Mentoring

By far the most rewarding part of my research career has been serving as a mentor and teacher. An important part of my graduate research is that I work locally and thus have the opportunity to get as many undergraduates and high school students as possible involved in my field- and lab-based research projects. Below are all of the undergraduates and high school students apart of the TRES crew.

# High school

* Undergraduate

^Graduate

2017 Field Crew

Catherine Hucul*

Jen Holub*

Clara Frazier*

Emily Mardiks*

Ben Vernasco^

Sydney Hope^

2018 Field Crew

Emily Reasor*

Taryn Smith*

Catherine Hucul*

Matt Aberle^

2019 Field Crew

Hannah Glass*

Devin Adler*

Arturo Romans*

Taryn Smith*

Christian Shushock#

Phil McElmurray^

Zach Gajewski^

TRES

Crew

Emily Reasor (B.S. Fish & Wildlife Conservation, Virginia Tech) earned a fellowship through the Fralin Undergraduate Research Fellowship program to carry out an independent research project. Emily studied the hormonal response of male tree swallows partnered to females with experimentally manipulated sexual behavior. She presented a poster of her results at the 2019 VA State Wildlife Society conference. Since graduating from Virginia Tech, Emily has been a Range Technician with the Bureau of Land Management in Central Oregon and is currently a Naturalist on Cumberland Island in coastal Georgia.

Taryn Smith (B.S. Biological Sciences, Virginia Tech) earned the Ralph E. Carlson Memorial Scholarship in Ornithology through the Department of Biological Sciences. In addition to being a field technician on the TRES Crew for two summers, Taryn carried out an independent project where she studied the effect of lead exposure on the red blood cell membrane integrity of a songbird. She presented a poster of her results at the 2020 SICB conference in Austin, Texas. Taryn is interested in pursuing research opportunities in the areas of behavioral endocrinology, conservation, and sexual selection.

Interfaces of Global Change

Fellows-for-Fellows Mentoring Program

To increase mentorship across departments at Virginia Tech and foster a sense of community among graduate students, I developed a peer mentoring program for the Interfaces of Global Change (IGC) graduate education program, of which I was a PhD Fellow. The IGC program consists of ~70 graduate fellows from 13 departments at Virginia Tech.

To see an overview of the mentoring program as well as expectations for both mentors and mentees, click here.

Vanderbilt Cross-educational Mentoring Program

In collaboration with the Collaborative for STEM Education and Outreach at Vanderbilt, I also developed a cross-educational mentoring program that focused on matching high school women of color from multiple local high schools with undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral women of color at Vanderbilt. My goal was to expose young women to other high school-aged women of color interested in STEM and to successful women of color scientists at each successive stage of the educational pipeline.

As a first-generation Latina in STEM myself, this is the type of program I dreamed of being a part of as I made my journey through higher education; I hope it continues to benefit the next generation of women in STEM.