Revealing the Hidden Cirriculum of Graduate School Applications
Much of the graduate school application process and funding possibilities are opaque to potential graduate students, a reality that reduces the breadth of students who successfully apply to graduate school, and in turn deprives departments and science more broadly of the full breadth of perspectives and creative solutions. To this end, I have worked to help pull back the curtain on several aspects of the graduate application process, including applying to the NSF GRFP funding source, and writing effective graduate application statements.
To increase awareness of the GRFP and the application process, I have held several GRFP information sessions for summer research undergraduates, the diversity-focused Envision EEB program run by Michigan State University, and trainees associated with MSU’s Plant Resilience Institute. These sessions cover everything from writing timelines and statement content to general overviews of ways to fund graduate school, and increase basic awareness of the fellowship opportunity at the pre-graduate school stage, when the greatest gains in researcher diversity can be realized.
In addition, I co-developed and lead an interactive one and a half hour writing workshop for prospective graduate students from historically excluded groups on preparing graduate school statements. We covered statement content, editing tips, and improving writing flow and organization, using real examples that students tried their hand at editing and improving, and explicitly discussed academic norms and hidden curriculum throughout the workshop.
Trans-inclusive Mentorship Workshop
To help advisers understand the opportunities they have to support transgender mentees, the challenges trans students can face in graduate school, and role-play scenarios of what to say and how to say it in a supportive way, I helped create and present a 1-hour interactive workshop on trans-inclusive mentoring for the Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior department at the University of Michigan. Minority-specific information about threats, effective interventions, and external support programs go a long way to helping mentors be successful and confident in effectively supporting all of their mentees.
Live Science with Middle School Environmental After-school Program
To bring the excitement and dynamicism of active research to students near my field site, I was a guest scientist for the ECO-SEEDS environmental after school program at Forest Area High School and Middle School. I designed an investigative activity where students collected data on insect larva abundance in fluid removed from red and green morph pitcher plants growing behind their school. I then analyzed the data in front of the students, asking for their predictions of what we would find, and emphasizing that I didn’t know the answer either, and we were about to find out together. The students responded to the unknown aspects of the activity with excitement and heightened engagement in understanding the biological conclusion we reached together. After we had graphed the data and worked through interpreting the graph together, I took the students back to the bog boardwalk and we returned the insect larvae to the pitcher plants and spread pitcher plant seed that I had collected earlier as part of my research, emphasizing the importance of conservation, stewardship, and ethics in biological research, in addition to the excitement of the research itself.