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,…
Category: Dynamic Ecology
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…
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…
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…
Productivity, planning, and self-care: work-life balance requires planning ahead
From Dynamic Ecology by Meghan Duffy, a University of Michigan ecologist and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology As I’ve done work related to Michigan’s Grad Student Mental Health task force, and done my own “regular” work this semester, I’ve realized that discussions related to self-care and work/life balance often focus on…
Graduate student mental health at Michigan: some key factors & potential things to address
From Dynamic Ecology by Meghan Duffy, a University of Michigan ecologist and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology As I’ve written about before, I am chairing a task force for Michigan’s Rackham Graduate School that is focused on graduate student mental health. We started our work last summer, and have spent the…
Guest post: How to be an ally
From Dynamic Ecology by Gina Baucom, a University of Michigan associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology He’s just a clueless dude. A friend and colleague told me recently about how one of her advisors had written a grant on the topic she developed in his lab — he was awarded the grant, but she…
Why teaching Intro Bio makes me think we need to radically change qualifying exams
From Dynamic Ecology by Meghan Duffy, a University of Michigan ecologist and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology When I first arrived at Michigan and began teaching Intro Bio, the course had four exams. In that first semester, I added in clicker questions. Since then, we have added in frequent quizzing, so…
Cohort-based mentoring for graduate students: a “bright spot” worth emulating?
From Dynamic Ecology by Meghan Duffy, a University of Michigan ecologist and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology I recently learned about an approach to mentoring that I think has a lot of potential. My initial conversations with others suggests they think it has promise, too. The goal of this post is…
What do you most think you should know but don’t?
From Dynamic Ecology by Meghan Duffy, a University of Michigan ecologist and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology I recently attended an event related to graduate student mental health. One point of emphasis was imposter syndrome (something I’ve blogged about before), and one thing the presenter stated was that it’s important to remind ourselves…
Why I told a room of 300 people that I see a therapist
From Dynamic Ecology by Meghan Duffy, a University of Michigan ecologist and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Last week, I had the honor of being a plenary speaker at the biology19 conference in Zurich. This is an annual meeting of Swiss organismal biologists, where most of the attendees are Swiss graduate…
Put your take home message at the top of your slides!
From Dynamic Ecology From Dynamic Ecology by Meghan Duffy, a University of Michigan ecologist and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Imagine you’re sitting in a talk. It’s Thursday morning at the ESA meeting and your brain is a little fried from sitting in lots of talks all week. You momentarily zone…