The Graduate Forum will be publishing department highlights from 2011 on an ongoing basis. Check back regularly to find out what graduate students, alumni, and faculty are doing in the graduate community and beyond!

EEB Graduate Student, Chelsea Vario

The Ecology and Evolutionary Biology program (EEB) continues to thrive and grow—we have 26 students enrolled this fall, topping last year’s record size.

During the past year, Tom Kraft and Mike Logan were named GAANN fellows, Chelsea Vario and Jessica Trout-Haney were awarded IGERT fellowships, and Zak Gezon was named a NSF GK-12 fellow. Sam Fey won the 2010 David Cushing Prize from the Journal of Plankton Research, and Ramsa Chaves won the Albert Cass Traveling Fellowship. In addition, to support their research, Fey was awarded an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, Laurel Symes received the Huck Preserve Research Grant and Orthopterists’ Society Grant, and Robert Schaeffer received the Langenheim Endowed Graduate Fellowship from the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab. Dartmouth presented awards to Gezon (Filene Teaching Award), Simone Whitecloud (top 4 poster at Graduate Student Appreciation week), Ramsa Chaves and Max Overstrom-Coleman (Graduate Alumni Research Awards). Research from current graduate students has resulted in eight lead or co-authored publications in the last year as well as a number of manuscripts in review.

In alumni news, Paul Pickhardt (2002) was recognized for excellence in teaching at Lakeland College and Rich Hofstetter (2004) was promoted to Associate Professor at Northern Arizona University. Laura Burkle (2008) joined the faculty at Montana State University, and Bryan Brown (2004) moved to Virginia Tech.

For more details and more up-to-date information, please see the EEB home page.

by Kathryn Cottingham and Rebecca Irwin, EEB grad co-chairs