A celebration of Catherine Gautier’s career and outstanding contribution to science and education was held on June 7, thanks to the organizational efforts of fellow faculty member Leila Carvalho. Dr. Gautier will formally retire at the end of June, or, as Leila puts it, ‘Catherine will be beginning another exciting phase of her life.’
Dr. Catherine Gautier received her doctorate degree in Physics/Meteorology from the University of Paris in 1984. She spent several years in Quebec as a professor of Physics at the University of Quebec, Rimouski, and then accepted a position as the Associate Director for the California Space Institute at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography of the University of California, San Diego, where she worked as a Research Meteorologist. She has also served as the CEO for two independent businesses (Metsat Gautier and Planet Earth Science Inc.) and worked at the Space Science and Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Catherine served as the Director of the Institute of Computational Earth System Science (now the Earth Research Institute) at UC Santa Barbara for eight years. During that time, she continued to be a professor at UCSB in the Department of Geography where she has taught for the past twenty three years.
Dr. Gautier recently published two books with Cambridge University Press: Facing Climate Change Together and Oil, Water and Climate: An Introduction. Her main research areas are Global Climate Change Science and Education. With over 200 scientific publications in atmospheric and climate science, her education research addresses issues such as learner-centered pedagogy, misconceptions about climate change, and the utility of various pedagogical approaches (e.g., mock climate summits). She has developed computer modeling software that provides students with an interactive approach to climate alterations and predictions, and she focuses on the use of concept maps to evaluate learning and misconceptions. Professor Gautier regularly gives talks about climate change in various local, national, and international venues. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
