Grad News Forum

Lilian Kabeche, a fifth-year PhD candidate in the Molecular and Cellular Biology program, was recently featured on the blog of Bárbara Alcaraz Silva of the University of California, Irvine. Kabeche was a recipient of an award in the poster competition of the Minority Affairs Committee (MAC) of the American Society of Cell Biology (ASCB).

For the full post see Science and Research.

The latest event in the Graduate Studies “Becoming a Faculty Member” series was held on February 8. A panel of distinguished Graduate Faculty Mentoring Award recipients was on hand to discuss their mentoring styles. Members of the panel included Dean Madden (Department of Biochemistry), Joseph BelBruno (Department of Chemistry), Ross Virginia (Environmental Studies Program), Thalia Wheatley (Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences), and Gregory Holmes (Program in Experimental and Molecular Medicine). Faculty are nominated by graduate students and recent alumni to receive this award based on their outstanding dedication to fostering the professional and personal development of their students.

The panel was asked to discuss why they felt they had been successful mentors. They emphasized the importance of recognizing that each student is different and of adapting one’s approach to each individual. Ideally, a graduate student will leave school with the ability to confidently convey his or her own original ideas, and a mentor needs to foster this ability to think independently. Professor Holmes remarked that knowing where your students want to go in their future careers greatly helps in mentoring them successfully. If you cannot help them, you should direct them to where they can receive help in achieving their goals. The panel agreed that professional meetings are great places for students to develop their skills and meet potential postdoctoral advisors or employers.

Graduate student attendees asked which mentoring styles worked best for the panel and why. Professors Virginia and BelBruno stated that their methods were more “hands-off,” but accessible, in that they placed responsibility on their students to learn on their own, but made themselves available for discussion when needed. Professor Virginia also added that while he takes this approach, he does spend a lot of time with his students when they are out in the field conducting research. Graduate student, Gilbert Rahme, was intrigued to know if mentoring styles change over time (e.g. with promotions or obtaining tenure), and panelists agreed that tactics may become more relaxed with time. Professor Wheatley commented that you must always be “driven as a mentor to ask questions and find the answers.”

Effective mentors also rely on their postdocs to help in the task of counseling and teaching. Professor Holmes remarked that he expects his postdocs to also be great mentors, and he teaches them this skill by showing them how to choose and design projects and how to properly manage a lab. Professor BelBruno views postdocs as colleagues and expects them to educate themselves about lab research with only minor support. He feels that more focused support should be on how to become a successful professor.

Attendees also sought advice on what to do when challenges arise. Professor Madden encouraged students to find a way to communicate the issue directly to their mentor, since mentors cannot always tell when something is not working well for a student. This can be an intimidating prospect, and it can help to reach out to colleagues for advice on how to frame the issue.

Overall, panelists advised graduate students and postdocs to try to be fair and helpful mentors. Professor Virginia reminded everyone that graduate students are people too, who have lives and families, and an advisor should be prepared to appropriately help in all aspects of their lives. To be a well-rounded mentor, one needs to “know when to acknowledge life.”

by Molly Croteau

Dartmouth will present the 2013 Social Justice Awards, which honor Dartmouth community members who have contributed significantly to social justice, on February 1.

The awards ceremony serves as the culminating event for Dartmouth’s Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration and will be held at 4:30 p.m. in the Hayward Room at the Hanover Inn. The ceremony, free and open to the public, will feature a panel discussion with honorees followed by a reception.

President Carol L. Folt, Dean of the College Charlotte Johnson, Vice President for Institutional Diversity and Equity Evelynn Ellis, and Elise Smith ’13 will make remarks.

“These honorees embody the ideals and carry on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. with their relentless pursuit of social justice,” says Gabrielle Lucke, director of diversity training and educational programs and chair of the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration committee.

This year’s honorees are listed below. For more information on the Social Justice Awards, visit the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration website.

For full article see the Dartmouth Now

Zak Gezon, graduate student in EEB, moving insect traps to field sites in Colorado at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab.

The Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) program continues to thrive with the addition of two new graduate students, Elizabeth Reinke and Christine Urbanowicz. Both Elizabeth and Christine were awarded National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships, extremely prestigious and coveted fellowships.

During the past year, current students received an impressive number of fellowships and grant awards. Sam Fey and Marcus Welker both received the Environmental Protection Agency’s Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Graduate Research Fellowships. In addition, Tom Kraft also received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, joining Vivek Venkataraman and Carissa Aoki, who have received this highly respected fellowship in prior years. Marcus Welker was awarded an NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute Fellowship, Zak Gezon and Christine Urbanowicz were awarded NSF Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) Fellowships, Elizabeth Reinke was named a Department of Education Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) fellow, and Laurel Symes was named an NSF Graduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics in K-12 Education (GK-12) fellow.

Graduate students applied for and were awarded a significant number of research grants. Some highlights include a grant from the Garden Club of America awarded to Carissa Aoki, a grant from the Explorers Club awarded to Julia Bradley-Cook, and a grant from the Orthopterists Society awarded to Laurel Symes. These honors, as well as other grants, resulted in research that was presented at national and international meetings. Highlights include Mike Logan’s nomination for the Best Student Presentation Award by the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology at the 2013 meeting and Julia Bradley-Cook’s nomination for the Judges’ Choice Award for the 2012 IGERT Poster and Video Competition at the IGERT Principal Investigators Meeting. Research from current graduate students in the program has resulted in at least ten lead- or co-authored publications in the last year as well as a number of manuscripts in review.

For more details on any of these items and up-to-date information, please see our home page.

by Rebecca Irwin

Matt Cain

The past year has seen a number of awards and exciting events for the graduate program in the Department of Chemistry. Matt Cain, who worked with Professor David Glueck, shared the Hannah T. Croasdale Award, given annually to acknowledge those who best exemplify the qualities of a scholar. His work was also chosen to grace the cover of the journal, Inorganic Chemistry, Volume 49, Issue 17.

In March, Nick Tito and Xin Su took part in the Germany Exchange Program run by the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society (NESACS). They participated in poster sessions, lectures, and research site visits with ten other graduate students in and around Rostock, Germany. In July, Nick co-chaired the inaugural Graduate Research Seminar in Polymer Physics, which preceded the Polymer Physics Gordon Conference, at which he presented a poster. In August, he was one of fifteen graduate students selected nationwide to participate in the American Chemical Society Publications Summer Institute, working to develop new tools for online access. Nick was also recognized for his superb undergraduate teaching assistant work–he was the recipient of the Department of Chemistry’s John H. Wolfenden Teaching Prize.

Xin and Justin Foy were selected to attend the American Chemical Society International-Domestic Student Summit held in November in Raleigh, North Carolina. The main goal of the summit was “to discuss promoting cross-cultural understanding, skill flow, and increasing international collaboration.” They presented a poster and gave a talk.  Xin and Justin are students in Professor Ivan Aprahamian’s lab. Xin is also the Dartmouth representative to the NESACS Younger Chemists Committee (NSYCC), and Justin is the chemistry representative to the Graduate Student Council.

This fall the department welcomed six new graduate students to our program. They are now assigned to research groups and starting their research while also taking courses and serving as teaching assistants. We wish them the best as they progress through our program!

by John Winn

Coral reef ecosystems harbor tremendous biodiversity, perform important functions in the biogeochemical cycles of the planet, and provide the foundation upon which humans create unique and diverse relationships with nature.

In the summer of 2012, I traveled to Buen Hombre, Dominican Republic—a community of 600 residents on the northwestern coast of the country—to assess the status and functioning of coral reef fisheries accessed by artisanal fishermen. With the help of an undergraduate research assistant, Molly Wilson ’13, I performed fish-community surveys, benthic assessments, catch surveys, and social research on how the fishing system in Buen Hombre operates.

Thanks to the scuba equipment purchased with the Alumni Research Award, I was able to sample deeper reef sites that play an important role in the ecological dynamics of the area. We found that nearshore reefs are heavily exploited to the point that some areas have collapsed into an unhealthy, algae-dominated state.

Herbivorous fish maintain coral health by clearing away macro-algae that can outcompete slow-growing hard corals for space. This presents a major challenge for fisheries management because parrotfish, the Caribbean’s most abundant and effective herbivore, currently comprise at least fifty percent of fishermen’s catch in Buen Hombre.

The Alumni Research Award was an integral part of my experience in Buen Hombre, allowing me to perform more thorough and productive research. My future work will include modeling fish population dynamics to help the community and resource managers establish harvest guidelines and promote ecosystem recovery.

by Tyler Pavlowich, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB)

Photo courtesy of Tyler Pavlowich

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the César Chávez Dissertation Fellowship. It was established in 1993 in honor of César Chávez, with the aim of providing support for underrepresented minorities in academia as they pursue their Ph.Ds. By providing our undergraduates with examples of successful Latino students, the fellowship also promotes diversity at Dartmouth and throughout higher education. Initially exclusively for minority students, the fellowship was recently expanded to include any graduate student committed to the wider field of Latino studies. The fellowship supports graduate students for a year-long residency at Dartmouth, from September through August. It provides them with a stipend of $25,000, office space, library privileges, and a research grant of $2,500.

César Chávez, the fellowship’s inspiration, was a Mexican-American labor activist who played a prominent role in the promotion of minority and workers’ rights in the US. Having experienced poverty and discrimination from a young age, Chávez became heavily involved with the Latino civil rights movement. He was key in organizing Mexican-American migrant laborers under the United Farm Workers. Here he worked with Dolores Huerta and other activists. The fellowship not only celebrates his life but also honors his close association with the Hitchcock Medical School.  With this Dartmouth School he examined the effects of pesticides in migrant workers. The César Chávez Fellowship is one of many tributes to his human embodiment of the struggle against discrimination and the fight for human dignity.

The fellowship has a strong tradition of supporting scholars that go on to excel in their fields. The very first Chávez fellow, Tiffany Ana López, has recently been named the Tomás Rivera Chair at the University of California Riverside. López herself is a poster child for the benefits of the program. The granddaughter of migrant farmworkers, López went to public school and community college. Whilst at community college she was advised to go to state college, then to the University of California (UC) for her Ph.D. López came to Dartmouth to finish writing her dissertation. The Chávez fellowship facilitated the development of a talented student and helped her transition into academia. Commenting on her experiences, López said:

“The time here at Dartmouth completely changed my life because I had rarely been out of the state of California. Having been a first generation college student, I barely understood what it meant to go forward in my education beyond high school. The Chávez Dissertation Fellowship changed my life.”

Silvia Spitta, a Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth, has been involved with the Chávez fellowship from its inception. She also emphasizes the trajectory shaping of the fellowship’s effects on students. “It allows people to envision becoming a scholar—the fellowship provides an example to students of what they can achieve. Before coming to Dartmouth and becoming a member of this academic community Tiffany had not realized her own potential and had no models to inspire her to a life as an intellectual. Likewise, they then provide an example to minority students here of what they can achieve.”

The Fellowship cultivates a close-knit academic community. It is a beautiful example of how support for the arts can change lives and can have a domino effect in or on  the lives of others. This is a relatively inexpensive program that has a huge return not only in the careers of young scholars but that gives Dartmouth great visibility across the US. Lopez herself has had a prolific career. She has worked with multiple creative artists including Maria Irene Fornes, Cherríe Moraga and Culture Clash. As an academic she has published numerous essays, articles, chapters and reviews in books and journals, including Theatre Journal, Aztlan-A Journal of Chicano studies and Frontiers-A Journal of Feminist Studies. In Professor Spitta’s words: “It would be great to have more doctoral and postdoctoral fellows at Dartmouth. They would serve as models for our students and enrich the intellectual climate at Dartmouth in incalculable ways.” Twenty years after the death of César Chávez, the fellowship continues his work. It is a great tribute to the spirit of minority rights and the fight against poverty. Here, education acts in the same way as a picket line or a protest, it liberates the individual from their disadvantaged background, on their own terms. If you need proof, I will leave you with the words of Chávez and the example of Tiffany López: “Sí se puede!

By Dan Durcan

At its 2012 conference in Portland, Oregon, in October, the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs (AGLSP) awarded its Annual Faculty Award to Senior Lecturer in the Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies Program, Klaus Milich, PhD. The AGLSP’s Faculty Award recognizes “outstanding faculty who exemplify the qualities of interdisciplinary, liberal teaching and who have participated significantly in teaching or advising students and/or have actively participated in other faculty service in a graduate liberal studies program.” Dr. Milich was recognized for his contributions to Dartmouth’s Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) program, and for his work as an advisor for graduate students on campus.

“The AGLSP Prize is intended to recognize extraordinary commitment to mentoring and advising,” says MALS Chair Donald E. Pease, Jr. “From the time I recruited him to teach in the MALS Program in 1999, Klaus Milich has proven himself an exemplary scholar and teacher.” Dr. Milich teaches multiple courses for the MALS program— “Research Methods”, a course designed to help students understand and execute theoretical social science; “Diasporas and Migrations,” which focused on concept and theories related to mass-migration and diasporas across the globe; “Religion and Politics,” and “Theories of Postmodernism.” Dr. Milich also teaches courses in the Jewish Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies programs.

During his acceptance address at the AGLSP Conference, Dr. Milich spoke to the place of theory in graduate liberal studies. “It is of great importance to focus on the theorization of our topics,” said Dr. Milich, who’s own research is focused on analyzing and approaching the classic divide between the humanities and the sciences. “Our students come back from jobs to spend time reflecting. They’ve decided to take time to merge theory and their experiences. This is what graduate liberal studies can offer them.”

The AGLSP’s Faculty Award, however, recognizes more than in-class teaching ability. Indeed, it is Dr. Milich’s approach to advising his graduate students that has set him apart.

“In their annual evaluations, Klaus’s MALS students have praised Klaus for the patience he displays in guiding them through every stage of their thesis projects—from initial formulation to culminating revision,” Pease says. “His students have attested in particular to Professor Milich’s willingness to work late into the evening and over long week-ends to help them to meet deadlines and get over writing blocs. No one is more deserving of this national recognition for exemplary dedication to teaching and advising than Klaus Milich.”

“In graduate studies especially,” Dr. Milich tells us, “the student-instructor relationship ceases to be a hierarchical one. Instead, there must be a mutual interdependence between teacher and researcher. I consider my students to be young research scholars, who embark with me on new projects. They chart their course – I help them as I can.”

“Last year, Klaus was the first reader of my masters thesis,” says MALS grad and former Graduate Student Council President Wes Whitaker. “During the fall and winter terms, I met with Klaus and the other two students in colloquium—Ellen Anderson and Thomas Frohlich—on a weekly basis. At these meetings, portions of Ellen, Thomas and my theses were workshopped by Professor Milich. The feedback provided by Klaus and the other members of my colloquium not only strengthened the final draft of my thesis, but also greatly improved my academic writing.”

During his early years as a student, Dr. Milich studied economics, American Literary and Cultural Studies, German and English Literature. In the first stages of his career, Dr. Milich worked as a management consultant, and then went on to work for German public radio, and various international newspapers, for which he wrote and broadcasted essays, documentaries, interviews, and book reviews on literary, cultural, and social issues. Before coming to Dartmouth, Dr. Milich taught at the University of Frankfurt and Humboldt University Berlin. He has held visiting professorships and visiting scholar positions at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Keele University in Great Britain, and at the David Bruce Center for American Studies at University of California Irvine.

Up in Portland, MALS Director Wole Ojurongbe, himself a MALS graduate, read letter after letter from MALS students, who echoed these sentiments. “Before I met and worked with Dr. Milich, I would have described my life as largely content, settled, and unperturbed,” said 2011 graduate Mary Fratini, “but in my good fortune to meet someone who is equally passionate about his own consistently evolving research and committed to mentoring a new generation of thinkers and scholars, my life has become largely unsettled, consistently perturbed and, ultimately, infinitely more satisfying.”

Indeed, it was Dr. Milich’s commitment to his students, and his very real appreciation for academic research that showed through in Ojurongbe’s remarks and in our interview with him. “Our research,” he told us, “always means an exploration of what we have yet to know. It’s a work in progress. An instructor works with a student, so that both can learn the dual process of learning facts on the one hand, and learning how to continue learning on the other.”

Article and photo by Zach Williams 

Many of these outstanding faculty advise and teach graduate students. Dartmouth Graduate Studies extends congratulations to all of the new American Association for the Advancement of Science fellows. The following article is reprinted from the Dartmouth Now – please follow the link at the end to continue reading. 

Six Dartmouth faculty members have been selected as 2012 fellows by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science. Professors Christopher Amos, Michael Dietrich, Carolyn Gordon, Todd Heatherton, Mark Israel, and Ronald Taylor are among the 702 new fellows recognized by AAAS this year for their distinguished efforts to advance science.

“Dartmouth professors conduct outstanding research in the sciences, and it is wonderful to see their accomplishments honored by their selection as AAAS fellows,” says President Carol L. Folt, who was named an AAAS fellow in 2010.  “Our faculty’s discoveries are helping to define their fields and Dartmouth’s growing impact is evidenced by the increase in AAAS fellows for the fourth consecutive year.”

“Dartmouth is honored to have six professors chosen as fellows by the AAAS, one of the most renowned and influential science organizations,” says Interim Provost Martin Wybourne.

Dartmouth now has a total of 33 professors who are current AAAS fellows (see a complete list below). This year, three of the new fellows are from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.

“The AAAS recognition of these outstanding faculty members and their important scientific achievements is indicative of the significant research activity taking place at the medical school,” says Wiley “Chip” Souba, dean of the Geisel School of Medicine. “They embody the Dartmouth ideals of improving lives through leadership, intellectual curiosity, and collaboration.”

Continue reading here…

Professor Pease, who chairs the Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies program at Dartmouth, has been awarded his field’s highest honor. The following is an exerpt from an article posted by the Dartmouth Now – please follow the link below to read the rest of the article. 

The legendary Donald E. Pease, one of Dartmouth’s best-known professors, has been awarded the 2012 Carl Bode-Norman Holmes Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies.

Pease is the Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities and chair of the Dartmouth Liberal Studies Program. The English professor is also the biographer of one of Dartmouth’s most famous alumni, Theodore Seuss Geisel, known to millions as Dr. Seuss.

The Bode-Pearson Prize, awarded annually by the American Studies Association, is one of the oldest and most prestigious awards in the field. Pease will receive the prize at the ASA’s annual meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on November 16.

“In the important field of American Studies, many honors for scholarship and teaching are bestowed every year—but none compares with the Carl Bode-Norman Holmes Pearson Prize,” says Dean of the Faculty Michael Mastanduno.

“This distinction is reserved for singular individuals whose careers truly reflect a lifetime of achievement and service to the American Studies field,” says Mastanduno. “Don Pease is just such a scholar-teacher. I cannot imagine a more worthy recipient than Don, and on behalf of the entire Arts & Sciences faculty, we take great pride in his recognition.”

To read the rest of the article, please visit the Dartmouth Now.