Spring 2008

Dear Friends,

This issue of the EEB newsletter focuses on our wonderful graduate students. Some of you were graduate students here yourselves but many of you probably remember graduate students primarily as your graduate student instructors (GSI) in laboratory or discussion sections. We are enormously proud of our GSIs and their dedication and creativity in teaching and are pleased that they often receive recognition for their work. Since the beginning of EEB in 2001, our graduate students have received five GSI Awards from the Rackham Graduate School; given that only 20 are awarded annually and there are over 2,000 GSIs at U-M eligible to receive these awards each year, it is clear that our graduate students go well beyond the norm in their contribution to undergraduate education.

Increasingly, undergraduates in EEB and The Program in Biology work with graduate students in research, both on independent projects or as research assistants. We have encouraged more partnering between undergraduate and graduate students within laboratory groups to expand research opportunities for undergrads and expose them to the energy and enthusiasm of our graduate students. Faculty research mentors are also always involved so that they help train the next generation of faculty in how to be successful mentors of student research. This has been a very successful program and we continue to seek funding to expand the number of graduate student research mentors and to increase funding available for undergraduate researchers to purchase supplies and equipment or travel to field sites and conferences to present their work.

We strongly support and encourage our graduate students in their teaching and mentoring activities, but also need to provide them with time and resources to focus on their own development as independent researchers. The graduate students in EEB are the next generation of educators, researchers and communicators in universities and colleges, government agencies and nongovernmental organizations. The research skills they learn here not only contribute to their own success but to the knowledge needed to solve the many societal problems that require deeper understanding in ecology and evolution.

But developing those skills requires the time to devote to research and the equipment, supplies, assistants, and travel to make that research successful. Our alumni have been marvelous supporters of this effort in the past. In fact, we have a number of endowments to support graduate student research including fellowships named for Helen Olson Brower, Emma J. Cole, Peter Olaus Okkelberg, Angeline Whittier as well as the E.S. George Reserve Scholarships. However, research costs continue to rise and in order to compete with other universities for the very best students, we must continue to raise their stipends. With the new 2-for-1 match for graduate support from the President’s Challenge Fund (see page 7), your donations to EEB are increased by 50 percent, making this the perfect time to help us support our students.

In this issue we highlight just a few of our outstanding graduate students – I only wish we could tell you about more of them and the exciting research they do (although the most recent issue of LSAmagazine features several more of our great students). Many students have their own Web pages where you can find out more about their dissertation research (and other interests).

With many thanks for your ongoing support of EEB and my best wishes for the summer. As always, we welcome your news and your visits.

Warm regards,

Deborah E. Goldberg
Elzada U. Clover Collegiate Professor and Chair
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Link to Spring 2008 Natural Selections, EEB's alumni newsletter