Hybrid Lunchbox Talk: If Not Us, Who? Rebuilding Botanical Capacity for the Southeast

Name: Hybrid Lunchbox Talk: If Not Us, Who? Rebuilding Botanical Capacity for the Southeast
Start: 2026-04-16T12:00:00-04:00
End: 2026-04-16T13:00:00-04:00
Location: North Carolina Botanical Garden

Schedule

Thu Apr 16 2026 at 12:00 pm to 01:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

North Carolina Botanical Garden | Chapel Hill, NC

With Joey Shaw, Distinguished Service and UC Foundation Professor, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Thursday, April 16, 2026
12:00 PM-1:00 PM ET
Hybrid - Join us in person or on Zoom!
Free; preregistration required: https://reg.learningstream.com/reg/event_page.aspx?ek=0005-0014-5b1e51e6ffa0417abde12ab8dfd8b569

The accelerating loss of biodiversity, coupled with a decline in botany programs, organismal biology and plant identification skills, has created an urgent need to rebuild botanical capacity.
Botanical work depends on both traditional skills, like field observation and specimen identification, but we also need contemporary tools that improve worker efficiency, accessibility, and scale. The development of digital infrastructures such as digitized herbarium specimen portals, online plant atlases, keys (books and digital), and data-driven conservation metrics allows a small number of trained botanists to have outsized impact, supporting research, conservation, land management, and education.
This presentation explores how the deliberate integration of tool development, student training, and public outreach can strengthen the next generation of human infrastructure needed to document, understand, advocate for, and protect plant diversity.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Joey Shaw is a Distinguished Service and UC Foundation Professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he has been on the faculty since 2005. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Dr. Shaw’s career integrates herbarium science, floristics, plant conservation, molecular systematics, teaching, and public engagement, with a focus on building tools and communities of people that advance botanical research and conservation.