Fellowship Experiences

You know the old adage “there are plenty of fish in the sea?”  Well, what if that wasn’t the case?  How would we even know this was becoming not the case before it was too late?

When people think bacteria, they often think disease. But in reality, pathogenic bacteria are a very small fraction of all bacteria. Bacteria are everywhere, and though small in size, these microscopic organisms are highly complex and play important roles in controlling global nutrient cycles.  Read more...

I had finally finished over a year’s worth of careful data analyses from my graduate research project on the Chesapeake Bay, and I was ready to share them with the rest of the world. Together with my advisor, Michael Kemp, I wrote a paper reporting my results and submitted it to a scientific journal. However, when the journal (actually!) accepted my paper and I should have been jumping for joy, I instead felt more angst.

This past fall marks the first semester that I’ve begun to wholeheartedly flesh out a dissertation. Anyone who has gone through the process can tell you how arduous and difficult it can be to find a relevant topic. I set out to draw up a research plan that would help me answer the question, “How do different individuals and groups make sense of the environment and their place in it?”

Life is full of surprises. I’m going to tell you how supporting a Sea Grant project -- the Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs) Working Group -- led me to a six-week-old mixed boxer puppy named Winston.