by Scott Martin, Biological Sciences Librarian, University of Michigan Library Fall is my favorite time of year; I greatly prefer the transitional weather of spring and autumn to the extremes of summer and winter, and the fall colors of the Midwest – especially out in the woods where I live – push this season up…
Category: academia
Guest post: Undergraduate mentorship in the time of COVID-19: what we’ve learned
From Meghan Duffy and Dynamic Ecology This is a guest post by Jonathan Barros, Briana Martin-Villa, Lexi Golden, Jonathan Hernandez, & Callie Chappell (UM EEB B.S. 2016) I. Introduction: During this challenging time of COVID-19, our lives have been turned upside down. Jobs have been lost or radically altered, loved ones have fallen ill, and…
Sexual vs. asexual reproduction
The second in a series from the blog Gender and Sexuality in Nature, a 2016 UC Davis course organized by UM EEB alumnus Ash Zemenick (UM EEB B.S. 2011, Ph.D. UC Davis 2017) and Jacob Moore (B.S. University of Washington 2009, Ph.D. UC Davis 2017). Discussion overview: This week’s meeting focused on asexuality. Last week…
How to construct a “cold email” and meet with potential grad school or postdoc advisors
by Anat Belasen, herpetologist, evolutionary ecologist, Smith Conservation Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Cornell University, U-M EEB Ph.D. alumnus 2019 From Anat M. Belasen, Ph.D. Blog Tis the season to send those anxiety-producing emails out to your science heroes! I’ve gotten a lot of questions recently about the best way to reach out to potential advisors,…
Supporting BIPOC researchers in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
By the @EEB_POC team From Dynamic Ecology Note from Meghan Duffy: This guest post is a revised version of one that briefly appeared last month. Over the past few months society has once again had to face the stark inequities that disproportionately affect Black, Indigenous, and other racial minorities. The senseless murders of Ahmaud Arbery,…
PROJECT BIODIVERSIFY: We contain multitudes. Our courses should reflect this.
From Small Pond Science by Project Biodiversify We contain multitudes. Our courses should reflect this. We contain multitudes. Like an ecological niche, a person’s identity is composed of infinite dimensions that make up a person or group’s collective identity space (Figure 1). However, in science – a discipline that has historically valued objective and…
EEB volunteers at Feria de Ciencias
by Gail Kuhnlein, communications specialist, University of Michigan, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology As in past years, members of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology volunteered their time and talents to the third Feria de Ciencias, a science fair held completely in Spanish for bilingual school children. The Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics…
Guest post: 8 lessons for teaching over Zoom
From Dynamic Ecology by Morgan Tingley, associate professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA It has been a long ten weeks. As SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, was spreading rampantly across the United States in late March, most colleges and universities were returning from spring break, looking forward to finishing the academic year and…
Academic parenting during a pandemic
Recently, Meghan Duffy had a call while chasing her preschooler — who had just learned how to ride a pedal bike — around the block. (Insert your own life lesson about us both learning how to balance here.) From Dynamic Ecology by Dana Turjeman, Sondra Turjeman, and Meghan Duffy This began as a subsection of…
Going back to (a new) normal: reflections from three academics as universities and society begin to re-open
From Dynamic Ecology by Dana Turjeman, Sondra Turjeman, and Meghan Duffy This blog is directly connected to a post two of us (Dana and Meghan) published on March 15, right as things in the US were beginning to shut down due to COVID-19. In many places, discussions on re-opening the economy are at full speed…
Guest post: Suggestions from a wellness counselor on coronavirus and managing mental health
From Dynamic Ecology and Meg Duffy Kate Hagadone is the Wellness Counselor at Michigan Medical School’s Office of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies (OGPS). She sent the information in this post to an OGPS listserv at the end of last week. I thought the information would be of interest to lots more folks, so, with her…
Open discussion thread: field-based courses in the time of coronavirus
From Dynamic Ecology by Meghan Duffy, a University of Michigan ecologist and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology In the past, if we used the word “remote” when talking about field-based courses, we would have been referring to going to a far-off location. Now, during the pandemic, talking about teaching field-based courses…
Guest post: a personal account of why science needs inclusion
From Dynamic Ecology by Lynette Strickland, Ph.D. alumnus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, soon-to-be postdoc, Texas A&M Corpus Christie A diversity of metallic beetles This is a guest post by Lynette Strickland, who just defended her PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She will be moving to Texas A&M Corpus Christie to do…
Dynamic Ecology guest post: Balancing academia and chronic illness
From Meghan Duffy:Today’s post is a guest post by Sue Baker, a Research Fellow at the University of Tasmania. Here’s the post: In this post I will share my experience of being an ecologist while also being chronically ill. I was inspired by Meghan’s posts sharing her experiences of battling anxiety. I think chronic illness…
Some advice for PhD students and their mentors in the time of coronavirus
From Dynamic Ecology by Meghan Duffy, a University of Michigan ecologist and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Dana Turjeman, Ph.D. student for Quantitative Marketing U-M Ross School of Business This blog post started as an email conversation between Dana Turjeman and Meghan Duffy. Dana turned her initial outline into a…