Call for 2011 Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship Applications

Dear Colleagues and Students:

The South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium invites qualified students to submit applications to the Dean John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship.  Approximately 35-45 students are selected nationally for this prestigious Fellowship to spend a year in Washington, D.C., working in Congress or the Executive Branch on critical marine policy and resource management issues.  The Knauss Fellowship provides a stipend and living expense allowance totaling $44,000 annually.  The fellowship begins February 1, 2011. Applications are due at the S.C. Sea Grant Consortium, attention Rick DeVoe, no later than Friday, February 19, 2009.

All the details about the fellowship and how to apply may be found at: http://www.seagrant.noaa.gov/knauss/.

If you have any questions or want to make an appointment to discuss the fellowship, please call Rick DeVoe at 843-953-2078 or email: rick.devoe@scseagrant.org.

Thank you very much.

And, as always, be sure to check out the Paying for Grad School section of our website. We frequently add and update listings for grants, scholarships, fellowships, and jobs applicable to every program that we offer.

Hi folks,

The Graduate Student Colloquium of the Graduate Program in Marine Biology is moving to the fall: September 25-26.

Our Keynote speaker, Dr. Scott France, University of Louisiana Lafayette, will give the Keynote Address on Friday, September 25, and the Closing Address — following student presentations — on Saturday, September 26. Dr. France is a deep-sea biologist studying the evolution of deep sea benthic invertebrates; more information about his work can be found here: http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~scf4101/

The GPMB colloquium will also feature an expanded poster session Friday evening, following the Keynote Address; all GPMB students in their second year or beyond will either be presenting a poster or giving a talk. Please plan on attending both the poster session and talks, to support our students and enjoy this showcase of research being done in the College of Charleston/Ft. Johnson community! As usual, the colloquium will close with a Lowcountry Boil; in addition to celebrating the colloquium, new graduate students will be introduced at this event.

Abstracts are due August 31st. Students will be notified by the committee of whether they will be giving a talk or a poster by September 4th.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Cheers,

Melissa Hughes
Colloquium Committee Chair

The Grice Logbook Spring 2009 issue is hot off the presses.

http://www.cofc.edu/~grice/Newsletter/gmllogbook_spring_2009.pdf

Inside

• Undergrad Research Impacts Students and The State of Science
• Sex and the Single Cell
• Sea Urchin Research May One Day Lead to Healthier People
• Student Awards
• Octoclaus and the Folly Beach Christmas Parade
• Alumni Notes
• Faculty Notes
• Research Colloquium notes
• New Staff Members
• George Grice, Jr. Lecture

Joe Pollock is a College of Charleston Master’s of Science in Marine Biology candidate who was granted with a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Australia.  He touches base with us every now and again when he comes up for air.  Below is one of his most recent letters to us back home.  Enjoy the pictures.  We sure did!

Hello again from Down Unda,

I haven’t written in a while and I don’t want anyone to think I’ve fallen off the other side of the world so I thought I should drop a quick line. Things in Oz are goin’ well. There was a pretty awful period when we had rains of biblical proportions. We literally had 40 days and 40 nights of rain, nonstop! It was miserable, but now the sun has reemerged and it seems like the rainy season should be about over for the year. The sun has let me get back outside and I’m trying to make up for lost time. I’ve been hiking out on Magnetic Island, bouldering/swimming/surfing in Bowen, joined a beach volleyball team (we’re 3 for 3… in the lowest bracket, but oh well), and I’ve even started playing ice hockey again. I haven’t really played since they tore down the old Civic Center rink when I was in middle school so it’s been pretty awesome to get back on the ice.

My research has been going fairly smoothly so far. I’m working to develop tools to accurately diagnose coral diseases on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and around the world. Currently, there are not really any diagnostic tools, so coral diseases are distinguished almost exclusively on their macroscopic appearance (it’s like trying to identify a human disease just by looking at the patient). I think that it is an important avenue of investigation and I have been making progress. I have developed a technique to detect the pathogen responsible for the coral disease White Syndrome on the GBR and coral bleaching in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Right now, I am running aquarium experiments to tests it’s “real world” potential. I’m hoping it will work!!

Next week, I head down to Tasmania for a Fulbright retreat. Tazzy is beautiful and the other Fulbright kids are pretty fun so I’m definitely looking forward to it. We’re renting some cars so we can explore all around the island. If you’ve never seen photos of Tasmania, it’s a lot like New Zealand, with glacier-cut valleys, high lakes, waterfalls, and dense-green foliage (or as they say in Oz fo-lage).

I came to the realization the other day when I was buying a bottle of Vegemite that I may have been in Australia too long. I’ve become completely accustomed to driving on the left side of the road (I still try and get in on the wrong side of the car though), I’ve started using Ozzy phrases (I used to think that anyone who used the word “reckon” was a huge redneck), and I’ve started wearing more flouro than a 1980’s ski video (it’s really in here). I will be heading back State-side before too long though. I’m planning to return in the late-Spring or early-Summer, probably sometime in June.

Cheers,
Joe

]]> http://blogs.cofc.edu/gradschool/2009/03/16/update-from-australia/feed/ 1 http://blogs.cofc.edu/gradschool/2008/12/08/graduate-student-poster-session/ http://blogs.cofc.edu/gradschool/2008/12/08/graduate-student-poster-session/#comments Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:32:29 +0000 Niki DeWeese http://blogs.cofc.edu/gradschool/?p=138 Mondays are a rough day.  So much business to cover – especially during a Monday Morning Meeting.  Our office takes a long time to cover what happened last week, and what to expect this week.  I thought for sure that this morning’s meeting was going to be short with only four staff members, but I was wrong.  We’re pretty busy up here in Randolph Hall!

One of the topics we covered is January’s Graduate Student Research Poster Session.  This morning’s list of participants included 23 students from six programs and the titles are super exciting!  See more after the jump.

Communication

Bryn Burkard: Examining Communication Messages and Weight Loss: Politeness Theory and the Concept of Face

Carrie Busch: Charleston’s Museum Mile: An Analysis of Organizational Collaboration

Anna-Fiona Cooke: Text and Instant Messaging in the Workplace and Its Effects on Management

Kurtis Miller: The Speech Act of Complaining: Preliminary Quantitative Research

English

Jennifer Burgess: Adjunct Anxiety: The position of Part-Time Composition Instructors at the College of Charleston

Environmental Studies

Guinn Garrett: Application of Geochemical End-Member Mixing Analysis to Delineate Water Sources in a Lowland Watershed

Tyler Lawson: Habitat Effects on Chytridiomycosis Infection in the Critically Endangered Agalychnis moreletti

Jennifer Scales: Variation in Territorial Aggression in Relation to Environmental Impacts

Kelly Sloan: The Effectiveness of Multilevel Modeling in Analyzing Sea Turtle Nesting Trends

History

Rachel Allen: A Violent Redemption: Charleston’s Own Civil War in the Gubernatorial Election of 1876

Hillary Lentz: The King of England’s Sickness: A Description of the English Sweat and an Analytical Discussion of its Origin and Treatment during the REign of Three Tudor Monarchs

Angela Dembiczak: The Axe, the Noose and the Fire: What Forms of Execution during the English Peasants’ Uprising of 1381

Kate Jenkins: School Desegregation in Charlesotn County

Neal Polhemus: Natural Disasters and Disastrous Politics: Rebuilding Charleston’s Fortifications 1752-1756

Marine Biology

Jesse Alderson: Distributions of Injured Loggerhead Sea Turtles (Caretta caretta) in the Southeastern United States: A 9-Year Regional Study

Jennifer Fountain: Monroe saxatilis, Release Strategies and Improve Hatchery Contribution

Megan Kent: Relative Contributions of Taxanomic Groups Within Microbial Biofloc Communities to the Growth of Litopenaues vannamei When Provided as Dietary Supplements

Allie Kreutzer: The Role of Crab Traps in Oyster Reef Restoration

Steven O’Connell: Perfluorinated Contaminant Concentrations in Loggerhead Sea Turtles (Caretta caretta): Expanded Spatial and Temporal Trends along the East Coast of the United STates

Katie Olds: TBA

Kolo Rathburn: Transcriptional Profile of the Penaeid Shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei to Hypoxia and Hypercapnic Hypoxia

Drew Wham: TBA

Science and Mathematics for Teachers

Sadie Fox: Robotics Curriculum for CE Williams Middle School for Creative and Scientific Arts.

The experiment began with the simple question of how do pollutants influence daily performance of shellfish. Lou and his crew simulated pollutants by exposing crab and shrimp to bacteria and giving stress tests.  Lindy Thibodeaux, a Marine Biology grad student, explains the experiment in greater detail in the video above.