Grad News Forum

Neurology professor Dr. Rand Swenson shows participants a human brain specimen at one of the activity stations.

Last weekend, over twenty high school students from around the area convened in the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center for the first Upper Valley Brain Bee. Hosted by the Neuroscience Center at Dartmouth  and the Society for Neuroscience New Hampshire Chapter, this event would not have been possible without the hard work of Marie Onakomaiya and Alex Bender, the two graduate students responsible for envisioning and organizing this outreach project. Dr. Michelle Sama, coordinator of the Neuroscience Center at Dartmouth, also played a key role in orchestrating the event.

The competition was advertised to high school students throughout the entire Upper Valley, and ultimately students from six different schools competed. Weeks prior to the competition, Onakomaiya and Bender visited these schools to host “Brain Boot Camps” in which students were taught basic neuroscience and neuroanatomy and provided with study materials. After many weeks of preparation, the brainy students were ready to show off their neuroscience knowledge.

In round one of the competition, participants completed a short quiz, identified brain structures on real human brains, and diagnosed “patients” played by volunteers from the Dartmouth neuroscience community. Afterwards, the students had a break for lunch and visited a variety of activity stations run by professors from the medical school. Dr. Rand Swenson showed students brain specimens, Dr. Jeff Cohen and Dr. Alissa Thomas taught participants how to conduct a neurological exam on a patient, and Dr. Olga Emery provided demonstrations illustrating various brain functions. Meanwhile, Dr. Michelle Sama ran a “Color Your Brain” station for younger attendees. These activities concluded with a talk about Parkinson’s disease from neurology professor, Dr. Stephen Lee.

Having patiently waited long enough, the top five scorers from the first round were announced and brought up to the front of the room to compete in round two. This culminating phase was structured similar to a spelling bee: competitors answered questions from three different categories and were eliminated after responding to two consecutive questions incorrectly. Questions were asked by the judges of the event, four members of the Dartmouth neuroscience community (Dr. Allan Gulledge, Dr. Barbara Jobst, Dr. Jeremy Barry, and myself).

Dr. Hermes Yeh, the MC for the event, congratulates first place winner Jane Plomp, a 9th grader from Lebanon High School.

Jane Plomp, a 9^th grader from Lebanon High School, took first place and will have the opportunity to compete in the National Brain Bee held in Washington, DC, next March. Molly Cornell, an 11^th grader from Hanover High School, won second place, and Morgan Keller, a 12^th grader from Lebanon High School, won third place.

Onakomaiya and Bender certainly accomplished their initial goal, which was “to introduce neuroscience to local high school students and provide a way for them to have fun learning about the brain,” says Bender. Based on everyone’s fantastic performance throughout the competition, it is evident that participants learned a great deal of information. Onakomaiya and Bender received a lot of positive feedback and hope that the Upper Valley Brain Bee will become a yearly tradition here at Dartmouth. Onakomaiya notes that “this year’s participants have already expressed interest in doing it again next year and will be recruiting their friends to join them.”

by Max Mehlman

In the coming year, Patricia Wadsworth, professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, will join Melody Brown Burkins on the Graduate Alumni Council. She will be taking over from Allan Weatherwax, who is completing his time as a member of the council this spring. Professor Weatherwax earned his PhD in physics in 1995 and frequently returns to campus to provide guidance to graduate students. The Graduate Studies Office thanks Weatherwax for his active participation on the Alumni Council and in the graduate community more generally. “Alan Weatherwax has been a great graduate representative on the council, and we will miss his leadership,” observes Assistant Dean of Recruiting, Jane Seibel.

Professor Wadsworth is an active member of her local Dartmouth Alumni Club in the Pioneer Valley, and she is looking forward to becoming involved in the Graduate Alumni Council. She completed her PhD at Dartmouth in 1983, working with Professor Roger Sloboda. The Graduate Forum recently had the opportunity to speak with Professor Wadsworth about her time at Dartmouth and decision to join the Graduate Alumni Council.

Graduate Forum (GF): What inspired you to study biology at Dartmouth?

Patricia Wadsworth (PW): My decision to study at Dartmouth stemmed from working at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. I had completed my undergraduate degree in biology at St. Lawrence University, and I took a summer job at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. My boss at MBL was Ken Edds, who received his PhD degree working with Professor Robert Allen, who subsequently moved to Dartmouth as Chair of Biology. Dartmouth researchers often perform research at the Marine Biological Lab over the summers, and I actually worked with several others from Dartmouth there. Dr. Edds had very much enjoyed working with Professor Allen, and he encouraged me to pursue my PhD at Dartmouth.

GF: What types of activities were you involved in while a graduate student?

PW: I spent a lot of time working in the lab, but in addition to that I also participated as a graduate student representative to the biology faculty. There was not a Graduate Student Council at that time, but individual departments did have graduate student representatives to inform them of graduate student happenings and concerns, so I participated as a rep. I also really enjoyed the many outdoor activities that the Hanover area offers. I took up cross-country skiing and went to the Dartmouth Outing Club cabins. There was a lot of camaraderie amongst the biology graduate students, and we would have different evening gatherings throughout the term.

GF: How did your graduate experience at Dartmouth prepare you for your position as a professor?

PW: As a graduate student, I had the opportunity to be a teaching assistant for several different courses. I feel that being a TA was great preparation for the teaching that I do now. The undergraduate students at Dartmouth are very bright and working with them was both challenging and satisfying. Although at the time I was primarily interested in being in the lab and working on my research, I think it would have been much harder for me to transition to a faculty position had I not had the chance to observe Dartmouth professors teaching and work with undergraduates there.

GF: What was it that made you decide you wanted to be a part of the Graduate Alumni Council?

PW: There are really two reasons that I decided to get involved in the Alumni Council. The first is that as a professional, I feel that it is important to maintain connections with the institution where you studied. As a graduate student, you are heavily involved in the work of your advisor, and when you graduate, you tend to maintain that connection to your mentor as you become a young faculty member. However, it is also important to have broader connections to the institution as a whole and to have interactions with your other classmates. I think that at the time I graduated, there was less emphasis on mentoring activities and maintaining connections, but now there is starting to be more recognition of how important these mentoring connections are.

The second reason that I decided to join the Council was that I am already involved in the Pioneer Valley Dartmouth Alumni Club. My father-in-law, who graduated from Dartmouth in 1939, is very active in the Alumni Club, and I started attending events with him and really enjoyed them. They have annual dinners, activities for families, and other events two to three times a year. Based on my interactions with the Alumni Club, I decided that I would like to be more involved in the broader Dartmouth alumni community and joining the Council seemed like a great way to get involved.

GF: Do you have any specific goals for the Alumni Council?

PW: My main goal is to enhance the opportunities for graduate alumni to get involved in the Dartmouth community.

We thank Professor Wadsworth for taking the time to talk with us, and we look forward to working with her in the future to promote the work of the Graduate Alumni Council!

Ryan McManus ’15 (second from left), Ed von Kuhn ’14 (third from left), Orion House residential coordinator Justin Fromer (center, blue shirt), Rob Lauzen ’15, fourth from right, and William Guinee ’15 (right) visit with Orion House residents.

Ron Bucca and Desmond Webster, Master of Arts in Liberal Studies students, cited in Dartmouth Now for work with Orion House.

When Rob Lauzen ’15 volunteered to visit the Orion House, a residential treatment facility serving males ages 11 to 19, he had no idea how he could connect with the residents. But that changed quickly.

“After our first visit, it wasn’t like we were doing community service,” he says. “It’s a lot of fun. We are just going, hanging out with some great kids, and trying to do a little bit of good.”

It seems to be working.

Nearly every week since October, a group of Dartmouth football players and graduate student military veterans have made the 40-minute drive south to Orion House in Newport, N.H. Orion House takes in underprivileged adolescent males who suffer from substance abuse, have family problems, and/or are dealing with emotional and behavioral issues.

It all began when Ron Bucca, a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) student, heard about the not-for-profit from a friend. Shortly thereafter, Bucca, a U.S. Army Staff Sergeant, and other members of the Dartmouth Graduate Veterans Association traveled to the residential facility.

But after a few trips, Bucca thought Orion House residents might connect better with Dartmouth student-athletes: There would be less of an age gap between the residents, and the boys might have more in common with athletes, since nearly all the Orion House residents play sports. So Bucca approached classmate and football player Edward von Kuhn ’14 about volunteering at Orion House. Once football season ended, Von Kuhn and a crew of teammates joined the veterans on a trip to Orion House.

“When the football guys started coming,” Bucca says, “that’s when this really took off.”

For the full article go to the Dartmouth Now.

Photo by Eli Burakian

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!

“I really don’t want to talk, I just want to listen”

The words of F. Jon Kull, Dean of Dartmouth Graduate Studies at a debriefing session on the issues of sexual assault and prejudice at the College.

On Monday 6^th May, the Graduate Student Council and the Grad Studies Office held a program wide-debriefing session to discuss the recent unrest at Dartmouth. Classes were cancelled on Wednesday 24^th April due to an escalated conflict between fellow students and with the administration.

A group of student protestors had disrupted the Dimensions events to highlight their dissatisfaction with College responses to discrimination, specifically sexual assault, on campus.

The venue of the protest, the Dimensions event, was particularly controversial. Many students see the Dimensions Show as an iconic part of the Dartmouth experience. It brings prospective students to the College where they sit through a performance by current students.

The response of what appears to be a minority of students to the protests amounted to aggressive cyber bullying.  Some Dartmouth students had taken to posting on the “Bored at Baker” website. This site allows for posting anonymous comments, usually in a humorous context. However on this occasion, the comments were aggressive and derogatory. Some comments even threatened violence.

Given the very serious nature of this bullying, which included threats of personal harm, the College cancelled classes to allow for space for students to discuss what had happened. There were teach-ins amongst other events to provide this space. Many graduate students took the opportunity to get involved in these events.

Members of the GSC executive board got together with Dean Kull to organize a debriefing session for graduate students. The meeting was open candid and informal. All students were encouraged to speak. Each student filled in an anonymous comment card giving their thoughts on the issues at hand. Kull then collected and redistributed these cards to facilitate discussion.

One of the meeting’s first points of discussion was where graduate students stand in relation to the worrying events. Graduate students have a unique place on campus. They do not share the same culture as undergraduates, yet are inseparable in so many ways. They act as mentors and teachers, making the Dartmouth experience as rounded as possible.

Graduate students’ experiences of mentorship meant that the issues, protests, conflicts and subsequent events affected graduate students as they did undergraduates. However there was an acceptance that graduate students had some responsibility in increasing communication between the two communities.

Many of the comments and suggestions raised at the session were enthusiastic about further participation with the undergraduate community and undergraduate organizations. There was the feeling that the graduate community has a responsibility to help nurture a Dartmouth environment that is welcoming for all.

Speaking on the event and the issues, GSC President Lisa Jackson said, “One of the biggest themes that arose in the discussion was the need for better communication between graduate students and undergraduates.”

Jackson continued “I echo the sentiments of many in the room who said these events have exposed a communication gap in that regard, and thus, an opportunity to reach out to undergrads moving forward in order to help foster more unity on campus.”

Above all, the event showed there was unanimity that it is important to discuss these problems, and to be bold standing up when a student feels that their position at Dartmouth is threatened.

We encourage all graduate students to reach out to Dean Kull, the Grad Office and the GSC if they wish to further talk about these, or any other issues.

by Dan Durcan

Dr. Fisher is pictured here with his daughter, Josie, in 2011, doing one of his favorite activities, hiking in the Sierra Nevada.

Current Master of Public Health graduate students, Lisa Jackson and Dyane Tower, recently sat down to talk with Dr. Elliott Fisher, the newly appointed director of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice (TDI), on what got him started in medicine, TDI’s most important health care contributions to date, and what its future might look like here at Dartmouth and beyond.

Lisa Jackson (LJ): What first inspired you to pursue a career in health care?

Elliot Fisher (EF): I decided that I would try a few things after college, so I drove an ambulance in Somerville, Massachusetts. I was interested in the outdoors and had done a lot of climbing and wanted to be able to learn more first aid to take care of friends who had gotten hurt. I began to notice the gap between the quality of care that I had received as the son of a Harvard faculty member compared to the care that the residents of Somerville received. This was part of why I chose to go to med school—so I could help improve care. (I also enjoyed providing care.) Commitment to making the world a better place was instilled in me by my father growing up.

Dyane Tower (DT): What has been your favorite TDI project that you have contributed research to?

EF: The project that was an incredible opportunity to be a part of was our look at the health implications of geographic variations in spending. It took me from being a health services researcher to someone who had to show up in Washington to explain the findings. The findings were relevant to policy in ways that I could never have anticipated and seem to be having a continuing impact on health care today.

LJ: What have been TDI’s most important contributions to health care so far?

EF: First, emphasizing the importance of engaging and empowering patients through the work done by Jack Wennberg and Al Mulley on shared decision making. Second, utilizing modern scientific methods in the improvement of health care delivery through the work done by Paul Batalden, Gene Nelson, and others. And third, working to align payment and delivery systems with the care that patients want and need.

DT: What makes TDI different, special, or unique from other public health programs in the nation?

EF: First, we are committed to asking important and difficult questions about health and health care, like can there be too much health care? Second, we have a sharp focus on understanding the failures of and the challenges facing health care delivery systems and what we might do to make them better. We emphasize an epidemiologic way of thinking about care.

LJ: Do you have any plans for further integrating TDI into the broader graduate community through collaboration with other graduate programs on campus?

EF: We are already strengthening our collaboration with Tuck. TDI and Tuck share responsibility for the Master of Health Care Delivery Science—a mid-career master’s program. We want to build on that by bringing graduate students from TDI, Geisel, Tuck, Thayer, and Arts and Sciences together to focus on creating a sustainable health system.

DT: I have heard there may be plans for a new building; would TDI be looking to move to campus in the near future? (TDI is currently located in the Centerra Business Park in Lebanon, New Hampshire.)

EF: There is a new building being built on the Dartmouth-Hitchcock campus, which is where the research community of TDI will be based. It will be a great space, and will be next to people doing all sorts of interesting things in bioinformatics and statistics. We are also committed to getting space on campus for the educational programs to increase multidisciplinary teaching. It is really important that students are a part of the broader Dartmouth community of students, and being on campus will help that.

LJ: As the new director, what is your number one priority for TDI?

EF: To build on our amazing current strengths in research and education and our strong current partnerships with delivery systems here and elsewhere to make Dartmouth the preeminent academic institution addressing problems in health care delivery in the United States.

DT: What is your favorite recreational activity when you are not working?

EF: If it’s warm enough, I will be on my bike. If it’s cold enough, I’ll be on my cross-country skis. We are so lucky to live here because of the great outdoor opportunities. Moving to Vermont wasn’t a difficult decision—it’s a great place to bring up kids and you can go right outside the house to cross country ski or bike anytime. I love the outdoors.

Dr. Fisher follows Drs. Jack Wennberg and Jim Weinstein in leading TDI, originally founded in 1988 by Dr. Wennberg. To learn more about Dr. Fisher’s goals for TDI and read his bio, please visit the TDI site. 

by Lisa Jackson and Dyane Tower

Congratulations to graduate student John Gartner, in the Department of Earth Sciences, who was one of four winners of the Graduate Poster Session held recently in Alumni Hall! (Below is a summary of Gartner’s poster.)

Poster Title: Irene Landslides and Sedimentation in Vermont Rivers:  Importance of Gradients in Transport Capacity

How do rivers transport sediment from the mountains to the sea? This question has implications for every species that lives in and near rivers, including humans. Hurricane Irene, as devastating as it was to so many people, provided an unprecedented opportunity to observe how rivers cut into and also bury the local landscape with sediment.

For decades, geomorphologists have measured stream power at spot locations along rivers to determine if the capacity at a point is high enough to transport sediment. Yet the stream power of rivers is seldom constant from the headwaters downstream, and this change should affect sediment transport dynamics. Specifically, if the stream power is decreasing downstream, going from high to low power along a given segment, then the river cannot carry the sediment load delivered from upstream and must deposit material. In contrast, if stream power increases moving downstream, then the river can entrain all sediment delivered from upstream and more, possibly exporting material from the riverbanks, undercutting the adjacent hillslopes, and inducing landslides. I hypothesized that river segments with decreasing stream power should exhibit widespread floodplain deposition and few landslides, and, conversely, segments with increasing stream power should exhibit abundant landslides and minimal floodplain deposition.

To test these ideas, landslides and floodplain deposits were mapped based on field surveys and aerial photos in two Vermont watersheds after Irene. Freely available digital elevation data were used to compute stream power and, more importantly, gradients in stream power on the two rivers. The hypotheses were supported by the preponderance of floodplain deposits occurring in reaches with decreasing stream power and an abundance of landslides in reaches with increasing stream power.

This novel approach to characterizing sediment transport dynamics shows that gradients in stream power can affect both the downstream and lateral mobility of sediment. In particular, decreasing downstream sediment transport capacity favors the movement of material from the river onto the adjacent landscape. However, reaches of increasing downstream capacity have an opposite dynamic, with material moving from adjacent areas into river channels. One critical broader implication is that maps of stream power gradients can be an important tool for protection and management of human infrastructure and riparian ecosystems.

poster summary by John Gartner

Congratulations to graduate student Alex Schlegel, in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, who was one of four winners of the Graduate Poster Session held recently in Alumni Hall! (Below is a summary of Schlegel’s poster.)

Poster Title: A Neural Network Supporting Mental Operations on Visual Imagery

Ask a bonobo what you get when you cross an elephant with a rhino, and he likely will not have the slightest clue. But if you ask me, I can vividly imagine an elephino with two tusks and horns charging through the savanna. Humans have evolved robust machinery for synthesizing new concepts that we can use for a range of pursuits including art and science. However, we know little about the neural basis of this machinery.

In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the brain’s ability to manipulate the contents of visual imagery. We developed a set of abstract visual shapes that could be assembled into 2×2 arrays to generate figures of varying complexity. Subjects performed two types of tasks: they either held the stimuli in short term memory for later recall or mentally manipulated the stimuli in working memory.

We found a network of 11 cortical and subcortical brain regions. There was differing activity between those tasks involving remembering and those involving manipulation. Multivariate pattern classification within these regions revealed a subset of frontal, parietal, and occipital areas whose informational structure could distinguish between the different mental operations. This suggests that these regions play a key role in mental operations. We also found that the pattern of functional connectivity between these regions changed depending on the task, with an area called the precuneus serving as a network hub.

Thus, a multi-region network of areas dominated by fronto-parieto-occipital connections supports the mental manipulation of visual imagery.

poster summary by Alex Schlegel

Congratulations to graduate student Marianna Kleyman, in the Department of Biochemistry, who was one of four winners of the Graduate Poster Session held recently in Alumni Hall! (Below is a summary of Kleyman’s poster.)

Poster Title: STAG2 Regulates Kinetochore-Microtubule Attachments in Human Cells

Chromosomes must be faithfully segregated during cell division to allow for normal growth and development of organisms. Errors in chromosome segregation cause birth defects and are common in many solid cancers yielding a heterogeneous population of cells. This increases the potential to resist drug treatment and metastasize, and generally leads to a poor cancer outcome for patients.

Cancer cells frequently missegregate whole chromosomes at high rates in a phenomenon called chromosomal instability, or CIN. CIN is caused by mal-attachments between chromosomes and the microtubule fibers responsible for movement of chromosomes during segregation.

The data demonstrate that loss of the chromosome-associated protein STAG2—important for chromosome cohesion—increases the frequency of mal-attachments of chromosomes to the microtubule fibers. The loss of STAG2 occurs in about 10-20% of cancers and results in the improper assembly of chromosomes. These data indicate that STAG2 plays an important role in ensuring faithful chromosome segregation in human cells.

poster summary by Marianna Kleyman