A Summer Experience Working with the US Fish and Wildlife Service

By Ashley Booth The last eight years of my life I’ve spent most of my time in the swamps and marshes of Louisiana, covered in mud while studying blue crabs, sea birds, and wetland plants. From my Masters through my PhD these experiences offered an opportunity to experience the unique ecosystems and cultures of the …

An Abbreviated Journal of a Postdoc

Dr. Clay Tucker Clay, hard at work coring a bald cypress My graduate school advisor once told me, “a master’s degree is learning how science is done, and a PhD is proving that you can do science.” After obtaining a PhD, many are expected to produce scientific products (e.g., publications, grant proposals, teaching) without much …

Navigating Academia and Beyond with ADHD

This post was partially guided by a Slack Chat that took place Monday, 1/24/22 in the Slack space of another early career science group, the Early Career Ecology section of ESA. I hosted the chat with a colleague and we fielded questions about coping with ADHD as researchers. This is more or less the condensed …

Now Hiring! Where to Look for Summer Funding

JAN 22, 2018     CLAY TUCKER AND TAYLOR ROWLEY Internship - career issues and concepts word cloud illustration. Word collage concept. Graduate funding often matches the 9-month term that most professors hold, so not every graduate student has access to year-round funding. Perhaps you pick up a job at the local coffee shop, or maybe you move …

What do fish and flowers have in common?

DEC 18, 2017     REBECCA DALTON A) A photo of my field site in Gothic, CO, where flowers begin blooming early each spring. B) Fish ladder in Parker River, MA where fish are counted each spring. C) A photo of Claytonia lanceoloata (spring beauty), which is one of my study species for my dissertation. D) A photo …

Field Notes: GOMECC III Cruise

AUG 21, 2017     GABRIELLE CORRADINO Figure 1. Example DNA filter from a surface water sample. The filter will be frozen and brought back to North Carolina State University to have the DNA extracted for processing. Photo: Corradino “Why would you spend 35 days on a boat just to filter seawater?” This was the most common question …

Studying Berries in Bear Country

AUG 14, 2017     LINDSEY PARKINSON Photo: http://www.arkive.org/american-black-bear/ursus-americanus/ Summer ‘tis the season of studies from geology to ornithology and everything in between. I study wild berry species to try to find what environmental factors have the strongest influence on berry productivity. With no other wild fruits in Alaska, berries are an important natural and cultural resource, one that …

Notes from the Field: An Educational Swamp Tour

Students listen to Dean Stacie Haynie (standing) of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences discuss possibilities at LSU. JUL 31, 2017     CLAY TUCKER For three weeks every summer, undergraduate students from the South Central United States, representing a wide range of cultural backgrounds participate in the “Undergraduate Summer Internship for Underrepresented Minorities” program to visit …

The last call of the rail in California?

AUG 15, 2016     JORDAN ROSENCRANZ Light-footed Ridgway’s Rail (Rallus obsoletus levipes) perched on artificial nesting platform in tidal wetlands at Seal Beach Wildlife Refuge during fall high tide event. Photo credit: Kirk Gilligan - USFWS When I tell people that I study the vulnerability of salt marshes to sea-level rise in California, the typical responses are …

Maine’s First State Record of Ancient Murrelet: How it’s vagrancy could be a warning Climate Change

JUN 20, 2016     KEENAN YAKOLA Ancient Murrelet. Photo: Keenan Yakola During the summer I am beyond fortunate to be one of the research supervisors on Seal Island NWR (restricted access). In addition, I recently finished my first semester as a Master’s Fellow with the Northeast Climate Science Center at UMass Amherst. SINWR is one of the …