Grad News Forum

Maile Arvin (Charles Eastman Fellow), Danielle Terrazas Williams, and Ariana Ochoa Camacho (César Chávez Fellow) at the Dissertation Fellow Lunch.

This year’s Thurgood Marshall Fellow, Danielle Terrazas Williams, graduated this past week from Duke University. Her dissertation focuses on the lives and entrepreneurial activities of free women of African descent in Veracruz, Mexico in the seventeenth century. She is finishing up her fellowship at Dartmouth and will be moving in the fall to a post-doctoral position at Princeton University.

Terrazas Williams holds a BA in Afro-Mexican studies from Cornell University and an MA in history from Duke University. She first became interested in the history of the colonial period and in particular the experiences of those of African descent in Mexico as an undergraduate. For her the connection is also personal. Her mother is Mexican American and her father is African American.

Terrazas Williams chose to pursue graduate studies at Duke University because it is renowned for both its Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program and its Department of African and African American Studies. Her advisor, Professor Pete Sigal, a full professor and director of Graduate Studies in the History Department, has been very helpful and supportive of Terrazas Williams as she has undertaken her dissertation research, spending three years living in Mexico and examining archival documents in Xalapa, Veracruz. In particular, Terrazas Williams works with legal and notarial documents, tracing the births, marriages, purchases, sales, and deaths of wealthy free women of African descent in the region.

One of the difficult aspects of her work, explains Terrazas Williams, is reading and interpreting extremely old documents that have not always been well preserved. While the documents in the archives where she conducted her research were in relatively good condition, Terrazas Williams has run into some cases where general wear and decay, as well as insect damage, have made materials hard to work with. For example, she recounts an instance in which the age of a boy being sold away from his mother and into slavery was torn off of the corner of a document. It would have been compelling in her dissertation, observes Terrazas Williams, to have been able to include “whether the boy was four or ten when he was sold,” but she notes that this is sometimes what happens when one works with documents that are hundreds of years old.

In her dissertation, entitled Capitalizing Subjects: Free African-Descended Women of Means in Xalapa, Veracruz during the Long Seventeenth Century Terrazas Williams presents the women she studies as industrious businesspeople in contrast to a view of them as simply patrons, dependent on the men in their families. She notes that past research has not approached the lives of these sometimes wealthy women from the perspective of their entrepreneurial activities. She also explores issues of respectability and how the women she studies managed their investments and other forms of capital in ways that reflected their sense of respectability and their efforts to be respectable.

Terrazas Williams’ decision to come to Dartmouth stemmed from hearing about the positive experience of a fellow graduate of Duke University, Dr. Reena Goldthree, who is now an assistant professor of African and African-American Studies at Dartmouth. Dr. Goldthree told Terrazas Williams that the faculty in the African and African-American Studies Program at Dartmouth were very helpful and supportive during her time as a Thurgood Marshall fellow. “I have found that to be very true,” observes Terrazas Williams, noting in particular that Professor Antonio Tillis, chair of African and African-American Studies, has been especially encouraging of her work. She adds, “I knew that the faculty at Dartmouth would not only make sure that I finished my dissertation work, but also that I was well-placed in an academic position after my fellowship.”

Terrazas Williams has very much enjoyed her time at Dartmouth, commenting that it has given her a chance to work with scholars whom she admires and to complete the job application process, as well as her dissertation. In her position at Princeton, her focus will be on working to turn her dissertation into a book. She will also teach a class, possibly on race and the enlightenment.

The Graduate Studies Office wishes Terrazas Williams the best of luck as she moves onto the next step in her academic career!

Two Dartmouth students have their sights set on very different kinds of science, courtesy of the National Science Foundation (NSF). As recipients of NSF Graduate Research Fellowships, Eshin Jolly will pursue graduate studies in cognitive neuroscience at Dartmouth while Aryeh Drager ’12 will head to Colorado State University to study atmospheric science.

For the full article go to Dartmouth Now.

Ayo Coly has taught Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in all of her courses since she began as an associate professor of African and African American Studies at Dartmouth six years ago, and she has found that nearly every one of her students read the book in high school.

That is as clear a picture as she can give of the significance of the Nigerian author who came to be known as the father of African literature, and who had numerous ties to Dartmouth. Achebe died Thursday, March 21, 2013, in Boston. He was 82.

Although there is a rich literary history from Africa in both African and European languages, “we can say Achebe is the inventor of African literature because he made it known beyond the borders of Nigeria and beyond Africa,” Ayo says. “I would like to acknowledge the way Chinua Achebe appropriated and transformed the European genre of the novel and conformed it to convey his own culture, his own agenda, as a Nigerian, as an African.”

Achebe was in residence at Dartmouth in 1990 as a Montgomery Fellow. In 1972, under President John Kemeny, Dartmouth awarded Achebe the first of his many honorary degrees.

For the full article go to Dartmouth Now.

Guo in Jinhua, China.

Congratulations to Bingqian Guo, winner of this year’s Karen E. Wetterhahn Graduate Fellowship in Chemistry!

The Wetterhahn Graduate Fellowship is given each year to an advanced graduate student in chemistry. It honors the memory of Professor Karen E. Wetterhahn, a former chemistry professor at Dartmouth, well-known for her research on toxic metals and how they cause cancer. She was the founding director of Dartmouth’s Toxic Metals Research Program. Professor Wetterhahn was also known for her strong support of women in science and was a co-founder of Dartmouth’s Women in Science Project.

Guo grew up in Jinhua, China. She was inspired by a high school chemistry teacher to pursue a degree in science. Guo studied at the University of Science and Technology of China, earning a BS in physical chemistry and winning several scholarships. While she considered attending graduate school at different universities in Canada and the United States, Guo chose Dartmouth because of the research possibilities here. She wanted to concentrate her research on applications of physical chemistry to biological systems. She was also impressed with the beauty of the surrounding region when she came to Dartmouth.

Guo is a member of Professor Dale F. Mierke’s lab. Her research focuses on the interaction of proteins, specifically NEMO and IKKβ, which play a role in the body’s immune response. Guo is researching the possibility of finding a molecule or peptide that can bind to NEMO in order to block it from binding to IKKβ in cases in which individuals have certain types of autoimmune diseases or cancer. In such cases, the proteins constitutively bind together when they should not. Preventing this binding will hopefully improve the life quality of sufferers of diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, and some kinds of cancer. Guo recently presented a poster about her work at the 2012 Signaling Pathways in Cancer Symposium at MIT’s David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. She has also been a teaching assistant during three terms for general chemistry and during two terms for physical chemistry.

As well as conducting research, Guo likes to spend time outdoors hiking and snowboarding. She really enjoys the White Mountain area. Guo also draws, and she is working on illustrations for a children’s book with a lab colleague. In addition, she has participated in the local COVER home repair projects in White River Junction, Vermont.

Guo plans to pursue a career in research after graduation, and she hopes to remain in the New England area. She says that she likes being in a smaller town, and she appreciates the close-knit Dartmouth community. She is excited to have been chosen for the Wetterhahn Fellowship and observes that it will help support her research on protein binding in order to hopefully help those affected by autoimmune diseases or cancer.

In supporting the work of young chemists such as Guo, the Dartmouth community honors Professor Wetterhahn’s dedication to her field and her encouragement of women in science.

by Elizabeth Molina-Markham

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

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…

Lilian in her famous pink labcoat.

The Graduate Forum is delighted to announce that Lilian Kabeche has been awarded the Copenhaver-Thomas Fellowship. Last year, Lilian made her debut on the Forum in her now famous pink lab coat. Now a fifth-year bio-chemistry PhD student, Lilian has seemingly unparalleled energy and enthusiasm for science and research. Speaking about the incredible moments during her time at Dartmouth, Lillian gave us insight into what drives her and what makes science so exciting for her:

“That moment, the moment in life you get to know something that no-one else knows, it’s amazing! It’s amazing!”

Lilian completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Miami in Microbiology. Wanting to continue her education, she looked at a number of PhD programs, but fell in love with Dartmouth and Hanover. For Lilian, Dartmouth was love at first sight, and leaving Hanover will be a tough task for this graduate student.

After a successful application to the MCB program, Lilian went to see a talk by Professor Duane Compton on chromosomes and from that moment decided that that was the research focus for her. This talk was the beginning of a successful working relationship that would see the two publish together and lead Lilian to the fellowship.

One of the many things that Lilian has enjoyed during her time at Dartmouth is the level of support that graduate students get. “Everyone wants you to succeed,” she explained. An integral element of this success is securing solid funding. So, Professor Compton nominated her for the Copenhaver-Thomas fellowship. This fellowship allows for greater freedom and flexibility for research, and there are far fewer concerns regarding getting funding for conferences and other auxiliary activities. “Its always nice to be valued” she continued, “to have people to value you at the point of providing funding for your work”. The fellowship is a testament to this support and will allow her to make the most of the rest of her time here.

When not being awarded fellowships, Lilian’s favorite activity in Hanover is getting Kettle Corn from the farmers market. She also enjoys snowboarding come the winter term. Congratulations again Lilian!

Article by Dan Durcan

Photo by Erin O’Flaherty

Ernest Gibson is the current Marshall Fellow, under the guidance of Antonio Tillis in the African and African American Studies Department and recently received his PhD from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Right now he is wrapping up his fellowship at Dartmouth, and preparing for a tenure-track position as a Professor of English at Rhodes College.

He decided to apply for the fellowship because, in his words, “ it’s one of the most prestigious dissertation fellowships in the country for African American Studies.” Dartmouth is perfect for Ernest, for reasons other than it’s academic prestige and reputation though; location also played a part in Ernest’s decision to apply, since Dartmouth is close to his home institution, and MacDowell in Peterborough—the colony where James Baldwin, the author on whom Ernest’s dissertation focuses, studied. The close proximity to his muse’s artistic refuge facilitates a certain personal insight or inspiration that can be traced within his dissertation.

“The space here really encourages scholarly productivity for me, in a way that no other campus could,” says Ernest.

His dissertation, titled “In Search of the Fraternal: Salvific Manhood and Male Intimacy in the Novels of James Baldwin”, examines male intimacy and vulnerability, and traces Baldwin’s preoccupation with loneliness as it is imprinted onto his male characters. Ernest’s chapters address the role of intimacy in a variety of male relationships, ranging from the platonic to the homoerotic/homosexual. It also deals with black male suicide as the result of a lack of intimacy.

Asked if he’d found a supportive cultural community at Dartmouth, Ernest responded that he’d met many people whom he could relate to, and that people affiliated with the African and African-American Studies program, under the guidance of Antonio Tillis, had been particularly supportive. He also mentioned MOCA (the Men of Color Alliance), saying “MOCA has been extremely helpful with aiding my research, and also carving out a space for cultural community for students and faculty of color.” Much like the other students interviewed about their fellowships, Ernest cites “the fellows” (as they jokingly call themselves), as a “tight knit community both academically and socially, and, a wonderful respite and refuge.”

With his smart sartorial sense—you can see in the photo that Ernest has a penchant for colors and bow ties—and his impeccably organized office, it’s clear that Ernest has a flair for presentation, while taking himself and his work seriously. Asked about his sense of style, specifically about the bow tie, he responded, “I’m inspired by W.E.B Du Bois, that titan of erudition who rocked bow ties and top-hats, and who is, for me at least, a quintessential representation of intellectual dandyism.”

Congrats on your new position, Ernest, the graduate office wishes you the best of luck!

by Tennile Sunday
photo by Tennile Sunday

Melody Brown Burkins, second from left, with WISP members.

Melody Brown Burkins, Senior Director of Research & Strategic Initiatives at the University of Vermont (UVM), visited Dartmouth recently and spoke at a Women in Science luncheon. During her time as a graduate student at Dartmouth, Melody served as President of the Graduate Student Council (1998-1999), and also won the Hannah Croasdale Award for excellent in research and teaching. She has recently been appointed Dartmouth’s Graduate Alumni Rep to the Alumni Council.

Asked why she chose Dartmouth for her graduate studies, Melody explained that Dartmouth was one of two top choices and the deciding factor was that Dartmouth’s Earth Sciences program was more flexible, allowing her to take a variety of classes and explore her options, whereas the other program she was considering was very structured and specific. It was her experience at Dartmouth that first sparked her interest in policy. As a graduate student, she participated in many long-term ecologic programs that were funded by the NSF (National Science Foundation). Despite all of her exciting, albeit grueling, projects—working under the scorching sun in the Jornada Desert in New Mexico (“I think I only passed out once,” she jokes, “it was hot”), and then in the vastly different, freezing climates of the Antarctic—Melody found her interests expanding outside of research.

“I was fascinated by the science, but I really wanted to learn about how these projects were funded, and who was paying for it,” said Melody. She was thrilled when she was selected for the National Congressional Science and Technology Fellowship–a fellowship in which, according to Melody, “clueless scientists were thrown into congress.”

The position called for concise, non-scientific writing and communication and, through some trial and error, she realized that the strategies that would have been very appropriate in academia were not as effective in her new position—she needed to change her approach, and quickly did. “I was learning from people who were younger than me and had so much more experience in this world than I did,” she revealed, adding, “I learned to be very humble and realize that even with my expertise, there was still a lot to learn.”

She was soon offered the role of Special Legislative Assistant, to Senator Patrick Leahy, and, not long after, The University of Vermont, having heard what Melody had done for them from DC (in terms of science and policy) offered her a position there. “They wanted me to take programs that had a lot of investment but no funding and secure funding for them with support from the delegation. It was a perfect fit!” she explained.

On the flip side of her developing career path, Melody and her partner were (and still are) raising a family together, and the demands of her various positions required them to make some decisions regarding childcare and work. To make the balancing act less tedious, her husband (whom she met at Dartmouth) decided it would be best for the family if he became a stay-at-home dad, and Melody continued to pursue her career goals. This dynamic has worked beautifully for them, and now he is exploring a new career as a singer/songwriter—a venture he originally began as a graduate student, at Dartmouth.

Aside from having a supportive family, and being adventurous and open to change, Melody encourages students interested in non-academic work to network, and to realize that their application process may need to be self-guided since many advisers will not have connections outside of science. She also urges individuals to remember that their graduate degree does not mean that they will be experts in any field they choose to venture into; hard work, and the willingness to learn and adapt are key. For those who see themselves in managerial positions, Melody stressed that everyone benefits when you give your team trust and support, “what people need is to be heard and then championed. Invest in your people first.”

Asked about her future plans, Melody happily mused, ” I’ve thought about taking some time to write a book or a course, perhaps on how to get scientists talking together, and how to get their points across to non-experts, and therefore how to obtain funding–basically the stuff I most struggled with when I first started. But really, I’m open to whatever paths may present themselves!”

by Tennile Sunday

Award-winning writer Tobias Wolff, author of several short story collections including Our Story Begins and the memoirs This Boy’s Life and In Pharoah’s Army, is in residence at Dartmouth as a Montgomery Fellow this month.

Wolff, the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of English at Stanford University, will be on campus from Monday, April 23, to Friday, April 27. He will deliver a public lecture entitled, “Luck and Work: A Writer’s Life,” on Tuesday, April 24, at 4:30 p.m. in Filene Auditorium, located in Moore Hall.

There’s still room at this Wednesday’s lunch the Montgomery Fellow: sign up if you’d like to discuss writing with Tobias over lunch in the Montgomery House!

For more on Wolff, visit Dartmouth Now.