Genevieve van der Voort is graduating from Vancouver Island University (VIU) with a significant accomplishment under her belt – she is lead author on a research paper published in The Canadian Entomologist.

“I still haven’t quite got my head wrapped around it,” says the Biology major, who graduates this June. “I’m very passionate about insect research, so being able to contribute and share what I found with others is very exciting.”

The Canadian Entomologist publishes research papers and notes from entomologists and biologists from around the world. Van der Voort’s note paper was co-authored by Dr. Jasmine Janes, a VIU Biology Professor, and Dr. Manu Saunders of the University of New England. The work falls under the larger umbrella of Janes’ long-term research project on the eco-evolutionary process of bog orchids.

“Few undergraduates get to be co-authors on papers, let alone lead authors, because the opportunities for research experiences like this are often reserved for graduate students,” says Janes. “This work is impressive, not just for its scientific merits, but because it means that Genevieve went above and beyond the expectations for a typical undergraduate research project – she did the field work, analysis and writing for this paper.”

The research paper – Pan trapping in habitats supporting Platanthera (Orchidaceae) shows little difference in insect family-level diversity – sheds lights on the use of different-coloured pan traps. Pan traps are small coloured bowls filled with soapy water used to catch insects. Van der Voort’s study used eight different coloured pan traps to sample insect diversity in habitats supporting Platenthera, commonly known as bog orchids, on Vancouver Island. The yellow traps caught the highest numbers of insects but she found there was no statistical difference among colours overall. The study also contributes important baseline data on the diversity and behaviour of insect communities in orchid habitats on the Island.

Van der Voort’s accomplishments don’t stop at being a lead author in a scientific journal – she’s also a recipient of a VIU 2020 REACH Award, an award given to undergraduates to complete an independent research project, and a recipient a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA).

“Doing research helped me figure out what topics I would like to continue researching after graduating. I really enjoyed learning about insects and their relationships with plants in courses I had taken earlier in my degree and being able to use the information I had learned in year- or semester-long projects was very rewarding,” says van der Voort. “I am hoping to go to graduate school for my Master of Science in the future, working on plants and insects.”

Janes says the USRA is a highly competitive award that supports undergraduate research experiences. Over the past few months, she has witnessed van der Voort’s dedication and passion for research.

“Genevieve has a fantastic attitude – she shows great attention to detail and initiative and has really demonstrated an ability to link complex topics from multiple areas of biology,” says Janes. “It has been truly inspiring to watch her grow as a person and a researcher.”

Written by: Vancouver Island Univeristy News | Rachel Stern, Communications Officer

Please visit here to read the original article. 

By the time Anastasia Kerr-German was a senior in 2014, she had already presented independent research at various conferences, delved into the rigor that goes into designing a research study, and worked with three different Georgia College faculty in their research labs. 

“All my professors that I worked with brought something different to the table,” she said. “That was the beauty of Georgia College for me because you get to work with multiple faculty and it’s very collaborative. My ideas of what I wanted to do with my life sort of evolved based on conversations I had with them individually.”

Kerr-German worked with Drs. Whitney Heppner, J. Noland White, and Tsu-Ming Chiang in the Department of Psychology while she was a student. It was those experiences in faculty research labs, that led her to pursue research in her own career—and she’s not alone.

“Well, first I didn’t even know that I’d have the opportunity here,” said Marissa Mayfield, ‘18, ’20, who recently graduated in December with her master’s in biology from Georgia College. When Mayfield was an undergraduate environmental science major, she too experienced taking the reins in a research lab, which invigorated her to explore research further.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to research. At first, I just thought it was a cool path to test out,” she said. “Working with other students and faculty on research helped me figure out this was something that I loved doing.”

Mayfield researched environmental remediation while an undergraduate. She looked at environments that have been polluted and through varying environmental analysis, she determined the most affordable and efficient way to fix that area. An interest in remediation and rehabilitation eventually landed her a National Science Foundation grant last year. The grant was to research the remedial properties of Moringa trees, whose roots and shoots absorb water and nutrients from the soil as well as heavy metals.

Like Mayfield, Audrey Waits, ‘17, was a graduate student studying biology at Georgia College. Her research at the university focused on the discovery of new bacteriophages, which are viruses that infect bacteria. Waits garnered a Fulbright Scholarship in 2017 to study in Finland. She conducted research with the Thule Institute at the University of Oulu. She studied Arctic health and studied how climatic factors (temp, precipitation, etc.) affects infectious diseases for both humans and animals in the Arctic.

As part of her Fulbright experience, Waits attended workshops, seminars and conducted a systematic literature review—it’s the same experiences that now guide her as a faculty member in biochemistry and molecular medicine at the University of Oulu. She’s also a Ph.D. student at the university, where she’s studying endometrial glands and their 3D structure in relation to hormones, genetic modifications, and early pregnancy (mainly in mice).

“This research will help in understanding how endometrial gland structure affects implantation and could aid in timing embryo transfers for in vitro fertilization (IVF),” Waits said.

“My Fulbright experience was truly a life-changing experience for me, in the best possible way,” Waits said. “I met my husband during my Fulbright experience and now, we live in Oulu where I am a PhD student. My Fulbright experience definitely shaped my career and future in research.”

Kerr-German went on to study at the University of Tennessee where she got her master’s in experimental psychology and graduated in 2019 with a doctorate in research and experimental psychology and neuroscience. She now leads the Brain, Executive Function and Attention Research (B.E.A.R) Lab at Boys Town National Research Hospital. One major goal of the lab is to understand how children’s brains process the information in the world around them and what individual factors might lead to different developmental trajectories and long-term outcomes.

At the core of what these graduates do is a focus on community and translating this experience in research to serve others. For Mayfield, it’s about helping communities and wildlife have a chance to thrive.

“Being a researcher is important because it’s all about what you’re able to contribute to science,” said Mayfield. “I get to find ways to help people, to clean whole environments and give organisms back their habitats so they won’t go extinct.”

Kerr-German said it comes down to the lives she’s able to impact—it’s a lesson that’s stayed with her since her time at Georgia College in Dr. Chiang’s research lab, where she did examine factors contributing to the development of young children’s social and emotional competence.

“Because we were all paired with individual children, we were able to see that child grow over the course of a year or however long you’re in the lab. You get to see how these interventions affected them, you got to look at the statistics and see if it actually worked,” she said. “To me, that’s the coolest part. It’s that translational piece that I sought when I went on the get my graduate degree—and eventually what I sought when I was looking for a career in research.”

Written by: Editorial Team for Georgia College & State University

Please visit here to read the original article. 

A group of Michigan State University Department of Theatre students created a series of new audio plays, each connected to themes of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). All five “Audio Anthology” plays, along with a student-produced documentary short, are now available online at theatre.msu.edu/dei_audio.

When the health and safety response to the COVID-19 pandemic caused the Department of Theatre’s entire 2020-2021 production season to be canceled, students were invited to audition for a series of experimental, devised, and novel theatre projects all rooted in topics around DEI.

“Necessity is the mother of invention and having all of these limitations created opportunities,” said Deric McNish, Assistant Professor of Acting and faculty coordinator on the project. “This is not something that is done in the traditional theatrical model. It’s something that is genuinely the creation of the people in this ensemble that everyone has equal ownership over.”

The Audio Anthology project was unlike anything the students had worked on before.

“We were all cast in this project without knowing what it was. Usually, you get cast, and you get handed a script and you rehearse,” said Sam Carter, senior BFA Acting and the anthology’s assistant director. “With the Audio Anthology, we all got the chance to be actors and directors and playwrights, devising a piece about something we were passionate about.”

As a starting point, the group read and discussed dozens of poems from diverse artists, which evoked frank and honest conversations about race, gender, and sexuality as well as personal experiences about how these issues impact the way the students move through the world today. From this experience, they created scenarios and improvised scenes until the basic structure for each play began to take shape. Individuals and groups of students then took on the challenge of weaving these experiences into cohesive audio dramas.

Nealmonté Alexander, a senior dual Fine Arts candidate in Acting and Apparel and Textile Design, took a notably personal approach to the project. He liked the poems the team shared, but did not feel connected to them, so the poetry he used to inspire his play was his own.

The audio play, “Missing Link,” tells the story of a student in a therapy session who discusses issues of ethnicity, identity, intimacy, community, mental health, and being a mixed-race person. The student, Alexander says, is him.

“I had to revisit things in my past, but if I stay silent, I’m doing everyone a disservice and I am hurting myself by not talking about it,” Alexander said. “The character is absolutely me. The experiences that the character goes through are not made-up experiences; they are authentically and personally mine. I’ve experienced the exclusion and feeling disconnected from people for reasons around race, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Making a conscious choice to share this has made it more comfortable for me to talk about it in general.”

For sophomore English major Mary Claire Zauel, the mystery project was a dream opportunity that merged all of her areas of interest.

“As someone who wants to be a playwright, I was excited to combine my passion for poetry and theatre,” said Zauel, whose play, “For Detroit” is inspired by “There Are Birds Here,” a poem by Jamaal May that addresses the uninformed and biased perception that many Michiganders have of Detroit and its citizens.

Zauel read the poem in a class during her freshman year. “As soon as I read it, it quickly became my favorite poem. It really opened my mind,” she said. “When I was given the opportunity to write the play, I felt very honored. It was an emotional experience at times because I felt that I shouldn’t have been the one to write the piece. I’m not from Detroit, I don’t share the same experiences as people who are from Detroit and the character in the play. But the group had a lot of faith in me, I felt very supported by the other cast members and everybody else in the creative team.”

Even after the scripts had been developed, the experience continued to be atypical of what the students had grown to expect from their involvement in past theatre productions.

“Before the plays were cast, we got the opportunity to express which roles we were really excited about or strongly identified with,” Carter said, “which is something an actor never gets to do in a typical audition.”

The art of directing an audio play was also inherently unique, says Zauel. “One of the really positive sides of directing just for audio is the amount of impact that a voice can have, which is something that can be overlooked in physical theater because we’re so focused on where our hands go and how we need to move around the stage.”

Carter agreed, adding that she found physicality to still play a critical role in voice acting. “My characters were in a coffee shop, so I directed the actors to put a coffee in their hands, eat something, take a sip. You could hear that movement in their voice, and it painted a better picture overall.”

The students all agreed that beyond the experience of writing, acting, and directing, the biggest takeaway was the creative bond they’ve formed as a group. For Carter, the anthology brought a newfound confidence as a writer. “I’d never written a script before and all the people who had experience in that area gave me feedback in a super respectful manner that made me feel like I was so capable.”

For Alexander, the lessons learned from the project have already made an impact in his personal life. “When I first submitted my script, I was so nervous. I didn’t know how people would take it. I didn’t think people would like it, but I received validation and positive feedback from Deric and my peers. We discussed how to tackle that kind of vulnerability and it has absolutely helped me in classes and other facets of my life going beyond the project. It’s opened me up to so much.”

McNish hopes that those lessons will now extend from the students to the audience. “If one person listens to these plays and becomes a little more empathetic, a little more kind, maybe if they just listen a little bit better knowing the struggles that people are carrying around with them, then this will be time well spent.”

Visitors to the anthology at theatre.msu.edu/dei_audio will find an audio file of each play, along with the poems that inspired them, links to a transcript of each play, and additional resources and information relating to the themes and topics explored.

To hear a podcast with Alexander, Carter, and Zauel about the experience of creating the anthology, visit theatre.msu.edu/aud.

Written by: Editorial Team for Michigan State University’s Department of Theatre

Please visit here to read the original article.