Endowed Student Support Fund from Doctors at Brookside Dental

GILBERT B. PAULEY Endowed Student Support Fund

Dr Gilbert B. Pauley is a professor emeritus of SAFS and a past member and leader of the Washington Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit (Coop Unit). Gil had a long, distinguished career at the School and Coop, serving from 1974 until 1997. He currently works with his wife (Dr Patricia Pauley) and his daughter (Dr Cindy Pauley) who are family and cosmetic dentists in the Seattle, WA, area. Gil takes care of the business and internet aspects of their dental practice at Brookside Dental, Bellevue, WA.

In 2002, Gil and his wife Dr Patricia Pauley established a fund to support UW and Washington State University students conducting Coop research. The fund has been used to award graduate students for best oral presentations and scientific poster presentations at the Unit’s Annual Cooperators Meeting. The funds pay for travel expenses to conferences, where the students present the results of their research. In 2007, through the cooperative effort of the University of Washington and the Drs Pauley (Gil and Pat), the award fund established in 2002 became a permanent “Endowed Student Support Fund” at the University of Washington.

Dr Gilbert Pauley

The Coop Unit, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in May 2007, is one of 40 units in 38 states that constitute the national Cooperative Research Unit Program (part of the US Geological Survey). Working with universities, state fish and wildlife agencies, and the Wildlife Management Institute, the various Coop Units coordinate research and graduate training programs. The longstanding relationship that the University of Washington Coop Unit has had with SAFS has yielded mutually beneficial results, providing opportunities and funding for numerous students to pursue research, and in turn, helping the Coop address pressing wildlife and fish management issues.

Gil explained why they chose to support student travel: “Attending scientific conferences is critical to student development. It gives students the chance to practice communicating in front of a group of peers about their work; and, by presenting their work before it’s published, they have a chance to get some feedback.” He added, “These conferences enable students to interact and network with the rest of the scientific community.” Also, this is a way that we as a family can give something back to the University of Washington, where I, my wife and my daughter all received a major portion of our educations.

Several winners of the Pauley Travel Award spoke to the value of the fund: Jennifer McIntyre—oral presentation winner, 2006—said “This generous award allowed me to travel to Newfoundland, Canada, for the Seventh International Congress on Fish Biology, where I was awarded the best student paper in my session. Without the Pauley Award, the trip would have been prohibitively expensive.”

Mike Mazur—oral presentation winner in 2005—used the fund to attend the Hydroacoustic Mobile Survey Workshop in Wyoming. He reflected, “The award enabled me to present my research to applied research scientists and managers, beyond the Pacific Northwest, at a small, informal venue, where I forged valuable relationships critical to any young scientist’s success. Thanks to the Pauley Fund, I was able to bridge the gap between the academic and applied science world and interact with a group of researchers that ordinarily would not know about my work.”

We at the SASF are pleased to announce the establishment of the Gilbert B. Pauley Endowed Student Support Fund. This fund will help ensure travel funding, in perpetuity, for students awarded at each year’s Annual Cooperators’ Meeting.

We extend our gratitude to Gil and Pat Pauley for their generous support of students in the Coop and SAFS programs. For more information on giving at SAFS, please contact Cara Mathison, caram@u.washington.edu, 206-685-1456. For more information on the Campaign for Students, please see how to fund students at the University of Washington.

The above article is reprinted with some editorial changes by permission of the Aquatic & Fishery Sciences Newsletter, University of Washington, Seattle, Spring-Summer 2007, pg 9.

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