 Welcome to our fifth spring workshop on archaeology at work. I'm Christine Hastor, the director of the Archaeological Research Facility at the University of California Berkeley from where this is coming today. And it's an umbrella research unit on the UC Berkeley campus that oversees all things research in archaeology, but clearly research has many different aspects and domains and today we're really fortunate to be having this workshop on one very important aspect, which is cultural research management. So to start off, I'd like to give an acknowledgement and then I'll turn it over to our moderator. So we acknowledge that the University of California Berkeley is on unceded traditionally Chin land. We respect the land itself and the people who have stewarded it throughout many generations. We honor their elders, both past and present. I would like now to welcome you all to today's event and especially thank the panelists for taking time to speak to us about their work, jobs and lives. Our moderator for today's event is Dr. Albert Gonzalez. Dr. Gonzalez is an assistant professor of anthropology at California State University East Bay, right next door to us in Hayward, California where he has taught since 2015. He also directs the C.E. Smith Museum of Anthropology and the Pacific Earthen Architecture Research Laboratory also at that institution. So he is a very busy man. He also trains students in decolonization of museum and laboratory methods in that research laboratory and I assume the museum too. As they relate to the interpretation of indigenous and Latinx documents and material culture. He is a colleague, he and a colleague recently won a CSU East Bay Outstanding Contribution to Community Engagement Award. So we all should congratulate him when we thank everybody. So congratulations, well done Albert. Dr. Gonzalez has been a good friend and colleague of ARF and seemed to be the perfect person to moderate this panel today. So we're really grateful Albert for you taking the time and you're very busy scheduled to help us very much. Thank you. I would like now to turn over the screen, the stage, the setting to Albert who will begin our exceptional panel of professional archeologists who are now going to talk about their work within cultural research management. So without further ado Albert, please start our session which goes on for two hours. Thanks so much, Christina. Thank you, Sarah and Niko, all three of you for inviting me to do this. It is a great honor. I have been in attendance at ARF events for so long now. It's just wonderful to, I'm sad that I can't be there in person. I feel like I'm saying this for every talking panel I'm a part of these days it would be great to be up there, up front in the very room would be wonderful. But it is an honor to be invited to moderate by people I admire so and an institute that I admire so. The ARF has really been an invaluable resource for me as for as for so many others but it's not an exaggeration to say that it's guided and shaped the course of my career and is an important part of the reason why I'm still in Northern California and haven't gone somewhere else. And it's really important to me. My past ARF attendance talks, it was like as a grad student, a visiting researcher most of those was like a kid in a candy store really. I don't think there was a single talk where I didn't fully immerse myself, invest myself, ask questions and then bother the speakers, harass the speakers afterwards. And I think CRM presentations and panels are especially important in the ARF's repertoire for emerging archeologists since the best bulk of us are either CRM archeologists or have been CRM archeologists or will be CRM archeologists. So to the students present, grad students and undergrads, I say if we were in a room in real life I would say look around the room but take a look at the names and faces on your screen some of them frozen, some of them just big red letters whatever the case, this is the future of California archeology. I wasn't sure I appreciated or understood it when I was in the audience as a graduate student in the ARF and the future of California's past is truly in believe it or not in the hands I think increasingly of CRM archeology. As academic archeology contracts a bit, recedes a bit for various reasons, CRM firms increasingly shape historical narratives and I'm not sure that's something that even many CRM folks see very directly but all of us do CRM most of us do CRM at some point or another and we all play some role in shaping these narratives CRM plays a huge role in guiding that process and there's no better folks I think and again this also is not an exaggeration I promise you I know most of these folks on this panel and have worked with several of them in the past quite directly there's no one better to steer that ship than the people on this panel the excellent people on this panel. Some of you know that I'm a California CRM I think the word is fanboy or stan I'm an exceedingly avid fan of California's CRM and California's CRM history and the stories behind them and if there were CRM trading cards I would collect them and the people in this bunch would be in special plastic sleeves guarded carefully they are that good I think excellent folks and again I'm so honored to be moderating this conversation so the speakers got an email from us a little while back specifying the order in which you'll do your kind of micro presentations and I'll let you introduce yourselves they're gonna introduce themselves do some short presentations and then I'm gonna ask them some questions afterwards that hopefully are some utility to the students and other folks and faculty also present and then we'll break out into breakout rooms each breakout room with one of the speakers and students and other folks present should feel free to join the speakers in their own respective breakout rooms whoever it is that you'd like to communicate with in lieu of the typical cookies in the foyer and it sounds like we gotta promise that next time there will be wine so next time next time so I'll start things off then with or I'll allow Hannah Ballard to start things out Pacific Legacy with her introduction and talk. Great, thank you Dr. Gonzales. My name is Hannah Ballard I work for Pacific Legacy I have worked for Pacific Legacy for almost 25 years it's really been the bulk of my career in CRM and I recently became the CEO of the company as we transitioned towards a new generation of leadership so these are exciting changes for our company and I know we're not alone in these sorts of changes that are happening throughout the CRM world here in California. So Pacific Legacy is a small cultural resources management firm we have offices in California and Hawaii we have two offices in California one right here in Berkeley and the other one outside of Sacramento in a town called El Dorado Hills and we have an office in Kailua on the island of Oahu in Hawaii so we do work in California and Nevada and all over the Pacific. We have permanent staff that includes archeologists and ethnographers who specialize in Native American and historic period resources and we also do some built environment because some of our historical archeologists have experience with architectural history as well. We also have some in-house special analyses that we do starch grain analysis and obsidian hydration so we provide those analyses do it on our own projects and we provide them also as something we'll do for other companies. We specialize in compliance with state and federal cultural resources regulation as do most everybody here. We do work around the National Environmental Policy Act the National Historic Preservation Act and the local state regs of the California Environmental Quality Act. Our clients range from private companies developers in the city of San Francisco to pseudo private companies like PG&E we work with local governments, cities and counties state agencies like Caltrans federal agencies like FEMA National Park Service, Forest Service, Bureau of Reclamation and as I said, we do this work all over California, Nevada, Hawaii and Pacific. So one of the things that we were asked to speak about were current issues in CRM. One of the main ones that I think is really coming up more and more is sort of the archaeology of disasters in fact in the recent SCA and so I decided for California Archaeology Meeting there was a whole session on disasters and it has to do with climate change related disasters and a lot of those are around fire. And so we as a company, I know a lot of the folks here also are doing work after fires after the major fires in California to help protect the resources that were burned or might have been damaged by the fire processes or firefighting and also working a lot with pre-fire prevention efforts like working with PG&E to do surveys and cleanups and also sea level rise which is Mike Newlands area specialty but this area of climate related natural disasters is really a growing field for us and I think it's in many ways the future of CRM. And I'm gonna maybe leave it at that because I know that other people have other things to say on that on the current issues. As far as the effects of the new administration, there's a lot that's going to happen and we don't yet I think know the full effects of what the Biden administration can do but certainly rolling back a lot of the Trump era executive orders around environmental issues should change the way land use is done and the kinds of work that we will do and really one of the biggest ones is changes in the department leadership particularly with the confirmation of Deb Haaland to the Department of Interior which is really exciting to have the first Native American woman leading that department that oversees all of the federal lands and so again we don't know exactly what that's gonna mean in terms of how cultural resources management will be conducted but there definitely is going to be a shift away from the fossil focus on extraction to multi-use and I'm sure also bringing in more Native American voices in how the land is used and treatment of sites more of an emphasis on that. Upcoming opportunities in CRM and for Pacific Legacy one of the things that we're really experiencing right now honestly there's a real labor shortage so we're all having trouble finding crews and so I think there are a lot of opportunities in CRM in general and certainly in the next year we have a lot of survey and monitoring projects that are going right now and will be coming up and also just recently got a big CalTrans on call that will provide us with a lot of other field projects so there's some exciting things that are gonna be happening in this coming year and the field season has kicked off in a big way sometimes it's more delayed in the year but things are really rolling right now so it's exciting and we're definitely looking for people to help us with that so we're always looking for responsible crew and people who are enthusiastic, have some experience willing to learn willing to jump in and work with us so I guess that's the end of my mini presentation so thank you, I hope I left some room for some other things. Thank you Hannah and I can see that labor shortage real easily because so many students didn't receive field training in the last year so there's a pool that doesn't exist right now that otherwise kind of would have so thank you and I think next is Evan and Tutor Elliot Paleo West. Hi, thanks Dr. Gonzalez. I guess I'd like to start out with just kind of saying that I was where the students were I was sitting in the ARF many years ago as a young person going to presentations just kind of seeing what people were doing and honestly at the time I didn't see a lot of CRM. I didn't see that really represented a lot at the ARF at the time and it's great that it's more now. I ended up really becoming aware of CRM as a practice through Pat Kirch who's emeritus now but his specialty was the Pacific and one of the things that may surprise people is that all those little Pacific islands, all those territories that the US has as well as various military bases and things. I mean, those are all subject to federal cultural resources management laws. So I ended up learning about it from there and getting introduced to folks' specific legacy through that originally. And I'd also just like to say before really diving in, they're like Dr. Gonzalez said, a lot of great people on this panel. I mean, personally I have learned so much from Mike Newland to come up later and from Hannah as well having worked under reports of them. Not only are they great archeologists, good CRM people, but I also wanted to say that they are good managers and they are people who are not going to take advantage of you as a young archeologist, as a young employee. So I'm not saying that Desiree or Addy or anyone is going to do that. They're good companies as well, but my own personal experience is that I know these folks and I can't speak highly enough of them. So to reiterate, I'm Evan Teter Elliott. I work for Paleo West. We are the largest terrestrial only CRM firm which is a funny caveat, but just that the company search is giant, but they do tremendous amount of underwater archeology as well. And so we are coast to coast headquartered in Phoenix. And we have now five offices in California, three until in California, as well as one in the Bay Area in Walnut Creek and one here in Sacramento. We also have offices in Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Texas, Florida. And I think that's one thing that people should remember when they are looking into these, looking into going into this field is that specialization can help you, but also generalization can help you and being willing to work anywhere is huge. And being willing to be able to say yes to projects is huge. Also, I wanna apologize if I seem a little disjointed. I am on maternity leave and have a seven week role. So not getting as much sleep as even undergraduate students do. So yeah, so at Paleo West, like everyone here, we are specialized in compliance archeology, state and federal regulations, depending on what those are in the various states. It's so important to get a grounding in that as much as you can. And there are three things that you can use for that. Advisory Council for Preservation has on those other things. And so, we work for a lot of the same sort of clients that legacy does, state, local governments, utilities, federal agencies, private developers. We do a lot of work with building in San Francisco, as well as out here in Sacramento Valley. We are doing a lot of work on water with Army Corps of Engineers, further field, lots of stuff from BLM, which in this case is Bureau of Land Management, not Black Lives Matter, and Forest Service, lots of things like that. One of the things that we really try to do within our practice is we focus a lot on digital methods of work, digital recordation. We try to do, we do a lot of photogrammetry, which is using computers and photographs to create 3D models. When I started years ago, it was like, oh, buy this $100,000 laser system to do scans, now it's, they've got this $200 camera and some computer equipment and we'll do an even better 3D model for you. So, we're really trying to, we really try to leverage that to make it so that we can spend more of our time doing the analysis, doing the writing, doing the science and just doing the recording, just transcribing field notes. I spent way too much time when I was younger, transcribing Mike Newland's Chicken Scratch and wasting that time and I'm sure that if he could be typing that up on an iPad instead, it would, you know, I was gonna go more smoothly. Let's see. So, yeah, current issues in CRM, I mean, I think, you know, I think digital heritage has really become something that's really important. You know, we are more and more clients and more and more local agencies are really requiring various sorts of public interpretation as part of their mitigation strategies. And so, you know, using digital methods to tell stories about the past and really get those stories out to a wide segment of people, you know, the people who aren't going to be, you know, going to the library and looking at archeology journals or, you know, seeking these sort of things out, but, you know, putting interpretation in the lobbies of buildings that people can, you know, look at on their phones. I mean, on our website, we have links to, you know, these 3D models that we do of artifacts and things. You know, one of the really rewarding things that we've done recently, and, you know, we also have architectural history as one of the aspects that we offer in addition to archeology and anthropology. And we did a recording effort and interpretation effort in Montgomery Civil Rights National Historic District and, you know, just being able to tie places with, you know, things and people having, you know, clips of speeches along with, you know, what the building looked like 60 years ago and what it looks like now. And I think that's something that's really important and we're doing more of that in San Francisco as well. The city there is requiring a lot more of this interpretation. You know, and I think, you know, branching off that, I think really thinking about comprehensive CRM, comprehensive heritage management is really important these days. You know, before anyone's time here on this panel, you know, CRM was archeology. Pretty much only, you know, there was some architectural history that went on from other folks, but really being able to now seeing that these things aren't, you know, shouldn't be thought of as separate when it comes to, you know, managing our past, managing our heritage, you know, the architectural history, the tribal outreach, you know, working with series of tribes along a transmission line just figuring out what the important places are for them and, you know, working for a state agency. We have the there, we have the ability to really give them things that they find are important and really sort of emphasize the places that they find sacred and important. And, you know, that's something that's always been, that's, you know, been in the laws for a long time. It's been codified a bit more formally in California recently, but I think every year, all of us find that to be a more important part of what we're doing. So, you know, when I was at Berkeley, I really much only took archeology classes. You know, I didn't take an ethnography class, you know, an ethnographic methods class, and I would say that is, you know, one of my regrets for sure. You know, I pick up things along the way, but being able to have the training to, you know, talk to people respectfully, listen respectfully, you know, take notes while you're participating with them. I mean, those are hard skills and they're super important. And if you can, you know, you can show that you can do that. You know, that's definitely a way to advance in your career more quickly than some people might. You know, going along with the digital recording, you know, there's, you know, my entire career, really there's been a crisis of curation. You know, you may not think about it when you're thinking about, you know, these cool excavations and things that, you know, we do, but all that stuff has to go someplace and how to dispose of it, how to store it, how to decide what things are important is really more and more, you know, it's become more and more an issue as these storage facilities fill up and being able to do, you know, digital recording and 3D modeling that not only helps it so that we can, you know, return things to the ground or to the tribe or, you know, to teaching collections or other places, it also allows us to let our colleagues, you know, see these things that they may not, if they had to run off into a collections facilities on place. See, you know, the new administration, I think that that's, you know, what Hannah said about Deb Holland is, you know, super important. And I, in the last six months, I've been on probably 10 or 12 meetings with the tribe representatives and every single one of them has mentioned her and how much, I mean, even just her nomination into tribal folks. And so that could really, it's gonna be really interesting to see, I mean, it could be a whole new chapter in tribal involvement in, you know, and how a lot of these things work out at CRM. And, you know, and I also think that, you know, big thing is that a lot of the, you know, the Trump administration had been as much as possible exempting things from environmental laws. And I don't think that that's gonna happen as much. So I think those are just, you know, positive things. You know, as for upcoming opportunities for us, I mean, you know, I'm seven weeks out of date on exactly what our needs are. So I can't say that exactly. But like Hannah said, there's a crunch for people. There is a, you know, we all need folks, we need experienced people, which, you know, you may not be, but the, we also need people who are not experienced, who we can help foster and grow so that we can, you know, move experienced people around to the projects that like actually require those folks. And, you know, saying yes to things and saying, you know, what else can I help you with? It is just tremendous when it comes to employees. Much more important than, you know, how straight you can walk a transect or, you know, whether you can read a GPS unit or a compass. I mean, those are things we can teach you. Attitude is not generally something that we have time to teach you. So, yeah, just, you know, being proactive and helpful is, you know, just enormous. And like the employees who I've had who have just done so well are the ones who are like, you know, I can do that. Hey, I don't know how to do that, but I'd love to learn. And, you know, hey, I'm done with this thing. Tell me what else I can do, you know, as well as being able to take, you know, criticism because we're gonna tell you how you do things wrong and how you need to improve those. And, yeah, so those that's, you know, you know, really, really huge there. Probably talk too long, but yeah, thank you. Thank you. And I truly appreciate what you were saying about taking notes. And I'm glad that you said that so many of my students are present because it's the hardest thing in the world to say, yes, just please, when you go, take notes. Because the first question is like, oh, why? You know, like I have a brain, I can keep it all, you know, right here. And I tell all my students that I find it hard to trust people that I work with who don't take notes because I don't know what's gonna happen afterwards. So, thank you. Yeah, and just to add to that and asking questions. If you show up and you don't ask any questions, how do I know you're engaged in this project? Right, and thank you. And next is Desiree Martinez. Thank you. So thank you for the invitation. My name's Desiree Martinez and I'm president of Cobstone Resource Management. And I'm coming from you on Tongva land, which you can see in my virtual background. And the Tongva are the original people of the Los Angeles base in both parts of Orange County, which where our Cobstone headquarters are. And I'm actually Gabelon Tongva myself. And Cobstone has five offices throughout the state of California. And we just celebrated our first year for our office in Arizona. And although we do a majority of our work in California, we have a number of projects throughout the United States and we're continuing to grow. Cobstone is a small woman-owned business. And so with that designation, we're able to participate in a lot of federal work that's specifically geared toward women-owned company. And we actually have some projects that are going to be starting in New Mexico, Utah and Texas in the summer. So if you're interested in doing some traveling, let me know. One of the big things that Cobstone does besides archeology is also paleontology and architectural history and history in general. But one of the big things we like to do is not like to do, but what we do is really try to instill the use of an indigenous archeology pedagogy. And what indigenous archeology is is the practice of archeology for within bi-indigenous people. And when you're doing CRM work, particularly because you are creating or researching or reviewing projects in order to be in compliance with laws, a lot of that anthropological inquiry that you're usually taught in the discipline kind of gets kicked to the wayside and you cut and paste backgrounds and you cut and paste ethnographies. And really that does a disservice to the ancestors whose history when you're doing archeology that you're trying to explain. So we always make sure that when we do outreach to native communities, it's not something just to be checked off the box, but you're actually listening to the indigenous population. You're listening to them about the sites that are there and why the site is important to them, whether it's the sacred site or whether it's just a quote unquote, milling stuff. There's a big difference from how native people look at items versus how the law looks at them. So just because it's just a grinding stone and it's not significant under the law, it's significant to the native people that you're working with. And you have to accept that and you have to make sure that that comes out that it may be not significant and thus you can blow it away for the indigenous community whose resources like this are being destroyed every single day that that's an important thing that needs to be protected. And as a cultural resource manager professional, you should try to make sure that the client that you're working for understand that and create recommendations in which their indigenous perspective and beliefs are protected. And so we try to instill that in our employees. And just as Evan said, a lot of what is being taught currently in the archeological programs does not include how to talk to native people. One of the things that I did when I was researching for my dissertation is recording and when I talk a lot about this to these, I used to run an archeological field squad on Catalina Island. And one of the things I would always tell the students is that native people have a particular way of communicating just because they speak English doesn't mean that you are actually hearing what they're saying and what some of the nonverbal cues that you may not know can hinder your communication with native people. And that's something that archeologists aren't taught about. So it's becoming really important just exactly what Evan said, there's a lot of changes in both the California law as well as the federal law of how outreach to native communities should be conducted. And to have that background and understanding of the native communities that you're working with before you actually start to work with them is very important. And that includes understanding their history but not only from the books that are written by non-native people but by listening to lectures, by listening and reading webinars, podcasts. My own community has put together websites with UCLA, mapping indigenous LA in order to describe how we feel about particular sites around Southern California being able to quote those sites and those books that the native communities have actually completed themselves and your CRM report is very important instead of everybody quoting Klober or Heizer from 1978. That's all outdated, misunderstanding, misconstruing information about indigenous communities. So that's one of the biggest things that I'm always a proponent of when I'm talking to up-and-coming people who are thinking about Sierra and is know on whose land you are on and make sure you know it from their perspective and make sure that when you're looking at artifacts or looking at sites that the site is not just a random dot on the landscape it's connected to the larger other sites that may be not too far for them. Archaeologists like to put circles and dots around things and think that those areas that have nothing on the surface aren't part of the village or aren't part of the resource use area of that community. That's a backwards way of thinking about it. So if you're really wanting to do right by the client you're working for as well as the community on whose land you are, you're gonna make sure that you're gonna document that whole use of that landscape whether there's something on that land or not. One of the biggest things that I think this current administration is going to impact CRM is I actually just released with Avacor which is one of our partners a statement on how excited we are for Deb Pollan's appointment as secretary and it's really going to hopefully help extend that Native American consultation and I like to use collaboration because no project should start even begin to be thought about without indigenous people on whose land that project is gonna be on. And what's important is making sure that any work that's being done that it's not extracting native knowledge for the benefit of somebody else but making sure that we can also then help the community in some way, whether it's through a mitigation measure of creating a book which is one of the mitigation measure that I suggested to take care of an impact on a project creating a cookbook on native foods that was used so that can be used by their communities so they can come back to their traditional foods just really thinking outside of the box and making sure that the projects that we do are not maligning the communities or further damaging them. And of course with indigenous archeological perspective it's not just about indigenous archeology or indigenous communities it's about all communities that are on that land or have seen or use that site. So it might be the Chinese American community or the African American community all community members should be involved in the process and the work that we do at all times and having those skills learning them as an undergrad and continuing as a graduate student as you go on learning those skills to talk to people and to really listen to understand how they communicate is gonna be a very important skill for any people that I know I hire. Thank you. Thank you, Desiree. Thank you for touching on communication and in particular the law. I'm not sure that everyone sees the wave that's on its way and not only at the federal level but at the state level with recent legislation maybe 275 assembly member Ramos's bill I think things are gonna change a big way in a big way in California and I'm not sure everyone sees it coming in terms of indigenous consultation across the board. So, and I hope that it does. So thank you so much. Next is Michael Newland, ESA. Hi guys, and I'm gonna set my timer because I'm a rambler here so let me walk. Okay, I'm gonna watch the clock about that. So hi, I'm Mike Newland. I'm director for Northern California Cultural Resources Group for Environmental Science Associates. We have offices all over California, Washington and Oregon and a satellite office out in the Southeast. I have been lucky enough to work with a lot of the people that are on this panel in one way or another either professionally on the job or at school with them or served in the Society for California Archaeology Boards with them. I'm a, I wear a lot of hats. I'm a former president for the Society for California Archaeology. I founded the Climate Changing and California Archaeology Committee and I sit as a co-chairperson. Like Han had mentioned earlier I've been doing climate change works since about 2012. I also sit on my organization's diversity, inclusion and equity. We have like an internship panel which looks like Albert's got some great questions about internships later on. It'll be looking really great excuse for us to talk about that. It's a big issue for me. Prior to this job I was at the Anthropological Study Center at Sonoma State University for about 20 years. And I trained graduate students how to run projects. And so some of the folks on this panel went through the internship program that I taught there. And so student training, student building, student careers, cultural resources management. These are all really important issues to me that I've spent really almost 30 years working on. Everything that the panel has said so far has been spot on. I just really appreciate everybody's comments. I especially want to touch on Desiree's comments about working with the tribes. You know, a year and a half or two years ago I was doing a lot of archeology and project review and I was doing tribal consultation part of the time. Tribal consultation is now my full-time job. It permeates everything. It permeates the biology work that we do. It's involved in site design and hydrology and habitat restoration. All of a sudden, so I work for an organization that has biologists and environmental hydrologists and community development people. And really for the first time they were all coming to me saying we have this big tribal consultation component to this and really the agencies and the other departments they don't know anything about how to do that. In fact, I think what Desiree said about the ability to speak to tribal communities, how to interact with tribal elders. You know, a tribal chairperson, they're the president of their tribe. The equivalent, they're their leader. Most of us will never meet a president or the leader of a sovereign nation. And there are ways to do that. You address folks of that stature that most of us don't know. When you meet a dreamer or a religious leader within an organization, I mean, you're talking to essentially their Dalai Lama, right? Most of us are never gonna meet the Dalai Lama. So it does require a different skill set than what we are totally normally taught in archeology. So much so, and we could talk about this later, that I've started to look for folks to help me out specifically with the tribal consultation. And I am specifically looking for tribal youth, folks who are Native American, coming out of a Native American studies background or potentially an anthropology program who has experienced an understanding or a cultural understanding of how to talk to tribes and tribal representatives. Because as was mentioned, the regulatory side, the fieldwork, like Evan was saying, we can teach you that part. The skills in tribal consultation are a much different skill set. And it's very hard to find. Like Hano was saying, the industry is impacted right now. We need folks sort of at all levels. It's really busy. I think probably crazy enough during COVID, it's probably the busiest that I've ever seen it, which is great for us. But I think in general, where I see the industry sort of shifting right now, at least on our end, is that I have grown to be much more interested in hiring somebody out with a BA or a BS and graduate students, but really high quality, high energy people who have really good personal skills and training them in all the minutia of the business rather than trying to go find mid-level people with experience because the investments we've made on folks at the beginning of their career have just so paid off. And I'd rather meet young, energetic, smart people who maybe don't have the experience, but have the personality skills to do this kind of work. So if you know, if that's you, I'd love to talk with you later on today. Point, notes, taking notes. I'll tell you, I know project managers who will instantly think less of you if you are in a meeting with them and you are not taking notes. Psychologically, it is an important skill set to learn because the people you are talking to are watching you and seeing if you are taking notes or not. And if you are not taking notes, they are assuming that you are blowing them off. So that's actually, its own skill set is learning how to take notes. And I'll tell you, I find most often where people fail in this business is not their lack of knowledge about a particular theory or field technique. It's laziness. It's just sheer, I didn't fill out the paperwork because I was too tired or I didn't clean up my mess or I didn't get back to that person when I was supposed to because I got distracted or something like that. It was not paying attention to the work which is something that we're all capable of doing. The rest of the stuff can be learned. And then I just want to touch on one other thing here which is what Hannah mentioned which is the disaster piece. Like I said, I've worked on climate change since 2012. I do quite a bit of public speaking on that issue and discussion with our own climate change team on how climate change is going to affect cultural resources. One of the other hats I wear is I'm on the board of directors for the Alta Heritage Foundation. And one of the things that we do, you may have seen this in the news as we go into catastrophic wildfire zones and after the houses have burned, we go in and recover the ashes of people whose ashes were stored in the house before the fires. So it's a big, and now it's a volunteer effort. If folks are interested in that, I could be happy to talk with you about that. But we've done hundreds of homes now. This is something we never did four years ago and now we're doing probably 100 homes a year. So that's it. I think I'll pass it on to the next person. Thanks, Mike. And I should mention that Mike has been kind enough on several occasions now to come out to my university and talk to my students, including at least one group of women of color who are interested in archeology and wanted to, and we're thinking about moving forward with it. I don't think had they not talked to Mike that they would have. But I think they are now in grad school. I think some are in attendance here this very moment. So thank you for doing that. Next is Christina Spellman. And I'm so happy to introduce her. We actually worked together at Albion for some time. And I'll let you take it. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Dr. Gonzalez. Nice to see you again. So I feel like in this lineup of people presenting today, I am potentially the greenest. I started archeology in 2010. I went to a field school through the Carrillo Field Archeology Program, which is excellent. If you need a field school, I would recommend that. I started working at Albion in 2012 after going to UCSC. I started being involved with mission archeology at Santa Clara University. And I had these questions in my mind and I wasn't sure how to talk about them. I didn't feel like I had a voice at that moment. So I decided to go to UMass Boston. It had really great historical archeology program. So I was there from 2015 through 2017 doing my coursework. And I still have not finished my thesis yet, but I should be getting it completed this summer. And from that point, I came back to California and I'm here now. I am a co-owner of Albion. My perspective is from the field. I prefer not doing office work, although I realize that you need a balance sometimes. But so I felt a little underprepared for this conversation. So for the questions that were kind of proposed in preparation for this, it's gonna be a mix of my opinion, but also a fellow co-owner, Ceraquillo. So our business was incorporated in 1997. It's a woman-owned, predominantly business. And we have offices in the San Cruz and in San Luis Obispo. We enjoy working closely with clients to provide high-quality and cost-effective strategies. Obviously I'm reading right now, but ultimately we do everything from consultation, mitigation, inventories. We want to highlight, as everyone has already presented, integrating Native American voices and from the entire process. It's extremely important. That's where my heart is. And I don't feel... Well, I've only worked for Albion, honestly. So I don't really know how other companies do it, but I honestly feel like it is way under... represented in the past, obviously. And it seems like our concern is here now. And I'm really proud to be an archeologist in that realm. And so I hope that the development is representing itself to tribal communities in a meaningful way. Besides that is a concern in CRM practice, is the early identification of resources in an area before you go into the field. You need to do the research. You need to know the research questions. You need to know what you're looking for. So if you're a student who's curious and in your honor project, just do your own research to or ask the people that might have the answers and just have a good basis of the pre-colonial and historical context of where you are. Because honestly, it makes the job a lot more fun and interesting. Considering the new administration's political impacts on your work, that was one of the questions posted. I don't have a response for that in particularly. In my personal politic, I have family in Guam. And I know that there are military bases over there and there's a lot of archeology that is conducted there. And even most recently, there have been protests from indigenous people not wanting the military development because it's a tiny island, but those are the concerns for me. And then potential jobs. So in COVID, everything has slowed down dramatically. But as people have said also, because of that, the field schools haven't occurred. And so the pool is small, but that being said also, there's not much in the LBN realm of big projects. We usually keep it small. It's a smaller company, like 30 or 40 people between the Santa Cruz and slow offices, but still we'll take your resumes to send them on in if you're in the Santa Cruz or slow vicinity, or even if you're outside of it and you wanna come in if we have bigger jobs, we'll definitely pay for DM. But yeah, actually, that's all I have. I doubt it's five minutes, but I again, I get really nervous when I speak. I know that's not professional, but that's all I have. Thank you so much. And you know, I'll be honest, has hired, I don't even know how many of my students at this point have gone through Albion. So for all the students out there, I mean, there are jobs to be had. I mean, it's a little tough now with lack of field training, but I'll send more in the future. So Christina, thank you for taking them too. I have one final thing, actually, I remembered. So because we're so small, we have a variety of specialists here analyzing funnels, ceramics, whatever else. And if you're interested in a particular material culture and you voice that, this is a very important aspect of my experience in Albion is that I was driving over the hill with Cerepilo and she's, her specialty is locally produced ceramics and we're just chatting and I was like, that is of interest to me and she made it happen. So she trained me, she gave me the opportunity. I was able to develop myself in a way that my mind, the questions that I'm asking about archaeology and the ways I am understanding these things and how they connect are really, they came to a coalescence because I was brave enough to be like, hey, I'm here and I'm interested. Let's do this. And that's what I would encourage people to do. Thank you so much. Cerepilo is my Yoda, my Sierra Yoda also. So we share that certainly. Next, Mike Taylor, NWB Environmental Services. I just want to say that I met Mike at Columbia, I don't know how many years ago now in the lab there and I wanted to go to California and I found out that he lived in California and plan on going back, I think, and I was like, we've got to make stuff happen. So we've been collaborating on various projects now for some time and I'm so happy to introduce him. Mike Taylor, please take it away. All right. I'm very happy to be here. I'm starting my stopwatch just like Michael so we can keep this thing moving. I am the founder and president of NWB Environmental Services, a small CRM firm based in San Diego. We have satellite offices in the Bay Area as well as Los Angeles. We're a minority-owned business. We are a disabled veteran-owned business. Founded in 2012. Before then I was a field tech for a few years. We primarily focus on supporting utility firms. We've done work for Southern California Gas. Right now we do the bulk of our work for SDG&E and Verizon Wireless, which takes us all across the state of California, Northern and Southern California, and we do county and city other clients work like that for service. I don't have any more comments about the new administration, perhaps issues in CRM. Some of those are addressed, but one interesting one is for some reason there's little to no black archeologists in the West. And I'm not sure why that phenomenon exists. It's been that way for a while, but it seems like something worth mentioning. I don't know where it starts to interest black folks in studying anthropology and even archeology, but it's just an interesting phenomenon. I think there's a void of black folks and environmental services in general actually. Potential jobs. We've actually, we've hired a couple of folks out of Albert's program there, with no experience. That's one thing I'm sort of really big on is not necessarily requiring a lot of experience, really giving folks opportunities and especially just by default, being diverse on the top, our staff and the folks who hired really runs the gamut in terms of diversity. So with diversity at the top, you don't need any kind of diversity programs or anything like that for all folks to get opportunities here. We're just starting an on-call with Southern California gas and so we would certainly be accepting resumes for our field tech on-call roster and we're always looking for folks in Southern California as well. We've done, yeah, internships, we've done that locally from local community colleges, from their programs. And I think in terms of new hires with little experience, I think in archaeology programs, I think it's great to focus on the excavations and surveys are important, but I think a little bit more emphasis should be put on insights and teaching new up-and-coming archaeologists about monitoring and being on construction sites since that is such a huge, there's so much time spent on construction sites and that's a really big part of what's done in CRM, but for some reason it doesn't seem to be, it could be emphasized a little bit more in our programs and at community colleges. They shouldn't show up at the door of a CRM with something as simple as not owning a reflector vest and hard hat. But I think they should really receive much more insight in on monitoring and filling out monitoring reports and things like that. It might seem a little minor, but it's kind of major actually. So that's my five minutes and I'll yield to Dr. Gonzalez. Thanks, Mike. And if you wouldn't mind, I wonder if you wouldn't mind taking a bonus minute to tell us a little bit about your TV show. I think that people should know and it's a good opportunity for a plug. I wasn't expecting that. I'm also a filmmaker and I own a film production company, NWB Imaging. And one of the shows that we produce, which is on KPBS, which is a local PBS station here in San Diego, it's called Theater Corner. And I'm actually the host and I interview black actors, directors, playwrights, film professionals. We just got extended for a second season and we're doing interviews now. And we had a chance to interview a lot of folks that you'll probably recognize like Felicia Rashad and Debbie Allen and Dule Hill. And so Hal Linden for those of you that are as old as me that grew up with Barney Miller. I had a chance to sit down with the real, the actual Barney Miller, so that was pretty exciting. But yes, that's kind of what I do in my off time is host this particular show, which you can find on PBS app and website as well. Thanks Albert. Honestly, I'm not into theater, but I am now. Having watched your show, I've watched lots of episodes at this point. Do, do, do watch it, do tune in. And finally, it's, and I'm not sure if it's pronounced Addy or 80. Please let me know 80. Eddie Whitaker, Far Western. Great. Thanks. And I'm going to apologize in advance because I've been sitting here listening to everybody for the last hour and my dogs have been silent until right as Michael was finishing up and then they started barking. So hopefully they'll still stay quiet. Well, thank you so much. And I'm going to try to keep it really brief because I'm at the end of the line here. And most people have covered everything that I was going to talk about anyway. So I'm Eddie Whitaker. I'm one of the principles of far Western anthropological research group. We are a CRM firm that is headquartered in Davis just outside of Sacramento. And we're just under a hundred employees right now. And we have offices in our main office in Davis and then we have an office in Sausalito and two offices in Nevada. One in Carson City and one in Las Vegas or actually Henderson. And we work for all kinds of different federal and state and private clients. We do a lot of CalTrans work. We do a lot of PG&E work. We work for Army Corps of Engineers and the Navy. And then we also have just kind of various other clients. And one of the things that far Westerns always thought was important and not just to say that the other people who have spoken don't feel that way as well. But we really kind of put at the very front of our mission is that we're learning about the past through the work that we're doing. And so we try to steer ourselves towards projects that have archaeological interest. And we certainly still do a lot of the other stuff that everybody does, but that's kind of one of our goals. We like to stay active in publishing and also in outreach. And so we have a big outreach program. We also have professional staff who do only GIS. And we have professional staff who do only production. And so that is something that, you know, there's a lot of pieces that go into cultural resource management. And we have people who spend all their days making, you know, making our work products look really good. And so that's actually another entree into CRM is, you know, maybe you're not somebody who likes to be in the field all the time, but, you know, it's that there's other ways that people contribute to what we do. And the one thing, actually there are two things that no one has covered yet that I just wanted to share from my perspective. And so the first one is about writing. So I really loved what Desiree and what Mike said about, you know, communication and note taking and learning how to speak to a variety of people. The other thing that like permeates all of what we do is writing, right? So if you're in the field and you're recording a site, how you describe the site, you can't ever get that back if you don't do it right. And the way that we communicate what we have found both in, you know, the documents that we write that only agencies read and in the documents that we write that the public sees, all of that communication comes through writing. And so I think when I see, you know, myself coming up through CRM and the people that I've seen over the 15 or so years that I've been doing CRM who I see kind of grow into new roles and companies are the ones who can write. And so for those of you that are, you know, looking to get into a career in this, taking a few writing classes could be a really useful, you know, I mean, just, I think it's under appreciated kind of how important just being able to put together, you know, a well-written email or a well-written memo can be just in terms of what people think about you. So that was one thing. And the other thing that I think people haven't really covered and I should back up and say that for Western, we've got a lot of work going on right now, part of our Navy contract. We happen to have won a bunch of big surveys. So we've got 100,000 acres to survey in Fallon, Nevada. So we're going to be having people walk the desert for like three years. So if people want to go out to Nevada, send me a CV. We are definitely looking for folks to do that. And we have a couple of other big projects. But one of the things nobody has really talked about, and I don't know what was clear to me when I was an undergrad and thinking I wanted to get at least a job in CRM to see what it was like, is that it's going to be pretty rare that coming out of your undergrad that you're just going to get hired full-time for a job. And so that was my expectation. I thought I'll put in an application. I'll get hired. This will be great. I'll have a job, right? Because that's the way any other job I had applied for works. But the way that CRM work often works is that you get hired on a job by job basis. So you might get hired to go do a particular survey and you get hired in chunks of five or 10 days. We end up with people that do a good job. And they end up working for us all the time. And then eventually get staff archeologist jobs that are full-time with benefits and stuff. But it's just good to know that landscape. And maybe we can talk a little bit more about that. I think I'm going to leave it at that. And then we'll go back over to Dr. Gonzalez. Great. Thank you so much. And I really appreciate your point about writing and about changing the way that we teach archeology so that students can be, you know, their careers can more easily, their lives can more easily fit expertise, more easily fit into the CRM sort of mold. We've had that problem forever. And I think that's actually a good way to segue into the Q&A if that's okay, because a lot of my questions are pretty deeply connected to that. Thank you all so much for your introductions and for the valuable information. I'm sure tons of students are out there now probably watching this in the future who are getting answers to questions that they didn't even know that they had. So if it's all right, I'll start with some questions. So I would like to know, because I think that as we all know, most anthropology archeology students don't really have any idea of what an archeologist does, whether academic or CRM, you know, every day what their everyday life is like and just kind of imagine it as a life purely in the field. And we all know that's untrue, but for some archeologists, it's more true than others. And I'm curious what your daily life is like, you know, you're nine to five or whatever, you know. So what is a typical day in your life as a CRM archeologist like for those of you who'd like to answer the question, and we can start with Hannah or with anyone sort of who feels compelled to raise their hand and answer. I'll be happy to start. Well, it's a little different now that I'm working from home nonstop, but the location I'm working is different. What I do, I do a lot of project management, which means that I am interacting with clients, I am tracking budgets, I am dealing with and helping people who are working on my projects to move parts of that forward, whether it's getting fieldwork arranged or processing the information that we got from being in the field and translating that into reporting. I do a lot of report editing. And now I'm also doing more sort of corporate things too in my new role, but I don't go into the field much. And in fact, it's a fairly rare thing for me these days and for awhile, but I spend a lot of time early in my career doing fieldwork and lab work, which provided a really good basis for the work that I'm doing now so that I can help the people who work with me on these projects. So it's a lot of looking at a computer, answering emails, so I'm talking on the phone, lots of Zoom calls and meetings. But one of the things that I really like about cultural resources management is that there's so many areas for growth. And even though I may be working on doing similar things on different projects, the content of those projects is really different. And so it's not boring and I'm always learning. And so I think that that's a really wonderful thing about this business. Thank you, Mike. I see your hand up, Mike Taylor. I'd like to comment really quickly on perhaps what it looks like for CRM field tech day to day and kind of talk about a couple of my experiences. I was that field tech that you just tell me where I need to go and I'll go and I'll be there. I'll take any project. And I think that sort of made me rather successful and I worked consistently and I just did a good job. And so that fed into my reputation. And so that's another good point. Your reputation is huge. CRM is a relatively small community. And so just pay attention to your reputation because it has almost everything to do with whether you're working or not working. I've been on one really long project. It was an Edison project, building a transmission line. And so I lived out of a hotel in Palm Desert for 14 months straight. And all I did for 14 months was monitor construction and 14 months, not one artifact popped up. And so just understand that, but what I was doing was still very important. It's part of the whole compliance. But this is an example of the kind of work, kind of situation you may find yourself in. So perhaps you should think about, okay, well, how does that affect if I'm married and I got to go out of town like that? This is in Palm Desert. I live in San Diego. So what does that actually look like? Living in a hotel for five, six days out of a week and working extremely long hours during each day. This is 10 to 12 hour days. And in being in the elements, this was desert work. Being in the elements during the summer and winter of the desert. And so these are a lot of things to consider to think about whether being a field tech is actually for you. And I think about, this is the non-romanticized version of an archeologist. And so just kind of think about it and think through it that way. That's all. Just kind of really take a realistic look at what it means to be a field tech. Christina? Or is there someone else who is going to speak right now? I'm sorry. Go ahead, Christina. Okay. To add on to your words. I prefer field work. I'm not out of town all that much. I'm fortunate enough to just commute from my home. But I was, I want to highlight having to be adaptable and not knowing exactly where you might have to be, the conditions you're going to work in, the hotel you're staying in, the people you might have to meet. Being on a construction site is stressful. If you haven't been there before. Again, highlighting the fact that you need all the protection gear. And, um, and, uh, yeah, I think from a field perspective, I enjoy it because I love being outside. It's a different sort of stress than if you're in the office day in and day out. Um, so it, it depends on how you want to navigate where your career goes, you know, and, and again, voice where you want to be and create those opportunities for yourself. That's all. Thank you. I see a Desiree blue hand Desiree and then Mike I think we were on the same project, Michael. I was out in the Mojave for four months, living out of a hotel. Um, and I'm glad you brought up about, you know, sometimes you don't find anything. Um, When I was actually working for Cox stone at the time and we had another individual who they brought out from another state. And he was disappointed that we weren't finding everything every something every day. And the material culture from the state that he was from was very different from what you find in the desert in California. And he was like, so disappointed and so mad and frustrated and stuff like that. And I said, I am so happy that I'm not finding a single thing, because that means the ancestors and their items are not being impacted. That's why I'm there. Um, so you really have to have a really good mindset and not to tell you guys to not be archeologists, but please don't become an archeologist if you only want to find cool things because that's not the point. The point is to make sure and it's more especially for me, not necessarily the people out in the desert where my ancestors, but they're still the ancestors and their history and their items deserve to be protected. And if you're not going to do your due diligence to be, um, you know, off your phone, making sure you're looking at the ground to look for that stuff, then you, this is not the job for you because you're out there. You're the last hope for the, for the native people and for the ancestors. And of course I'm just focusing on, on, on native stuff, but also all people stuff. You're the last line of defense to make sure that things aren't being impacted. And if you don't have that heart and that determination and that words are involved to be out there for 10 hours a day and to be attentive, of course, making sure you don't get run over by the tractors or whatever. But if you're not there, um, to do those things, then please do something else. Thank you, Desiree. And now Mike Newton. Yeah, you know, so a lot of the folks that are on this panel, like, like, Hannah and Desiree and Mike and myself, I mean, most of us are staff or senior staff, people within our organizations. I mean, I spend most of my, honestly, I spend almost all my day in meetings, particularly tribal consultation meetings. They're very complicated. The very, very intense, as an archaeologist coming out of school, I never thought I would be doing this and, but it's work that I love. Um, if I can make a recommendation. When I started this, when I started this business, I won't tell you how long ago, but it was a long time ago. Um, I didn't find out about CRM until I was a senior at UC Davis. And it was taught to me by graduate students. Never mentioned by professors. That's changed. I think I see a lot more engagement from professors and teaching students about this. But I really want to, I want to really want to emphasize the importance in graduate students and teaching you the next step of your career, both in how to get into grad school, um, classes, but also how to outreach to companies because a lot of the graduate students, they, those guys cut, you know, those men and women cut their teeth doing culture resource work. And in some ways they're, they're as good or better at telling you how to, um, navigate those first few years out of college. So then some of us old timers who haven't had to do it for a while. And the same goes for the professors who also have not been out there, uh, doing it for a while. I didn't notice like to them, it's just, you know, we're establishing our careers. And, uh, I want to, I want to highlight what Mike said about a reputation. Um, you know, this game, CRM is about competing against your friends and I'm playing with, with your competitors. Uh, you know, we team with a lot of people that are on here. Um, I'm teaming with some of these folks right now. And I really like all these folks. And next week we're going to be competing against each other on another project. You cannot ever afford to burn a bridge here because you never know where that person is going to be. You, you slight somebody now as a tech, they're going to be a PI and a firm in 10 years. Uh, uh, don't ever burn a bridge. Um, it's just, uh, Mike said, like Mike says, your reputation is, is worth everything. And it's how you network to get jobs. If you get a good reputation, people will look out for you and help you get work. Thank you. I think that's a, that's a great way. Unless, unless, uh, ADS something to add, I think it's a great way to work ourselves into the second question. Um, so, so considering the, the usual constitution of anthropology undergraduate degrees. And I know in the CRM world, there are a lot of complaints about this. And we've heard, you'll, you'll all allude to some of them. Um, how should California undergraduate students, uh, prepare for a job in CRM. And I know that some of these things have been mentioned already, but I'm especially concerned for how low income students might best prepare, uh, who aren't able to sort of go off at a moment's notice necessarily for a project that'll only last say, you know, three weeks. Um, so how, how do you recommend that they, uh, you know, for a field school, you know, or something, um, that they prepare, uh, for a job in CRM. And, uh, again, unless there's someone compelled to answer, I'll start with Hanna and Mike, Mike Taylor. Oh, I could say really quickly that for one thing, I wouldn't wait till like you're a senior to start pursuing archeological work as a field tech. Uh, I was still in community college and, and, and when I had some of the very basic courses down, I started, uh, working professionally as a, as a field tech. Um, uh, that's, that's one, that's the first thing that kind of come to my mind and, and you know, and having a LinkedIn account set up and joining perhaps some archeology groups within the LinkedIn. Uh, so, so certainly don't, don't put it off thinking that because you don't have a degree that you may not necessarily have any opportunity out there to, to work. Um, uh, as far as, I don't know, I was, I don't know any students that are, that aren't low income. Uh, that part of the question, uh, you know, um, you know, we have our field techs that don't have vehicles, but we, we have company vehicles. So maybe, you know, as long as you can get to the office, you know, I mean, I think there's, I think there's ways of, of still working if you're low income. That's all. Thanks. I think next is a Desiree and then, uh, it'd be nice if I unmuted myself. Um, I actually am, uh, came from a loan income first generation, um, family background. And I actually did my first, um, archeological field school in high school. And that was thanks to the trio programs, which is a federal, uh, program that funds a number of different, um, programs for first generation, um, as well as low income students. And this happened to be through upper bound. I also did another field school when I was an undergrad. And that was through the Mellon minority fellowship program. So there are a number of different, um, grants that you can apply to in order to, um, get that field experience. Cause what's what won't, what's really important is not only paying for the tuition to go to a field school, but also paying yourself to live. Right. Cause, um, when I was in school, like I had to, cause my family didn't give me any money. I had to make sure all money that I, um, um, got through my work study jobs, fed myself, but then also save that money for, um, buying my books, buying my airplane ticket back and forth from Philly, back to California, et cetera. Um, so the society for American archeology has a number of different scholarships that you can do to get archeological training. I was chair for a number of years with the Native American scholarships committee and that's specifically for indigenous peoples of the Americas. Then there's now what's called the hugs or the, um, the grants that are for underrepresented minorities, um, groups and, um, believe the deadlines actually still there. And so that money specifically geared for you to get, um, archeological experience, um, to pay for those field schools and or pay for lectures, for instance, um, section 106 training or anything like that, as long as you can show that you're going to be, um, gaining some type of knowledge that's going to be useful for you in an archeological career and, or, um, informative people that are not archeologists, um, information to help them protect their cultural resources. Um, the other big thing too is if you happen to be out of school that has a graduate program, some graduate students get NSFs and then they have to go and do some digging. And so you can, you know, volunteer with that graduate student to help them dig their site. Um, I know there's some trajectory of some, um, graduate students are now really more focused on kind of museum collections, but if they've gotten their own grant, they might have some money that's available for you to get that education. Um, I know that when we were running the Pima Catalina iron archeology school, we always set aside some money, um, from the tuition of all of the other students that were paying. Don't tell them so that we could discount the tuition for people that couldn't afford it. So we actually funded a Native American person for our five week field school so that, um, you know, he only needed to pay 1,500 as opposed to the $4,000, um, that was necessary. So, you know, um, you know, using talking to your advisor or the department chair if you're an undergrad or talking to the professors and see who they can reach out to on your behalf to see, to get you that field experience is great. Um, I know that cobstone does internships with Cal State Long Beach. Um, and we were doing that with the Niagara coordinator. So we were having the students come every week to cobstone to learn, um, museum curation standards. And at the same time helping, um, California State, uh, Cal State Long Beach to get into compliance with their Niagara. So that also included, um, going through all the soil samples to make sure that they're sorted through so that we can identify any ancestral remains or other items that would fall under Niagara. So there, there are ways that you can get that experience. I also, um, when I was a first year graduate student, student got a, um, was an intern at Crow Canyon and they paid me to learn about, um, you know, the archaeology out there. I was a lab intern so I learned a whole bunch of lab methods up there. So there's internships that are paid and unpaid that you can, you can look into. There's a whole bunch of different grants. Um, I know I applied for a whole bunch of different grants to, to, to gain that, that experience. So it's, if you want to do it, it's out there, but it does take a lot of time to identify all of that stuff. Thank you so much for that. You know, it's, um, I feel like you're a clearinghouse of, uh, of these, uh, these opportunities, you know, my students, uh, you know, they asked me pretty often how it is that they can, how in the world they could possibly, you know, pay thousands to do, you know, four week or four week plus field school in the summer when they can't possibly afford to take that much time off. Even if, you know, I mean, and much less to pay to take that kind of time off in addition, right? Um, so fantastic ideas. Thank you. I think next is, uh, uh, Eddie and then, uh, Evan. Um, I wanted to pivot a little bit off of what Mike was saying and put the, the positive spin on, you know, Mike saying, don't, uh, don't make any, you know, don't burn any bridges because we're such a small community. I think the positive side of that is, um, for students that we are such a small community that I think professors at CSUs and UCs in California and a lot of the community colleges have, you know, went to school with people who are running CRM firms and, um, you know, no, no people in the community. And so, um, you know, I think when I'm hiring techs or at any level recommendations are the number one, um, deciding factor. And so I think, you know, students who are on this college shouldn't be afraid to leverage, you know, if Dr. Valdes is your professor at Cal State East Bay, you know, say, hey, I want to go find a CRM job, who do you know, and, um, and, you know, leverage those, those relationships. Um, and then, uh, the other thing, I, you know, and it actually was the same forum two years ago. I think Dr. Valdes, you're in the audience and you asked, well, what the same question, right? And I think it, um, you know, there, it was kind of an epiphany for me. It should have been an epiphany much earlier, but, um, I mean, I should have had that epiphany much earlier. But, um, I think I ended up hiring one of your students and it was probably somebody that I wouldn't have considered the fact that they didn't have a field school, except that I think my advice then was, well, don't be afraid to tell, you know, tell someone who's hiring you. Yes, I realize I don't have a field school, but it's because my circumstances didn't allow me to, you know, spend a summer doing a field school. And I think that that's, um, which probably gets us into the kind of the, the next, you know, the next set of questions about internships and diverse workplaces. But I think diversity includes socioeconomic diversity too. And so, um, I think we're all interested in enhancing that. So don't be afraid to just talk to people about it. Thank you for that. Thank you for hiring that student. I think, uh, Evan was, uh, was up next, Evan. Yeah. Um, I think there's a lot of, you know, a lot of ways to come into this. Um, and, you know, all these jobs, you know, almost every job posting is going to say, uh, you know, to do a field, you know, you know, you know, but those are like laws, right? You know, so you can, you can try to sell yourself otherwise. You know, you can say, Hey, I haven't had a, I haven't had a field school, but you know, I've done these things. Hey, you know, we, We, you know, sometimes after big field projects, we've got just tons of lab work, so, you know, like, I, you know, when I was at the, when I was at Berkeley, I volunteered, did internships, get to grad students and with, you know, graduate professors doing lab work in the basement of the art. I mean, it's right below you there and, you know, that's, you can say, oh, hey, you know, I did, you know, I did pollen analysis with, you know, with Celeste or, you know, all these sort of things are ways in. And I mean, one of the big things about the field school is, you know, it's a right of passage, obviously, and it's, you know, it does, it does give you skills. But it's also just kind of a way of us being able to be like, we can trust you. You're not like, you know, be a looter, right? So there's an element to two things and teach you how we want things done. I would say, you know, like, like Michael said earlier, you know, don't wait until you're, you know, you've graduated, you know, you can start talking to people in Sierra. I'm just saying, you know, hey, I'm available two days a week. If you got things, you know, you can, you can have me do these are the skills I have. And, you know, the other thing is that, you know, the people touched on a variety of, of scholarships and things. I mean, I think those are, you know, those are super useful. You know, especially if you do a, if you do a field school, that's incredible. A lot of community colleges have a field methods classes and, you know, those can kind of substitute and, you know, maybe you're doing two days a week for a semester instead of, you know, four days, four weeks in a summer or something and, you know, other good, really good ways of getting those sort of skills. And then I think the last thing I would say is really take advantage of students of student rates at the various archaeological associations, like the Society for American Archaeology Society for California Archaeology and the reduce, and then the volunteer opportunities to staff those meetings for free. And going and doing those, I mean, you get great information, you get, you see what people are doing and don't hesitate to go up to people who you might think are unapproachable. Every single archaeologist was where you are, right. So, you know, someone might seem like they're a giant in the field or, you know, unapproachable and just go up and talk to them and, you know, see how that goes. And, you know, the worst thing that happens is that they're addicted to you and if they're addicted to you, you don't want to work with them anyways. Well, thank you. I'm seeing double. So I see you have two, two manifestations here. You're kind of become a part of a person, whichever one you're on now stay on that one because we can hear you on that one. The other one seems to break up having just an FYI quite a bit. Let me, I'll move. Oh, sorry, Mike, I see you. Mike Newell. Yeah, there you go. Sorry about that. Just a couple quick things. One, we're going to know where to come back to it. But I, you know, internships are pretty remarkable way to get your career started. Because when you're done, down with the internship, you're a known quantity to that organization. They've vetted you for a semester. And you know more about that company and how it works in anybody else applying to that job. It's a great way. It puts you at advantage, even with people with more experience than you. So I know we'll talk about that later, but I want to put that out there. A couple other quick things. The Society for American Archaeology and the Archaeological Institute of America every year puts out the fieldwork opportunity bulletin. It actually usually comes out roughly this time of year. It's actually how I got started. And it has everything under the sun all over the planet. A lot of field schools, sometimes some paid gigs and a lot of times the volunteer gigs. And that's actually how I started was a two week volunteer out in the Arizona desert. I just had to get there and they put me up and I just had to have money for food. And so I would be a little creative and don't limit yourself to a traditional field school. There are other volunteer opportunities that can help fill that in. There is one thing I wanted to touch on. Again, I think we'll talk more about it at the internship is the issue with lower income students. I'm going to turn that around and say I think that the industry has an obligation to change that. For decades, this has been a field that you would only get a full-time job if you had a graduate degree. And that self limits to people who have funding to get graduate degrees. And not only that, who have the financial confidence that they could get a graduate degree in anthropology or archeology and not another traditional very money making career oriented field. And if I was going to opine, I would say that is frankly why we have such a white field is because we have self-selected for a certain small cross section of the population that felt like they could afford to do this. And it's really a comment upon us to everybody on this panel to break that. And to work with folks coming out with an undergraduate program and give them full-time jobs to reach out to underrepresented communities. To find ways for folks to get transportation to projects, be flexible with schedules, be flexible with field working hours. We have a lot of homework to do, I think, to fix that. And that's on us. And that shouldn't be on the students to fix that. I love the way you put that, Mike. Thank you so much. And I think that's a perfect segue into the question about internships. I think I'll just put together a couple of the questions that I sent out to you because one of the things I was going to ask is if your firm has any internships to offer if you know any of that do. But I think that's more of a yes or no, that can be a yes or no. It's something that you talk a little bit more about in the breakout groups in the interest of time then. Why don't I ask, does your firm offer any internships or entry level positions for students with little or no experience? And then also, what are the greatest obstacles from your end to creating internships? And I'll tell you why I ask because in my efforts in NorCal and in New Mexico to co-produce archeology internships with my museum you know, front some of the hourly pay for it, it's still hard even when my museum says we are willing to pay an hourly wage for this student to work with you part of the time because of overhead costs insurance and things like that. And I wonder from your end what the biggest obstacles are to creating internships, whether it's overhead insurance or internal resistance or whatever, and also if you have them. So I don't see any little virtual hands. Oh, I see a couple of Mike. Why don't you go ahead with what you're saying and then we'll move to Mike. Yeah, I'm just going to roll right in there. So we just this past year have created a diversity quality and inclusion internship firm wide within our organization. All of our practices have reached out and to different universities and colleges. We have interns starting this year. It's a paid internship. I think it's like 20 bucks an hour. We set you up with computers, equipment, everything. There's essentially a curriculum that comes with it. There's networking. This year, particularly, I mean, let's be honest, the last four years of the past administration were miserable, but it brought so many issues, particularly around diversity and inclusion that we just had not been addressing. And so our company is actually working with a consulting firm to help us fix some of that. So we have an internship now in archaeology, specifically reaching out to unrepresented communities to help fix some of that. That's going to be every year, every semester. I'm glad to hear that it's going to keep coming through because I got your message on that. I thought, wow, this is fantastic. And they sent it out to my students and their response right now. I was like, well, you know, I don't have any, I don't have any field experience right now. Doesn't matter. No experience. Yeah, no experience. All right. Good to hear you hear that students. All right. Yeah, no experience. The idea is to teach you and help you start your career. It's not, I'm not looking for, you know, the most experienced person, I'm looking for somebody that's going to help you start your future. Thank you. So Mike Taylor and then Christina Spelman. Okay, I'll be really quick. And we've done interns, not a formal intern program, but just when, you know, interacting with the professors at local community colleges recognize some a couple of the students that are, you know, that are, that are really enthusiastic and motivated. And I absolutely do not entertain having interns with no pay. So basically, we put them on payroll and they, they shadow some of the experience field techs out in the field or on monitoring. If they, you know, able to grow legs, then they actually get the opportunity to monitor on their own as well. And then they're just field tech by name, but basically they're, they're, they're interns by name, but they're, they're basically field techs. And so like Mike said, it's all about getting the individual, the experience that they wouldn't otherwise have. And I want to comment on what was talked about earlier about field schools. I never attended a field school. I started working when I was in community college and just established the experience, established the resume, and that spoke for me going forward after that. So, you know, if I, if I get two people applying, applying for a field tech position and one is just have field school and beliefs. And the other one has had some monitoring experience in California. That one, that California experience as a field tech, even if it's only a day only monitored one week, that that looks more appealing to me than some field school in an exotic place. So I wouldn't be concerned if I was a student that, that, you know, if you can't get a grant or a scholarship for a field school, don't think it's, it's not, it's not, there's no chance for you because you don't have a field school. That's all. Thank you, Mike. I think we'll go to Christina and then Evan and then I think, Sarah, let me know what you think. I think it's probably a good time to break out after that. So Christina, please go ahead. I just wanted to mention, keep your eyes open for opportunities because for myself and my thesis work, I was able to recruit some students from UCSC and their interns and their internship counted as a course at UCSC. They had to do the footwork of contacting the professor, but it was legit. And it makes a good connection between academia and the CRM world. And they're learning on the ground what CRM work looks like. It was an analysis based sort of project. They're basically soaring through a bunch of rocks looking for locally produced ceramics from the mission. They had to write a paper in the end, but there are various internships out there. Just keep your eyes open. That's it for me. Thank you, Evan. Yeah, you know, so we are, we are in the process currently of establishing a internship program specifically. But that doesn't mean that we don't do it otherwise. You know, to speak generally to the field, and this is not so much a problem at Paleo last, but in other places that I've worked in the past, you know, part of the difficulty with internships is that, you know, you either need to pay somebody or you have to give them work that could not be filled by a paid person. You know, it has to be like really just their benefit only, right? You can't like replace another worker. And so in past companies, that's been the big hurdle that I've run into. You know, we're not, you know, we're not operating that way. So like Mike, you know, we pay. And, you know, really, I think the thing with us is, you know, trying to find the appropriate amount of time and project work to ensure that the internship is fruitful for both us and the students. Yeah, we just want to make sure that it's, you know, beneficial to everybody. And, you know, I think a lot of these things will be a bit easier as we get back into more, you know, office work. It's a little harder to mentor digitally. I mean, I found that even with our paid staff. You know, the other thing is, you know, at least one person on this call has, you know, worked for time for us. You know, and that's, you know, especially when it comes to, you know, little office things, you know, bits of writing, bits of research, you know, lab work. Those are things that we can, you know, kind of give you internship credit if you want it, or just kind of hire you as a part-time person. And, you know, get you as many hours as you can do as many hours as we have. Really the only time that part-time becomes a big issue is when it comes to field work, obviously. Well, thank you so much. And thanks to all of you for tuning in today with our fantastic panel. I think we're ready to go to breakout groups. For those of you who'd like to stay behind and do our emulation of the typical cookies in the foyer piece. Again, every panelist will have their own breakout rooms, so please feel free to join them. And I think I might pop about there too.