While the explanation of my affiliations at the University of Washington over the last few years may seem complicated, the reality is that I have been working for the same boss, and sitting at the same desk, all along (at least until just recently). He just keeps moving around (organizationally) and so I keep having to answer the phone differently.
I have been affiliated with the University of Washington since the fall of 1993, when I began my masters program with the Department of Geography. In Geography, I served as a teaching assistant and as a staff assistant, managing the department's computer lab.
After finishing my degree, Dr. David L. Peterson of the College of Forest Resources hired me in early 1997 to support his research program with geospatial analysis. While Dave is a Professor of Ecology at CFR, he is also a federal employee which explains most of the organizational change. At the time that I was hired, his program was transitioning from being affiliated with the National Park Service (as a Cooperative Park Studies Unit) to the U.S. Geological Survey Biological Resources Division. Thus, after a couple of false starts finding a suitable new name, we became the USGS Cascadia Field Station; much of the work of the lab was funded by the USGS Global Change Research Program (USGS-GCRP), but we still supported National Park Service projects as well. In 2001, Dave left USGS to become an employee of the USDA Forest Service at the Seattle Forestry Sciences Laboratory as a member of the Fire and Environmental Research Applications (FERA) Team (while still remaining a professor at UW) (you can see why this story seems complicated). Dave "brought me along" to the Forest Service as well, and now some of my salary is funded by the Forest Service under the cooperative agreement they have with UW. In the meantime, Dave's lab at UW (while still supported by USGS-GCRP) was compelled to find a new identity other than USGS. We adopted the name "Fire and Mountain Ecology Lab" to reflect the types of research that we performed. (Is anyone still reading this?)
As Dave's USGS funding was slightly uncertain at one point, I was able to take advantage of an opportunity to start working half-time for the Climate Impacts Group of the JISAO, starting in December of 2002. While I now have another supervisor (Amy Snover), Dave is also affiliated with CIG so it's still all one big happy family, sort of.
So, while I did still have the same desk in the College of Forest Resources that I had when I started with Dave, I now have two additional offices, at the Forest Service Lab and at Climate Impacts Group.
Update as of 2010. While that was all true as of 2002, things have changed a little bit. Dave Peterson is now the Team Leader of FERA, and so I report now to Don McKenzie (whom I have worked with since the beginning in 1997, and who is also a CIG principal). I still work half-time for Don and Dave, their graduate students, and the other researchers at FERA, and half-time for the Climate Impacts Group. The Office of the Washington State Climatologist is affiliated with CIG and I was asked to also provide GIS support for them, so that's where affiliation number four came along. If you look closely, I'm listed as an Assistant State Climatologist but I leave that title off my business card.
Fortunately, I was able to consolidate my three desks, computers, and phone lines back to just two and finally just one, so I'm no longer uncertain where I'm going each day. I sit with the Climate Impacts Group but since we now have office space on campus, I'm able to meet regularly with Don and Dave's groups.
Another simplification to my affiliations is that both CIG and the College (now School) of Forest Resources became part of the UW's new College of the Environment in 2009. That and the single office both make my business card a lot simpler.
Back to my main UW/GIS/work page.