hearing needs, we’re hearing kind of the conflicts on the ground, let’s convene conversations and start those dialogues that then can turn into actionable research or education, or outreach, whatever that may be, but making sure we’re involved in those efforts. We’re going to be launching a new website, thanks to OEE, Marketing and Communications in April 2025. I’m very hopeful about this website and hoping it will really streamline the information and access to information and our resources that we have. So that’s very exciting. I started to bring back our E-newsletter, gonna get it back to monthly, right now, where maybe every two or three months. But this is a great way to reach all across the state and share the latest updates, promote our partners work as well and promote what’s going on at CSU. I’d like to bring back a digital version at least of Colorado Water to share out the research that we’re doing. So, I’ve heard from a lot of folks, you know, this is an important way to really condense the research findings around water that’s going on at CSU and share that out with our stakeholders. There’s not a great way otherwise to do that other than presentations at conferences or something, which would be a lot of presentations at conferences. So this is a really concise way to do that and make sure that research is getting out to the people that are with the research needs. In addition, we need to do a great job and we are currently with active targeted outreach through our social media campaigns and make sure we’re reaching different audiences through these channels. Lastly, just ensuring we have an active and updated list of water-related research and faculty that we can point stakeholders to and say, hey, connect with these people on these topics and then vice versa for researchers, we can direct them to key stakeholders on certain issues. How do we accomplish this work within the Colorado Water Center? So general structure, our primary focus areas, that’s what they are currently. I don’t think these would change substantially. We’re always gonna focus on ag water management because it’s so critical to our state and to the west and it’s such a big piece of the water conversation. Water quality and access. This is an issue where we continue to have stakeholder engagement on this, whether it’s South Platte salinity, mobile home park water quality, private well water quality issues and making sure we have access to clean water and those water quality issues aren’t going to be impacting, you know, agricultural production, for example. Then obviously, water education and workforce development, that’s a big one, not going away. Who are the folks that we need to get this work done? I’m just going to kind of list the specialists that we might need. So we need our extension water resource specialists. These are folks that are on the ground doing research and extension and really, a huge resource in different parts of the state. These are trusted folks. They’re part of the community and we need more of them, period. So we’ve got Perry in Grand Valley, Joel in Eastern Plains. We need a position in Lower Arc, like to get one in San Luis Valley and see where that goes. And then research scientists. I think as we continue to engage more stakeholders and direct stakeholder needs to our researchers and collaborators, we’re going to need folks within our staff that are knowledgeable of research and can help to coordinate and fulfill some of those needs as well. Stakeholder engagement specialists. People who are trained in facilitation, who are trained in co-development processes, education and workforce specialists, and then administrative and communication specialists. And there’s a whole host of other things too. But these are the ones that I have listed. And I’m going to stop with the vision there and hopefully have like a few minutes just to share a little bit about my background and how this informs my approach to leadership, how it would inform kind of what I would bring to this position. So I grew up on a farm in Central Illinois. My dad is still a farmer. He is a corn and soybean farmer. And I left the farm when I was 18 and went to McGill University, which is in Montreal, Canada, which is very different from rural Illinois. I was very interested in the natural sciences and I got an undergraduate in biology. I did some research experience for undergraduate students and I was at the Savannah River Ecology Lab and kind of got a taste of field work and stuff. And then I decided I wanted to go into the Peace Corps. And I went into the Peace Corps, I was an agriculture extension volunteer in Paraguay and lived in a rural community, which is where these pictures are from. I had a demonstration plot, this was my plot and I grew that corn by hand, which I think, you know, I probably should just be hired for that, you know? I’m just kidding. But it was such a unique experience and really kicked off that engagement and you know, experiential learning and adult education aspect that’s been so important in my career. I did soil health initiatives and soil conservation. I also worked a lot with… That was my pig, I had a pig. I also worked a lot with youth and trying to break down barriers to secondary education for youth in our community which was very isolated and remote. And also did some other stuff with river bank restoration and kind of clean water access stuff. But overall, you know, this was a very formative experience for me and kind of set the stage for me wanting to serve communities in whatever form that may be. Phase two. After the Peace Corps, I eventually ended up moving to Tucson, Arizona and I started working for a non-profit organization called Sonoran Institute which headquarters is based in Tucson. I started working in the Colorado River Delta program as an program associate, you know, entry level. I eventually worked my way up to be associate director of Water and Ecosystem Restoration for Sonoran Institute and over that time, really built our restoration and monitoring program from scratch. So started off with like three people in the whole program and I hired and retained, directly supervised seven very technical staff and then we had a full team of 30 that I was over overseeing to do restoration and monitoring on the ground in Mexico along the Colorado River. There were some really great experiences with that. I learned a lot. In the meantime, I also got my Master’s degree at University of Colorado Boulder and did a lot of traveling back and forth focused on kind of the ecohydrological relationships between riparian vegetation establishment and what does that look like in terms of groundwater when you don’t have an actual flood event, you have more of a trickling of water event in the Colorado River Delta. So, I got to be involved in the pulse flow release, environmental flow release in the Delta. Did a lot of binational water management, kind of partnership building. And then also co-led the Minute 319 and Minute 23 science teams in partnership with University of Arizona and the Nature Conservancy. So, was really fun work, I do miss that team. It was such a great team and learned a lot through that experience. Phase three took me to Florida. So big transition. I started working at the University of Florida Water Institute and immediately became enrolled in. I was selected for the Natural Resources Leadership Institute at University of Florida and this was a 9-month long program where you basically travel around the state, learn about natural resource issues which were mostly about water, engage directly with stakeholders, all while building leadership skills, facilitation, conflict resolution and negotiation. So this was a very informative program for me and that’s where I’ve been doing a lot of stakeholder engagement previously, but this really gave me the tools and training that I needed to take it to the next level. At University of Florida, I worked with huge interdisciplinary water-related projects, some involving kind of water quality, quantity issues of the Floridan aquifer, so working to help implement best management practices in agriculture and forestry and a whole lot of other good stuff. Mostly, great people to work with. Had a really great experience there. Which brings me to the Colorado Water Center at CSU where I started as associate director in January 2023 and became interim last August. I’m very excited to be back in Colorado. I lived here for five years when I was doing my master’s and got a sense of the breadth and depth of water issues in the state during that time. But what I would bring to this position and throughout my experience is excellence, accountability and transparency which I would bring to leading my team as well, strategic and thoughtful leadership. So thinking about how we can integrate ourselves in OEE at CSU with our partners so we’re not just duplicating work. I have experience leading large interdisciplinary teams in water-related research. Lot of fundraising and revenue generating success in all kinds of diverse means to do that. Having worked for a nonprofit, that’s basically your whole job is doing that and then success in building and sustaining effective teams. I do feel confident in my ability to work and build partnerships with diverse individuals and groups represented across the state. And then I bring kind of the science background, but also have that broader kind of stakeholder engagement experience and kind of that interdisciplinary work, as well as touching and education and outreach. So, I’ll stop there and I’ll just thank you all for your attention and time today. Thanks to all who have contributed to me being here today and I’m happy to take any questions. Thank you.
Announcer: Questions?
Audience member 1: Thank you. Well, it’s a great comprehensive vision, Karen, and it covers a lot of ground. And what I’m wondering is, there’s not very many staff members, central staff members in the institute or the center and the vision is really broad. There’s going to need to be some kind of a restructuring or something. I mean, it’s great to work with all these extension people and all that, but everybody else, everybody’s got another job, you know? And so how do you envision restructuring or staffing up or you know, getting the kind of capability among the staff to do all these things that you have put forward?
Karen Schlatter: Yeah, that’s a great question. And obviously, you know, a lot of this comes down to just having the funding and the resources to do that, which there’s multiple opportunities here which we need to pursue and we’re starting to pursue. The first of which for particularly around our educational programming. We need to be partnering and leveraging those partnerships to have a sustainable funding source for Project WET, K through 12 Water Education for Water literate leaders. So can we get municipalities, water providers, folks who have a stake in educating our public to put in money that’s going to be a sustainable funding source, maybe create some sort of campaign where we’re getting match amount so that we create an endowment and that is funded in perpetuity for particularly, I mean, water education, it’s just something that we need to have a sustainable funding source forever. And it’s harder to get grant dollars for water education. When it comes to building out staff, particularly for research scientists. I see that being funded through grant opportunities and I think there’s partnership opportunities we should look to for that as well. Can we share a research scientist with another center with the Ag Water Quality Program or et cetera? Are there innovative ways we can think about doing that where we’re leveraging resources. Then additionally, making sure we’re bringing in funding from private donors and building relationships. There’s a lot of folks in water who feel very passionately about water and they want to see that legacy kind of continue. And so, can we build those relationships and build out our private funding ability? And then in terms of creating capacity kind of within, there’s a lot of potential to train and educate folks to do some of this work and get funding to support that. And so, one of the things I was talking about at one of these meetings was thinking about, like can we go together in a multi-state grant with some of our National Institutes of Water Resources partners to do water education and training for extension and give them the financial support that they need to be able to do that and other resources that they might need to do that. And similarly for faculty, like what do they need to take that on? Because I know especially for early career faculty, adding more things to people’s plates is very challenging unless you can kind of incentivize that. So yeah, these are some things that I’m thinking about.
Announcer: Any other questions? Apparently we have some online questions.
Audience member 2: Karen, what is your vision to collaborate with other similar institutes and other states like Utah Water Research Laboratory, New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute, Oklahoma-Texas Water Science Center, et cetera?
Karen Schlatter: Yeah, so we have regular communications with these groups. I’m actually, I’m on the board of the National Institutes of Water Resources and represent the Powell Consortium, which is basically, the Colorado River Basin plus Texas. And so that’s an area where we have regular interactions. We’re regularly talking about research priorities. I don’t see it as a stretch for a next step to develop a multi-institution grant to pursue some of those. One of the latest topics we’ve been focusing on is just groundwater and the range in which groundwater policy is exists in these states is vast and kind of the implications for groundwater management due to those differences. And then thinking about, you know, what are best practices, what are lessons learned, how can we bring this into conversation a little bit more comparing across? I also think there’s opportunities to partner in getting funding for our Water Fellows program. So we heard a lot from other universities that this is something they want to replicate. And so can we put together a large multi-institution grant to help get those off of the ground? We’ll give them our information as a model. We’ll give them our lessons learned and help provide the support that they need to get it off the ground. But there are more, there are more issues. Colorado River obviously, there’s no shortage of research that needs to be done there. And actually, I’ll just mention, I was part of a NSF proposal working with Tamee Albrecht of ESS and there was a big multi-state collaborative proposal put into NSF to address some issues with the Colorado River based in which we were a finalist proposal that has been put on pause for now. So we will see what happens with that. But beyond that, you know, I think there’s opportunities to work with AES as well and other western states to put together some joint research opportunities.
Announcer: Any other questions? Anybody else? Let Neil go for it.
Audience member 3 (Neil): Well, I was just looking for some criticism here and I’m wondering if you’re not overseeing all of us urban people, overlooking us urban people. Everything seems to be ag-emphasis here, which is kind of appropriate really, given extension. I’m kind of, you know, exaggerating here, but what about the big city problems, in Denver, Golden, you know, Fort Collins, Front Range and all of that. What would we do there?
Karen Schlatter: Yeah, I mean, I’m sad if that came across as just being an ag-focused presentation, but some of the areas I think we are currently supporting and can do more to support. So, you know, the water workforce issue is big and particularly for utilities and some of the larger utilities are really struggling with this. And so ensuring we’re having a pipeline of students and successful kind of training and education opportunities bringing into those metro areas is big. I think we’re partnering effectively with industry as well on these conversations. So with our Water Workforce Summit, with our Water Career Fair, we are engaging directly with especially, you know, all the metro area folks because that’s where a lot of the jobs are and that’s where a lot of the need is. And so, continuing to have those conversations and those forums will be important. When it comes to actual like urban water management and planning, that’s where I’d like to get more conversation and just understanding of how utilities and municipalities are doing their water supply and demand forecasting. And you know, are they being overly conservative with water supply that’s driving up competition or is it they’re doing a good job of being conservative, or like it’s all over the place and people are doing all kinds of things. Can we help to at least better understand what the of that is and then find some really good examples of good water planning? And especially with growth, I think the demand side is such an uncertainty and there’s modeling and scenarios that’s being done, but that is not, you know, small utilities don’t have the capacity to do that. So what are some best practices we can take away there? Can we offer recommendations for doing that in the future? And then I was just at a salinity summit last week, I think that was last week. No, I don’t know. The weeks are, they don’t make sense anymore. And this was an urban-focused salinity summit for salinity on the South Platte. Metro Water Recovery organized it and it’s focusing in on particularly, you know, as new industry comes in, there’s different discharge happening along the South Platte. What are some levers that we can use? How are we monitoring this? How are we communicating across all these organizations with all the information and data that’s being collected? And then how are we jointly forming solutions that we’re going to mitigate impacts of salinity? So we are doing work in the urban space and there’s all kinds of other stuff too that’s being done. We’re partnering with MSU, Metro State University of Denver on a Water Fellows program there and other initiatives. So we’ve got our finger on the pulse. Maybe could have put that a little more explicitly in my presentation, but thank you.
Announcer: Okay, I think we’re out of time and sorry, Perry, but you’re escorting her so you can ask a question. For those of you online, we are looking for feedback. You can get feedback at the same link where you got this presentation or link to this presentation. Please fill this quick form, fill it out, get it in so we can look at it. We’re looking for feedback from everybody. Tell your friends what a wonderful presentations you’ve heard and they should go and look at this. Let’s thank Karen for her time.