Pickett, Steward T. A.
Steward T. A. Pickett
Steward T. A. Pickett was born and raised in Louisville, KY. He is an urban ecologist and distinguished senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. He is an expert in the ecology of plants, landscapes, and urban ecosystems.
“My reading in sociology, philosophy, and history of science have led me to the conclusion that the openness and diversity of the scientific community are required for its success.” - Stewart T.A. Pickett, Ecology Society of America bio
Pickett, Steward. T. A. & P. S. White, (1985). The ecology of natural disturbances and patch dynamics. Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/C2009-0-02952-3
Marshall, V.J., Cadenasso, M.L., McGrath, B.P., Pickett, S.T.A., (2020). Patch atlas. Yale University Press.
Pickett, Steward.T.A., Cadenasso, M.L., Grove, J.M., Irwin, E.G., Rosi, E.J., Swan, C.M. (2019). Science for the sustainability city: Empirical insights from the Baltimore School of Urban Ecology. Yale University Press.
Grove, J.M., Cadenasso, Mary L., Pickett, S.T.A., Burch, W.R., & Machlis, G.E (2015). The Baltimore School of Urban Ecology: Space, scale and time for the study of cities. Yale University Press
Cadenasso, Mary L, Anne M Rademacher, and Steward T. A. Pickett. 2022. “Systems In Flames: Dynamic Coproduction Of Social–Ecological Processes.” Bioscience, 72 (8). Oxford University Press (OUP): 731-744. doi:10.1093/biosci/biac047.
Grabowski, Zbigniew J., Timon McPhearson, Marissa Matsler, Peter M. Groffman, and Steward T. A. Pickett. 2022. “What Is Green Infrastructure? A Study Of Definitions In Us City Planning”. Frontiers In Ecology And The Environment. Wiley. doi:10.1002/fee.2445.
Steward Pickett was born and raised in Louisville, KY. His father, Steward Sr., was a Boy Scout executive, and his mother, Barbara Pickett Frey, was a librarian. His father ran Boy Scout camps each summer, and one year Dr. Pickett got to join and spent a summer unattached to a troop, wandering and exploring. He gravitated to the woods, “The Kentucky forest in the summer was a magical place for me: Quiet, still, gentle air beneath the high canopy,” he reflected in an interview with the American Institute of Biological Sciences. After that summer at camp, his mother supported his interests by bringing him books on ecology. Realizing he could spend his life in the woods, Dr. Pickett realized ecology was his path.
Other family members supported and encouraged Dr. Pickett’s interests. His cousin, Carl Forbes, was a high school biology teacher and helped Dr. Pickett’s early identification of things in nature. These early role models showed Dr. Pickett that “a Black person can be a scientist” (American Institute of Biological Sciences, 2021).
He graduated in 1968 from attended Shawnee High School in Louisville, KY. He attended the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY, and received a Bachelor of Science in botany with honors in 1972. Dr. Pickett received a Ph.D. in botany from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL Ph.D. in 1977.
Dr. Pickett began his career in 1977 as an assistant professor at Rutgers University. In 1980, he received a Rutgers University Summer Faculty Fellowship. In 1982, Dr. Pickett was a Ford Foundation Consultant in Jakarta, Indonesia and a Fellow with the American Association for Advancement of Science. He was later promoted to associate professor before serving as the Hutcheson Memorial Forest Center director from 1984 – 1986. In 1987 he joined the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, where he has worked ever since. He is currently in the position of distinguished senior scientist. Dr. Pickett remains a member of the ecology faculty at Rutgers University. Since 1989, he has been an Adjunct ecology and evolution faculty at the University of Connecticut and, from 2015-20121, a visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In 1993, Dr. Pickett was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 1995 to 1998, Dr. Pickett served as Vice President for science of the Ecological Society of America (ESA). In 1997, Dr. Pickett founded the Baltimore Ecosystem Study and served as the organization’s director until 2016. In 2011, Dr. Pickett became the first Black president of the ESA, an organization he has been a member of since 1972, through the ESA. Dr. Pickett has been engaged in many of its initiatives, including the Inclusive Ecology Section, Black Ecologist Section, Urban Ecology Section, and the Governing Board.
In 2005, he received the Conservation Innovator Award, CERC, from Columbia University. In 2006, Dr. Pickett received the Centennial Award from the Botanical Society of America.
He is also the co-director of the Urban Sustainability Research Coordination Network. Since 2015, Dr. Pickett has been a fellow of the Ecological Society of America. In 2021, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2021, Dr. Pickett won the Eminent Ecologist Award from the Ecological Society of America and the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Conservation and Ecology.
Dr. Pickett’s career has focused on several research topics. He is interested in the impact of disasters and disturbances on ecology, understanding social-ecological systems, and how urbanization is an ecological process. He is also interested in societal values and justice impacting city ecology and urban ecological designs.
Dr. Pickett conducts research around to world. In the United States, he has researched vacant lots in urban Baltimore, western Pennsylvania forests, and New Jersey post-agricultural fields. Globally, he has worked in the Yanqi Valley in China, a rapidly urbanizing area, and Kruger National Park in South Africa.
One of Dr. Pickett’s career highlights is the welcoming mentoring from Dr. Jerry and Carol Baskin in college through their research and field trips. Another highlight was participating in the Organization for Tropical Studies field course in Costa Rica in 1975 and Contributing to the Equal Opportunity program of Rutgers College. He was also invited to a national workshop on forest succession in 1980.
Dr. Pickett is continuously in awe and appreciative of the excitement and interest his field brings. He enjoys finding new connections and perspectives to new problems or familiar situations.
Dr. Pickett lives in the Hudson Valley of New York State. He enjoys small city living walks, listening to jazz and other music, reading novels and poetry, and eating interesting food.
It seems inevitable that Dr. Pickett’s career would be vastly different without the mentoring he received in high school. He had three science teachers in high school, “the ancestors” (American Institute of Biological Sciences, 2021), who supported and encouraged him to engage in science and even to submit a project to the NASA Science Fair. Another high school teacher helped him determine which college and majors would support his dream of becoming an ecologist.
While completing his undergraduate studies, Dr. Pickett was guided by additional generous mentors. In particular, Dr. Jerry Baskin and Dr. Carol Baskin invited Dr. Pickett to conduct honors research. While at the University of Illinois, Dr. Pickett received mentoring from the late Dr. Fakhri Bazzaz. He got his first teaching job at Rutgers University thanks partly to a mentor, Dr. Richard Forman, who convinced him to apply.
The mentorship Dr. Pickett received came from a diverse group of people who constantly reminded him that he could be a scientist.
While Dr. Pickett taught at Rutgers University, he was a member of the Equal Opportunity Program, where he advocated for and mentored the diverse student body in the botany and ecology department. While at Rutgers, he invited undergrads of color to do research with him – just as Dr.’s Baskin and Baskin had with him at the University of Kentucky. In the twenty years he spent working in Baltimore, he often engaged with middle- and high–school students and took joy in showing them the nature surrounding their everyday lives. Dr. Pickett sees this as especially important for youth from under-represented communities. He views diversity as critical to science, especially in tackling our time’s most significant environmental justice and climate change issues.
Dr. Pickett continues to mentor students through the Cary Institute, which occasionally has summer and short-term research positions available.
In addition to a desire to mentor students and early career professionals in the process of research and the nature of community in science, Dr. Pickett encourages people to take advantage of the diversity and inclusion programs of the Ecological Society of America (e.g., the Black Ecologists Section, Inclusive Ecology Section, and Latin American and Caribbean Chapter among others). In addition, the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion activities of the American Institute of Biological Sciences provide resources and connections for early career professionals.
“People need to feel they are valued for who they are and for what their inclusion can bring to both the creative and the critical processes in science,” Dr. Pickett, American Institute of Biological Sciences, 2021
Accessed July 14, 2023 from https://www.caryinstitute.org/science/our-scientists/dr-steward-t-pickett
Stewart T.A. Pickett https://www.caryinstitute.org/sites/default/files/public/downloads/bio/p…
2021, June 10. Meet Dr. Steward Pickett, Diversity Hero. American Institute of Biological Sciences. https://www.aibs.org/news/2022/220610-steward-picket-diversity-hero.html
Survey conducted by Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Sustainability Initiative staff. 2022-2023. Yale University- School of the Environment. New Haven, Connecticut.