Solanki’s pilot podcast was a hit, and she was motivated by this success. She wanted to create a second podcast, hosting episodes focused on efforts SEISMIC members were engaging with. Solanki invited Anna James, currently Teaching Professor within the Marine Science Institute at the University of California Santa Barbara, to be a co-host on the podcast. At the time, James was a postdoctoral scholar within the Marine Biodiversity Observation Network at UCSB. Additionally, James and Solanki had volunteered to be SEISMIC’s Theme Leaders, who work to develop themes that tie together knowledge gained through projects and encourage collaboration across working groups. Establishing the podcast as an official Theme, the two decided that the aim of the episodes should be to increase the exposure of ongoing efforts within the collaboration.

Together, Solanki and James thought about the current SEISMIC projects and how they could inform members about what their colleagues are doing. At the same time, they also wanted to make the podcast accessible to a broader audience. “We also wanted to have a diverse group,” Solanki says. “Not only asking folks that many members [already] know, but also reaching out to folks that maybe are not as known within the community.”

Filming the podcast episodes themselves was a breeze, Solanki recalls. She enjoyed interviewing guests and having the opportunity to help share research with listeners. “Everyone was so gracious with their time and excited to talk about their research and share their experience with us.” It was also useful to have a co-host to bounce ideas off, and go back-and-forth with during interviews. Additionally, having someone to share hosting responsibilities helped with the overall workload.

The Office Hours Podcast consists of five episodes. Below is a table summarizing each episode:

1: Undergraduate Research

Katelyn Cooper and Nikeetha Farfan D’Souza share their work related to undergraduate research. Cooper discusses persistence in undergraduate research and D’Souza discusses cultural and educational disparities in undergraduate student experiences and research.

3: Leadership

Natasha Turman and Brian Sato highlight the value of interdisciplinary collaboration and shared leadership in STEM education. They discuss their insights on building successful teams.

5: Technology in the Classroom

Perry Samson describes two of his projects (LectureTools and Backchannels) that are aimed at enhancing student engagement in large lecture halls.

In addition to learning about the work of many SEISMIC members, Solanki also learned more about the process of creating a podcast. “[The episodes] require a lot of effort on the host, you know, to read about the person and read their material,” Solanki says. While she enjoyed the process and was enthusiastic throughout, she acknowledges that not having a production team increased the workload significantly.

If SEISMIC 2.0 were to have a podcast of its own, Solanki believes it’s important to feature experts from a variety of fields, and keep the content accessible and interesting for a broad audience. However, she acknowledges that this pursuit isn’t without challenges: “What’s hard is finding topics that are enjoyable and interesting to a broad audience.” Still, she believes that by asking members what they’re interested in hearing about and who they’d like to hear from, plenty of suitable interview candidates can be found. “The podcast is less about dissemination of one specific intervention and more about being another way to talk to experts,” Solanki says. As SEISMIC has a diverse community filled with experts in various topics, there are plenty of members to highlight, and I’m hopeful that the opportunity to do that through a podcast comes in SEISMIC 2.0.