Promoting a Sense of Place Virtually: A Review of the ESA Weekly Water Cooler Chat Focused on Virtual Sense of Place

The world has forever been changed by the pandemic.It does not look or operate like it did prior to COVID-19, and we do not know what it will look like moving forward.The current "normal," whether still facing quarantine or not, presents both challenges and opportunities.The ESA Weekly Water Cooler Chat is a response to the COVID-19 pandemic that brings together practitioners and researchers by providing a space for members to chat about what they are facing.As many people are forced into a "virtual" remoteness, the Water Cooler topics often address online or virtual field experiences.The Undergraduate Field Experiences Research Network (UFERN) (NSF RCN-UBE grant #173056) and ESA came together in April 2020 to organize a transdisciplinary chat, "Connecting to Place -Virtually." Motivations and PurposeIn undergraduate field learning experiences, students often gain a connection to the physical field environment or field learning site, and often to the cultural attributes of its setting as well (e.g., Jolley et al. 2018).The immersed experience and connection to the object of study is part of the value for field experiences (Giamellaro 2014).Many current ecologists can relate to this feeling of connection either through a current place of study, a memory of their own undergraduate field experiences, or a field excursion they have led (Morales et al. in press).This connection or sense of place is developed from the meanings we