The Evolution of the Sierra Speaker Series, with Elizabeth Gardner

This is a 12-minute listen.

Following the grand opening of the Donner Memorial State Park Visitor Center in 2015, the Sierra Speaker Series was launched in 2016 as a training program for volunteer docents. Over the years, it has grown to a larger, more formal format, allowing subject matter experts to hold conversations with the community about sensitive topics covering the rich natural and cultural history of the Sierra Nevada region.

We hear from Elizabeth Gardner, who represented the volunteer base assisting with the program planning, for insight into the evolution of the Sierra Speaker Series, and what we can learn from this development.

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Full Transcript:

Sierra State Parks Foundation, Host: [00:00:00] Welcome listeners. We're recording from Truckee, California today. I'm your host, Denise with the Sierra State Parks Foundation. Today joining us is Elizabeth Gardner. Elizabeth, I know that you are an active community member who wears many hats. What hat are you wearing today? And perhaps you can share a bit of your background with our listeners.

Elizabeth Gardner: Sure.

I suppose the most important hat, Denise, that I'm wearing today is first as a volunteer historical docent at Donner Memorial State Park, a volunteer position that I love and as a volunteer helping with the Sierra Speaker Series, which is put on by the Foundation and the State Park, along with the Truckee Library.

My background is mostly in International Affairs. I started out as an employee of the US Federal Government and working in foreign policy, and then I moved on to working in universities in [00:01:00] international programs.

Sierra State Parks Foundation: The Sierra Speaker Series began in 2016 to connect folks to the rich cultural and natural history of the area. It totally makes sense that with your background, that you've naturally fallen into planning the Speaker Series as well. And for context, folks, over the years, the topics have ranged from musicians performing their originals about the Donner Party,

to mountain lions and prominent local historical figures, to even the Chinese population that was essential to the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad. We've spoken to Heidi about the beginning of the series and we've talked to Jeremy, who talked a bit more about the evolution of it, and today we're going to continue that conversation with Elizabeth.

Elizabeth is a passionate volunteer and community member who's really pushed the organizations to level up the [00:02:00] program. Elizabeth, what were your first impressions of the talks and how did you envision your future involvement with the series?

Elizabeth Gardner: My first impression, Denise, back to 2022, was that the Sierra Speaker Series was an underutilized but precious resource for the Truckee Tahoe area.

I felt like there was this enthusiastic support for the series from The Foundation from Donner Memorial State Park from Jeremy Lin who was the Chief Interpretive Ranger at the park at the time, and there was this small core group of attendees for this speaker series, but it wasn't getting the kind of participation and animation that a platform with that kind of power could potentially get.

Sierra State Parks Foundation: The bones were there, but we just needed to add some meat to those bones.

Elizabeth Gardner: There you go. Exactly.

Sierra State Parks Foundation: The Foundation and California State [00:03:00] Parks have really benefited from your involvement because of your unique position. You've bridged the community that was asking for more of an intellectual conversation with this existing program that provided the stage for that to happen.

Furthermore, thanks to your academic background and your network, the planning committee has expanded. Its. Presenters network and has brought in some incredible academics and subject matter experts. Can you share a bit about your first experiment that you proposed to really push us towards this new direction?

Elizabeth Gardner: This experiment was conducted in the fall of 2022 with support from Jeremy Lin and The Foundation and staff at the State Park. And that was to bring in an historian Dr. Roland Hsu, who was the [00:04:00] Director of Research for the Stanford Project on the Chinese railroad workers. And Dr. Hsu had been working for quite a long time with original sources and with secondary sources to learn more and more about the Chinese railroad workers.

And so we invited him to speak in the Sierra Speaker Series in October 2022. And we simultaneously engaged a large number of co-sponsors in the greater Sierra Nevada region as partners in this event and asked those co-sponsors to invite their own stakeholders, their own constituencies to the event as well.

The result of having the co-sponsorship and doing a lot of marketing for Dr. Hsu's talk was an overflow crowd, which was the first time I at least had seen that at the Sierra Speaker [00:05:00] Series and at a level of deep engagement with him as a speaker that showed to me a pretty substantial demonstration of interest in substantive challenging topics regarding the Sierra Nevada region.

We had many people asking many more questions than there was time to provide the night that he spoke at Donner Memorial State Park.

Sierra State Parks Foundation: You touched on so many things that I wanna bring back. But I'll start with the Speaker Series is entering its ninth year of existence and you've played a pivotal part, I would say that experiment was the catalyst of stepping into this new space for us and just, what are your thoughts on the evolution of the series?

How have you seen it grow and what direction would you like it to continue to move in?

Elizabeth Gardner: I've seen the [00:06:00] evolution in a couple of different ways. Number one, the number of people participating in the series as audience members has grown tremendously. We now are routinely filling a 90, a 100, 110 seats, standing room only in the room where this is held.

And previously, the number of people at this event might have been 20 to 30 people max. So number one, certainly an increase in audience size. Number two is an increase in audience participation to the point that I think the term audience isn't even correct anymore. Historically the series was usually a presenter talking to people who sat quietly in an audience, and there might have been some questions at the end. Increasingly this series has become a dialogue between, I would say, an expert presenter who certainly prepares some remarks, but then engages [00:07:00] in a dialogue, a conversation with the other participants.

That becomes more of a discussion as time goes on and less than a strict Q and A. So it's more animated, it's vibrant, it provides fatality to intellectual conversation in a way that a back and forth presenter and audience as a passive recipient of information cannot do. And the last I'd say, Denise, is that the variety of both speakers themselves and topics has changed a great deal. We are now covering some fairly sensitive topics. We're retaining some topics that are really just for entertainment and are a pleasure and we're engaging in some pretty substantial public education at the same time. So both presenters and the topics have I would say pretty dramatically increased in variety.

Sierra State Parks Foundation: I think that was a perfect summary of the points that you had [00:08:00] highlighted before that I wanted to bring back. The fact that, it used to be more of a talk at the audience and now it's become a dialogue. And the fact that we're including more voices into the narrative.

And, history is messy. It's not necessarily black or white. And just having this safe space for the community to engage and learn and discover is truly important. What are your thoughts on that? Why have a speaker series? Why is this important?

Elizabeth Gardner: That's a great question. I think that many people want to have vibrant lives that are vibrant, physically, vibrant emotionally, vibrant in their community, but also intellectually vibrant, right? In the same way that so many people in the Sierra Nevada mountains enjoy [00:09:00] really pushing themselves physically, outdoors. They wanna do the same thing intellectually.

They want to push themselves vigorously intellectually. And that comes from engaging with other people in many cases, and a community resource that can offer that kind of really rigorous intellectual engagement is a true value added to this Truckee Tahoe community. And I think it's really appealing to a lot of people because we've seen this incredible response from participants.

Sierra State Parks Foundation: This has really become a social community event that has allowed access to these subject matter experts to challenge the mind and help connect folks to the rich history that the area holds, and by understanding our history better, [00:10:00] there's a grown appreciation and hopefully future stewards are in the making for that.

Elizabeth Gardner: Yes, I think that's absolutely right, Denise.

Sierra State Parks Foundation: You have been very active in the planning process for this year's calendar. Has there been a talk that you're particularly looking forward to?

Elizabeth Gardner: A hundred percent. I'm most looking forward to hearing about the return of wolves to the state of California, which is our talk in June.

The state expert who's responsible for tracking and understanding the return of the wolves to California, is our speaker, and I'm excited to hear from them. I think the return of wolves to California raises a really important range of topics in terms of our natural world, but also our political world.

And I think that having that combination of talk of interest makes for a lively conversation.

Sierra State Parks Foundation: [00:11:00] Oh, absolutely. And listeners, if you're interested in seeing what the full calendar looks like, you can go to our website, SierraStateParks.org/events. Elizabeth, there was one more thing I wanted to touch on.

I think the evolution of this speaker series wouldn't have been possible without the diverse voices that we have brought to the planning committee, not just from the presenter standpoint. So I want to give a shout out to our partners, California State Parks and the library system of the Nevada County.

Elizabeth, is there any parting thoughts that you'd like to share with us?

Elizabeth Gardner: Denise, thank you so much for diving into this topic and cheers to the many people in the Tahoe Truckee region who are engaged in the in the speaker series. It makes for a lively community atmosphere.

Sierra State Parks Foundation: Absolutely.

Thank you, Elizabeth, for your time today.

Elizabeth Gardner: Thanks, Denise.