For communication scholarship to be meaningful, I feel it must often go beyond the academy to engage in constructive dialogue with diverse communities. Such dialogue ensures scholarship is grounded in the needs and particulars of current societal issues and increases the potential transformative power of communication research. To attend to these core goals, I have taken part in various public scholarship actions and outreaches, founded communities devoted to public scholarship, facilitated my students' creation and participation in public scholarship, and presented to other academics on public scholarship.

Sample Actions:

•    Conservation Voters of New Mexico (CVNM) , The Wilderness Society, UNM Resource Center for Raza Planning, and Arts de Aztlan outreach project. Working with these organizations and a group of dedicated graduate students, we are examining local rural and urban Hispanic environmental meaning systems via creative expression public workshops. This research is dedicated to connecting and empowering seemingly disparate Hispanic communities, illuminating an existing but seldom heard enviro-cultural vernacular to help these communties write themselves back into the land, and informing environmental advocacy groups' message-making to advocate for these communities at the policy scale. 2008-present.
•    Scholar spotlight radio interview on ecotourism, communication, and whale watching. Interview aired in New Zealand, and internationally via the internet. Fresh FM (99.4 FM, 95.4 FM, 88.4 FM) in Nelson, New Zealand. September 2007.
•    Faculty consultant, Hablamos!, annual event of La Semilla Institute that engages local schools in environmental research projects (with leadership of interdisciplinary graduate students) in effort to collaboratively build community, innovative approaches to the environment, and cross-cultural and intergenerational awareness. 2007-present.
•      “Framing the Message” workshop leader with Canadian and American whale watch boat naturalists preparing for summer tourist season in highest international concentration of whale watching. Using my research, I presented observations and led discussion and dialogue about successes, challenges, and strategies in framing evocative, engaging, and empowering messages about endangered whales and their ecosystems. The Whale Museum, Friday Harbor, San Juan Island. s 2007.
•      Total Projection Action, part of small group of transdisciplinary academics and artists who created an interactive communication event in the heart of campus the evening before presidential election. Projected real-time public-created "virtual graffiti," slides, digital text, video, transparencies, and other public visual communication images at a massive scale onto walls of buildings in Red Square. Red Square, University of Washington. 2004.
•      Community Mural assistant facilitator in Seattle. As part of CROW (Creative Revolution On Walls), facilitated large-scale political discourse among hundreds of community members who took part in murals outside the Rem Koolhaas-designed downtown Seattle Central Library. Group-generated project responding to September Project. Sept. 11, 2004.
•      "Foreign Expert" guest. China Central Television (all-English channel, CCTV 9) talk show about culture. More than 200 million viewers. Beijing, China. s 2001.

Communities:

•      Founder and Director. Nature, Culture, and Public Scholarship Research Collaborative, a transdisciplinary network of 55 faculty, graduate students, and practitioners engaged in interdisciplinary and applied critical cultural research approaches to human relations with the environment. 2004-2007. Continues to exist at University of Washington.
•      Founding member, student chapter of The September Project, an international project started by UW Professor David Silver that on Sept. 11 annually involves public libraries and citizens in organizing free public discussions, events, and actions. 2004.

Student facilitation:

•      Thesis Adviser, for Erin McGee in the UW Comparative History of Ideas Program. Erin's project was both academic and activist, focusing on theory and strategies of collectively run organizations. As part of her project, Erin collaboratively created a grocery buyers' co-up within her urban neighborhood that had no grocery store. 2006.
•      "What is Your Meaning?" Facilitated UW Interpersonal Communication students in their formulation of student-generated, course content-focused community activist events for the day before the presidential election. Students organized a public chalk mural on key terms of the election and asked passers by to write meanings for terms like "the draft," "the economy," and "freedom." Students also organized a march across campus with signs and performance, engaging pedestrians and drivers. Nov. 1, 2004.

Selected Presentations:

•      Milstein, Tema.  "Survive, Critique, and Create: Guideposts for Promoting Social Justice and Environmental Justice through Radical Pedagogy, Eco Pedagogy, and Public Scholarship." Communication and Instruction Interest Group. Western Communication Association. February 2007. Seattle, WA.
•      Milstein, Tema. (with John Carr, Irina Gendelman, and Giorgia Aiello). "Political Discourse and a Community Mural: Getting Our Hands Dirty with Public Scholarship." Communication Department Alumni Graduate Work Showcase, October 2004. University of Washington. Seattle, WA.
•      Milstein, Tema. "‘You Will Use Your Ideas for Great Benefit:' Public Scholarship in the United States Post-WTO and 9/11." Co-sponsored with theme sessions. International Communication Association, May 2004. New Orleans, LA.