Grad News Forum

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. 

The Grad Forum is pleased to announce the arrival of a new ESL specialist to the Dartmouth community. Michelle Cox is the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric’s new multilingual specialist. In her position Michelle will be splitting her time between the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric and graduate programs.

Michelle grew up in southern New Hampshire and took her undergraduate studies at U-Mass and the University of New Hampshire. There she majored in English. After completing her BA, Michelle decided to continue and enroll in an MA in English Studies, then a PhD program in Composition and Rhetoric. Interestingly enough, it was not until after she began her MA at UNH that Michelle really studied writing and rhetoric.

It was as a Masters student that Michelle first taught writing–and this wasn’t something she knew would be her career. She was given a one-day orientation, a stack of articles and was sent to work: “it was really a case of being thrown in the deep end, it was sink or swim.” For a while she felt like she was merely going through the motions. However that semester she fell in love with teaching writing and decided that  college teaching was what she wanted to do and after looking at her options, enrolled in a PhD program at the University of New Hampshire with a focus on Composition.

Michelle’s interest in ESL was equally unexpected. During the first year of her PhD Program, Michelle was a writing center consultant assigned to work with students enrolled in a summer bridge program run by the McNair Program. This program focuses on helping students from demographics underrepresented in academia gain skills to help them succeed in graduate school. Unsurprisingly, over half of the students there spoke English as a second language. However, there were no staff with ESL expertise.  As a consequence, many of the students were struggling directly from the problems caused by the lack of attention paid to language issues.

There was one particular student who was simply being neglected by the professor who had agreed to mentor him. Every time this student submitted work, the leading professor refused to read it because the language (not the content) wasn’t up to his standards. Michelle realized that without support this student would fail the program. So she took a bold step, one that writing center consultants are told never to do: she asked the student to tell her what he was trying to say and typed while he composed orally. Whilst there was an ethical dilemma, the support for ESL was so poor that writing with the student was the only tenable means of support. Michelle’s experience brought her to the conclusion that ESL support needed to be better researched and resourced.

It was this experience with the McNair Program that led Michelle to make ESL a major research focus and ultimately to her position at Dartmouth. And so far it looks like a good choice. Her recent list of publications includes the following:

“Reading an ESL Writer’s Text” with Paul Kei Matsuda. Reprinted in Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal. March 2011.

Special Issue of Across the Disciplines. Edited with Terry Myers Zawacki. “Writing across the Curriculum and Second Language Writers: Cross-Field Research, Theory, and Program Development.” 8(4): December, 2011. 

“WAC: Closing Doors or Opening Doors for Second Language Writers?” In ”Writing across the Curriculum and Second Language Writers: Cross-Field Research, Theory, and Program Development [Special Issue].” Across the Disciplines, 8(4): December, 2011.

 WAC and Second Language Writers: Research towards Developing Linguistically and Culturally Inclusive Programs and Practices. Edited with Terry Myers Zawacki.  Edited collection, forthcoming in December 2012.

Michelle strongly encourages any ESL graduate student to make an appointment with her. It will help you significantly with your academic studies and publications. She is friendly and extremely approachable. Most importantly, she is at Dartmouth for you.

by Dan Durcan

Photo courtesy of Michelle Cox

Zach Williams with F. Jon Kull

This week, Michael Mastanduno, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth, announced that Professor of Chemistry F. Jon Kull ’88 has been chosen as the new of dean of Graduate Studies.

I sat down with Dean Kull in his new office this week, to talk about his new position and the graduate programs at Dartmouth:

The Grad Forum (TGF): You run a lab here on campus, in the Chemistry Department, that has exposed you to some graduate students already. What’s the role of graduate students across the Arts and Sciences?

Dean Kull (DK): First and foremost, our students are here getting a great education. But graduate students are also critical to every professor they work with – they help drive faculty research and they keep us moving forward while we manage our other responsibilities. And graduate students across the disciplines help to mentor our undergraduate students. They TA for a wide variety of undergraduate courses and they run review sessions for our students. For undergraduates who might be thinking about an advanced degree, graduate students offer a valuable perspective, which is something that we can build on going forward.

TGF: Graduate students across this campus are getting more and more involved, and are trying to help people understand the importance of the work we do. What are your thoughts on the state of Graduate Studies at Dartmouth?

DK: As Dartmouth grows, the existing graduate programs will grow along with it, and the visibility of our programs will increase too.  Of course, if our faculty are interested in establishing new programs, we can consider those too. But we’ll keep the intimate nature of graduate studies here at Dartmouth – we’re going to find the perfect medium. Having strong graduate programs benefits the entire Dartmouth community – undergrads and graduate students alike. Strengthening our graduate programs is in everyone’s best interest.

I want to make sure graduate students are getting the support they need. I want to continue Dean Pogue’s initiatives, and I want to increase interactivity between our different graduate programs, because they have so much to gain from working with each other. 

TGF: What would you say to undergraduate students out there who are thinking about applying to one of our graduate programs?

DK: Well, the fact that you’ve got world-class research going on inside this fairly small footprint – it’s rare and it’s impressive. There’s a closeness here, both inside individual programs and between programs, and that doesn’t happen everywhere. We have outstanding faculty at Dartmouth and they’re providing our graduate students with great opportunities.

TGF: I know a lot of students are excited to have you as our Dean. Anything you’d like to say to our readers?

DK: I’m really looking forward to getting to know the Dartmouth graduate community better. I’m excited to talk and listen and see what ideas come up. I think it’s a great time to be a graduate student at Dartmouth.

—

We do too. The Graduate Forum extends a warm welcome to Dean Kull. We’re looking forward to his leadership over the next few years! For more information about our new dean, check out Dartmouth Now’s biography that accompanied the official announcement.

by Zach Williams
photo by Kerry Landers

Brian Pogue (left) and Wesley Whitaker (right)

On Wednesday August 15, 2012, a new faculty member will begin serving as Dartmouth’s Dean of Graduate Studies. The editors of The Graduate Forum would like to take a moment to welcome the new Dean, and also to thank outgoing Dean Brian Pogue  for his four years of service.

“The Deanship at Dartmouth has been an incredibly high honor,” says Brian Pogue. “Now, looking back on the past four years, I know that we have made the right decisions on a number of key issues and have achieved a few important initiatives for the campus. I’ve taken an opportunistic approach to affecting change at Dartmouth in areas that would be receptive to it, and in the end I am happy with that.”

Originally from Ontario, Brian Pogue received his Honors Bachelors and Masters degrees in Physics from York University in Toronto, and was then accepted as a PhD candidate in Medical/Nuclear Physics at McMaster University in Hamilton. While at McMaster, Brian researched the use of optical spectroscopy—a method for examining the properties of a physical object by measuring how it emits and interacts with light—to image breast cancer under the guidance of his doctoral advisor, Michael Patterson, Head of Medical Physics at the regional Cancer Center. To test the optical machines developed in the Patterson lab, Brian examined both the tissue of mice and the properties of “tissue phantoms”— mimicking the physical properties of living tissue and cancerous tumors. In his doctoral dissertation, Frequency-Domain Optical Spectroscopy and Imaging of Tissue and Tissue-Simulating Media, Brian developed a system for imaging living tissue using high-speed optical measurements, to quantify the molecular features of tissues and cancer tumors.

“In a lot of ways, I still feel like a graduate student. I don’t think that I ever really grew up,” says Brian. “As a Director of Dartmouth’s Optics in Medicine Lab, I work with graduate students on a daily basis, and am conducting research on medical optics with professionals at Dartmouth and a number of other research institutions. I agreed to serve as Dean of Graduate Education because I genuinely care about graduate students and believe that graduate research is an integral part of our academic community. I think that the research being conducted by Dartmouth’s graduate students allows the school to advance the creation of new knowledge and leads to innovations in techniques and technologies.  This is the key part of what makes Dartmouth a world-class educational institution.”

Inspired to teach by his parents—Brian’s father was a professor and his mother a teacher—Brian Pogue led an active lifestyle and focused on his research throughout his doctoral career. In fact, it was during his graduate studies that Brian first played team sports.

“At McMaster, I was captain of the department baseball team for a year. I played outfield as a graduate student and had a great time serving as the team’s captain. I think in a lot of ways the exercise and socialization that playing baseball provided helped keep me sane while I did my laboratory studies,” says Brian. “Our team wasn’t particularly good—as long as you could catch a ball, you were in—but it was a great group of people, and we all had a lot of fun. I was responsible for things like collecting equipment and organizing social events.  As a graduate student, you need to have a plan to keep yourself socially involved, and for me, baseball was one of the ways that I stayed active and met new people.”

During his tenure as Dean, he led a number of projects which strengthened the cohesion of Dartmouth’s graduate student body, improved graduate student life, and increased the academic profile of Dartmouth Arts & Science Graduate Programs. A chair of the Graduate Education for the Future Working Group, Dean Pogue compared Dartmouth against a number of its peer institutions—like Yale, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and Princeton—reviewed each of Dartmouth’s doctoral and masters programs, and authored a vision statement for Graduate Education at Dartmouth with the 27 members of the working group. As part of the review effort, Dean Pogue invited a consortium of Dean’s and former Dean’s from peer institutions to review the school’s graduate programs. The work done by the Working Group was compiled into a document, and submitted as part of the Dartmouth-wide Strategic Planning process, led by interim president Carol Folt, and the Provosts Office, for review. To ensure that the voices of students from all of Dartmouth’s graduate programs were included in the final version of this document, Dean Pogue hosted 2011’s Strategic Planning Open Forum with the Graduate Student Council (GSC).

“For me, Dartmouth Strategic Planning has been an exciting challenge. It’s has been a long time since Dartmouth has compared itself to its peer institutions, I think that Carol Folt has done an outstanding job managing the institution-wide project,” said Dean Pogue. “The nature of academia makes strategic planning difficult for virtually every educational institution, and I really admire the manner in which the Provost’s Office has choreographed the effort. From the feedback solicited through the campus-wide committee work that Carol has orchestrated, Dartmouth’s administration has decided to place a greater emphasis on academics at the school. In the coming years, this will manifest itself in new faculty hires and a modest growth in graduate research.”

In addition to his commitment to Dartmouth Strategic Planning, Dean Pogue has improved the graduate student experience at Dartmouth through increasing stipends, advocating for a permanent graduate student social space, creating the PhD/MBA program with Tuck, and by leading a campaign to improve the web visibility of the school’s graduate programs. With the Graduate Student Council (GSC) and the members of the Graduate Studies Office, Brian has strengthened the connections between current graduate students and alumni from each of its Arts & Sciences Graduate Programs.

“Graduate student life has always been an important issue for me. I think this is because I place so much value on the role of personnel commitment and education in people,” says Brian. “At McMaster, I remember really growing as an individual even outside of my research. One year, I read Kurt Vonnegut’s entire catalogue—from his first book, Player Piano, and ending with his final work, Hocus Pocus. Later, I also read the catalogs of my favorite Canadian authors, Robertson Davies and Margaret Laurence. This had nothing to do with my research, but I was enamored with understanding people who are driven in long term creative work, and to see how their work evolves over time.”

Over the past four years, Brian has also “re branded” Dartmouth’s research-based Graduate Programs. Two years ago, Dean Pogue approved a new Dartmouth Graduate Studies shield, which was created through an online design contest, coordinated by members of the GSC’s Executive Board. Since the launch of the new shield, Brian commissioned the design of a mobile application for Dartmouth’s graduate programs available for use on iPhone or Google Android phones.  He oversaw the creation of The Graduate Forum, and increased the use of social media streams including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest by the Graduate Studies Office. The use of these media channels has not only improved communication between current graduate students, but has also facilitated electronic conversations between the school’s graduate community and other pan-Dartmouth entities. “I think these changes will have the most important long-term impact of anything that I have been involved with, on our Graduate Studies programs at Dartmouth,” said Pogue.

“While a number of important changes are currently happening here at Dartmouth, the elements that define the school’s identity will never change. These elements are Dartmouth’s rural Upper Valley location, and its relatively small size in the world of research institutions. These factors dictate the types of people that are drawn to the school, and always will.  I believe that it is the research conducted by these people that make Dartmouth a world-class educational institution,” explains Pogue. “Though I think Dartmouth will be substantially similar in 20 years, a higher metric for academic success will be in place.  Moderate increases in the size and strength of the school’s graduate programs will likely mirror the ongoing growth in research-active faculty on this campus.  This is the pathway needed to reinforce the world class status of this institution. I hope that I will live to see the day that the institution is named a University, which would simply recognize the institution for what it already is.  This is easily done, and can be done while retaining all its lovable characteristics which make it unique in the world of higher education.”

by Wesley Whitaker

On Tuesday, April 10^th, Dartmouth’s Graduate Student Council (GSC) announced the recipients of the 2012 Faculty Mentor Awards at the Graduate Poster Session. Established in 2005, the award recognizes and highlights the outstanding graduate mentoring activities that are undertaken by Dartmouth faculty advisors. In addition to publicly recognizing each recipient’s contributions to the school’s graduate community, the GSC also credits $500 dollars to each faculty member’s Dartmouth account to encourage further mentoring. This year, Dean Madden of Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) and Thalia Wheatley of Psychological and Brain Sciences (PBS) were selected for the award.

Each year, students from all of Dartmouth’s Arts and Sciences graduate programs submit letters of recommendation to the Graduate Studies Office for faculty members who they feel exhibit excellent mentoring qualities. All nominated faculty members are then asked to email their curriculum vitae to the award’s selection committee—a panel of student volunteers from the GSC’s Executive Board—who then review all of the letters of recommendation submitted for each nominee before selecting the award’s recipients. 

Professor Thalia Wheatley of Psychological and Brain Sciences (PBS) was selected as one of this year’s award recipients. A Dartmouth faculty member since 2006, Wheatley’s lab is currently comprised of three graduate students and five research assistants. The primary research focus of Wheatley’s lab is how humans understand and react to other individuals, and how the human brain has evolved to handle the computations underlying this social intelligence.

Thalia Wheatley was chosen as a recipient of this year’s Faculty Mentor Award by the Graduate Student Council because of her dedication to graduate mentorship at Dartmouth, and her ability to advise graduate students with varying research interests. As explained by Oliva Kang, a member of Wheatley’s lab who also works with an advisor from Digital Musics, “in addition to the three graduate students in her lab, Dr. Wheatley also mentors two graduates of Dartmouth’s Digital Musics department, and has many collaborators both in and outside of the department.”

Two years ago, the research of Professor Wheatley’s advisees took Thalia and two of her graduate students to rural Cambodia to study how non-Western cultures perceived both emotion and biological movement in music. “We traveled through rough territory in an off-road vehicle for 2 hours in each direction every day to work long hours… and assimilated to the norms of a foreign culture. Because of Thalia’s patience and unwavering dedication, [the trip] was ultimately a scientific success,” said Beau Sievers, a recent graduate from Digital Musics.

In addition, several students spoke of Wheatley’s ability to promote self-guided research that builds upon the academic strengths of her students. “[Thalia] has the uncanny ability to understand and play to people’s strengths while appreciating and educating their weakness,” wrote Christine Looser, a fifth-year PhD candidate in Wheatley’s lab. [She] encourages each of her students to think critically, question assumptions, and do high-quality work…By allowing her students to develop ownership of their research she has made each of us more thoughtful, inspired, and harder-working scientists.”

Congratulations, Professor Wheatley! The Graduate Student Council thanks you for all of your contributions to Dartmouth’s graduate community.

On Tuesday, April 10^th, Dartmouth’s Graduate Student Council (GSC) announced the recipients of the 2012 Faculty Mentor Awards at the Graduate Poster Session. Established in 2005, the award recognizes and highlights the outstanding graduate mentoring activities that are undertaken by Dartmouth faculty advisors. In addition to publicly recognizing each recipient’s contributions to the school’s graduate community, the GSC also credits $500 dollars to each faculty member’s Dartmouth account to encourage further mentoring. This year, Dean Madden of Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) and Thalia Wheatley of Psychological and Brain Sciences (PBS) were selected for the award.

Each year, students from all of Dartmouth’s Arts and Sciences graduate programs submit letters of recommendation to the Graduate Studies Office for faculty members who they feel exhibit excellent mentoring qualities. All nominated faculty members are then asked to email their curriculum vitae to the award’s selection committee—a panel of student volunteers from the GSC’s Executive Board—who then review all of the letters of recommendation submitted for each nominee before selecting the award’s recipients.

Professor Dean Madden of Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) was selected as one of this year’s award recipients. A Dartmouth faculty member since 2001, Madden’s lab is currently comprised of four graduate students and one rotation student. The primary research focus of Madden’s lab is understanding the functional characteristics of ion channels and transporters in terms of their molecular structure.

All of the letters submitted on Prof. Madden’s behalf spoke of his approachability, his positive demeanor, and his dedication to mentorship. “When I have my own lab, I hope I can laugh as much as Dean. He is genuinely happy, and it is contagious… He is always the first to ask a thought-provoking question in a seminar,… [and I admire his] ability to affect the lives of all students, and faculty, he comes in contact with,” wrote Jeanine Amacher, a current member of the Madden Lab.

In addition, many students spoke of Madden’s unique ability to foster self-directed, independent research while providing the professional guidance needed to strengthen both the research and scholarship of his lab’s members. “[Dean] provided me with a great balance of independence and direction, which have helped me progress my research while learning how to be an independent scientist,” said Lemira Sahar Al Ayyuobi, a member of Madden’s lab whose research examines the connection between mutations in the chloride channel CFTR to the genetic disease Cystic Fibrosis.

Finally, this year’s Faculty Mentor Award Selection Committee chose Prof. Madden for the award because of his approachability. Christopher Bahl, a member of Madden’s research group stated, “[Dean’s] open door policy facilitates and fosters a collegial, productive atmosphere in the lab. He is always available and excited to troubleshoot or discuss project ideas when we want help.”

Congratulations, Professor Madden! The Graduate Student Council thanks you for all of your contributions to Dartmouth’s graduate community.

Ten members of the faculty have been recognized with 2011 awards from the Office of the Dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The awards honor success in the classroom, scholarly achievement, and one-on-one work with students. Additionally, the graduating Class of 2011 voted to select the winner of this year’s Jerome Goldstein Award for Distinguished Teaching.

To see which grad faculty won go to Dartmouth Now.