FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact: Katherine Hazelrigg  (202) 461-3888 / khazelrigg@cgs.nche.edu

Washington, DC —Today the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) announced that Lauren Inouye has been named the Council’s vice president for public policy and government affairs. Her tenure at CGS begins May 1, 2018. She succeeds Beth Buehlmann, who had served in the role since 2013.

Inouye comes to CGS from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), where she was the director of government affairs. In her prior role, Inouye served as AACN’s primary liaison to Congress on workforce, research, higher education, and practice issues. She also led their University Government Relations Collaborative, working to bolster unified advocacy on issues impacting nursing schools, and developed their Principles for Higher Education Act reauthorization.

CGS President Suzanne T. Ortega commented, “Lauren Inouye has a deep understanding of the contributions of graduate institutions to our country and workforce and is equally attune to the challenges faced by institutions of higher education. CGS members will benefit from her experience and knowledge as the organization continues to advance the graduate education agenda in Washington.”

In accepting the appointment, Inouye emphasized the role of elevating CGS’s voice in the federal sphere. “I look forward to helping CGS members speak with a powerful and unified voice for graduate education,” Inouye said. “I value the opportunity to use my skills as a leader, collaborator, and coalition builder while developing a policy agenda that moves our country forward.”

Inouye holds a Master’s in Public Policy from Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Michigan. Prior to her public policy work, Inouye served as a registered nurse in the medical intensive care unit at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.

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After spending five years in the Marine Corps, including two deployments in Iraq and working as a mechanic on AV8B II jets, Jessica Phillips was eligible for the G.I. Bill to pay for higher education. She was working as a ranger at Kerr Lake State Recreation Area in North Carolina and at least an hour drive from a major university. Phillips discovered an online program at North Carolina State University and went on to earn her Professional Master’s Degree in parks, recreation, tourism, and sports management.

Phillips’s love of the outdoors started during childhood. After leaving the Marines, she knew she needed to find a job that would provide variety and wouldn’t require sitting at a desk all day. “In the Marine Corps, I was out on a flight deck and an open squadron, and I learned that I was somebody who didn’t want to work in an office,” she said. “I would have slowly died.” Phillips believed her skill sets would be a good match for a park ranger, and she has taken her work as a ranger to the next level. While at Kerr Lake she developed a regular “Ask a Ranger” column for the local newspaper and programming for the local radio station.

In 2014, Phillips moved to Umstead State Park, where she has developed an “Ask a Ranger” blog on the website, started podcasts by recording interviews with her colleagues, and created photo exhibits to celebrate the state parks’ centennial. Ultimately, Phillips wants everyone to appreciate all the parks have to offer. “I thought that by bringing the parks to (the people), we might then bring them to the parks.” To learn more about Jessica’s work visit the North Carolina State University website.

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Photo Credit: Becky Kirkland, NC State University

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact: Katherine Hazelrigg, CGS: (202) 461-3888 / khazelrigg@cgs.nche.edu

Washington, DC — The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) has announced that JoAnn Canales, founding dean of the College of Graduate Studies and professor in the College of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, has been named the CGS Dean-in-Residence for the 2018-19 academic year. Dr. Canales brings to the post significant experience leading graduate education, including launching a professional development program specifically for graduate students. Canales will join CGS on August 1.

The CGS Dean-in-Residence program was created to infuse a campus-based perspective and vision across a variety of the Council’s programs and initiatives. The Dean-in-Residence works on multiple projects aligned with his or her interests and the Council’s needs.

“Dr. Canales has spent her academic career ensuring a diverse community of scholars has access to quality graduate education,” said CGS President Suzanne T. Ortega. “Her expertise in assessment and facilitating the development of assessment skills will also greatly benefit CGS and its members.”

In accepting the appointment, Canales remarked, “I am honored to have been afforded the privilege of working with the graduate education enterprise at the national level.  I look forward to working with the very talented and dedicated team at the Council of Graduate Schools and its partners to enhance the initiatives of our colleagues.”

Dr. Canales holds a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Bilingual Education from The University of Texas at Austin. She began her academic career as an assistant professor in the College of Education at the University of North Texas. In 2002-2003 she was recognized as a fellow in the American Council on Education Leadership Training Program. As founding Dean of the College of Graduate Studies and Professor in the College of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Canales established the AC & Ende Canales Si Se Puede Scholarship.

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Juan Velasquez, a recent doctoral recipient in neuroscience at the University of Southern California, was awarded a prestigious Chateaubriand Fellowship to study how antidepressants affect fetal development during pregnancy. Somewhere between 12-18% of women experience depression at some point during the course of their pregnancy. Scientists, including Dr. Velasquez, are researching selective-serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a class of antidepressants increasingly prescribed to treat depression in pregnant women, and their effects during fetal development.

Understand the importance of Dr. Velasquez’s work requires a basic understanding of how SSRIs work. Depression is linked to the way chemicals, specifically serotonin, in your brain operate. Researchers believe that an imbalance of serotonin contributes to things like depression, anxiety, and stress. By taking SSRIs, patients alter their brain chemistry to balance levels of serotonin. One of the questions Dr. Velasquez wants to answer is whether changes in a pregnant woman’s brain chemistry can affect the fetus. How would it affect a fetus? The same way a fetus gets its nourishment among other things: through the placenta.

Early results from Dr. Velasquez’s research indicate that SSRIs do cross the placenta and affect the fetal brain, and other studies have shown that taking antidepressants during pregnancy can increase the risk of things like autism and ADHD. However, not treating depression during pregnancy is not an answer Dr. Velasquez will accept. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and continues to study this process to ensure the health of both the fetus and the mother. To learn more about Juan’s work visit the USC Graduate School YouTube Channel.

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When she was six years old, Dafne Guevara, a doctoral candidate in musical arts at the University of Nevada, Las, Vegas, discovered her musical ability. Her mother had enrolled her in a music program to keep her off the streets of El Chorrillo, Panama, a country with the second worst income distribution in Latin America and where roughly 25% of the population lives in poverty. Guevara overcame many obstacles, including discouraging words from an elementary school teacher.

Guevara left Panama for North Carolina on a Fulbright scholarship in 2010 to study flute performance and earned her master’s degree. While pursuing her doctorate at UNLV, she decided to do something to benefit her home country and organized the first-ever flute festival at the University of Panama. Guevara began by founding a non-profit organization, Asociación Panameña de Flautistas (APAFLUT), to assist with fundraising. She applied for scholarships and grants, reached out to mentors, and held recitals to raise money to host the festival.

67 students aged 12-21 from six countries and 17 artists and instructors gathered during the summer of 2017 to see first-hand the power of music. Sponsors helped to pay the tuition and fees for many of the students. “I wanted the whole music community to see that they can do it,” Guevara said. “If you set your mind to something, you can do it.” To learn more about Dafne’s work visit the University of Nevada, Las Vegas website.

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Photo Credit: UNLV Creative Services

Last week, Nathan Kurtz left on a trip for Greenland, not exactly a frequent location for travelers and definitely not for a few months a year. But for Kurtz, Greenland and Antarctica are becoming recurrent destinations. After receiving his doctorate in atmospheric physics from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Kurtz spent several years working as a research associate for the Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center at UMBC. His research interests have centered on sea ice and its role in the global climate system. Needless to say, becoming the project scientist for NASA’s Operation IceBridge was a dream come true.

“The Earth's polar ice covers, including the massive ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica as well as the surrounding ice-covered seas, have recently been observed to be undergoing a state of complex change,” said Kurtz. “Understanding these changes and their influence on climate using the latest in satellite and airborne remote sensing technology forms the core of my research.”

The IceBridge project and Kurtz’s work as project scientist have received quite a bit of attention recently. Time published an article in January 2018 that describes some of the data collected during a mission, and the attention from the public is welcome. This is a critical project to better understand the connections between the polar regions and the global climate system. To learn more about Nathan’s work, visit the University of Maryland, Baltimore County website.

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Photo Credit: Nathan Kurtz

Our personalities – characteristics or qualities that form our character – are, in part, what make us unique individuals. Peter Marting, a doctoral candidate in animal behavior in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University, has discovered that ant colonies have unique personalities, too.

Azteca ant colonies make their homes in Cecropia trees, which provide nutrients to the ants. In exchange, the ants act as security guards – protecting trees from choking vines and leaf-eating insects – but some colonies are better protectors than others. Marting’s research reveals that ant colonies actively displaying more aggressive behaviors protect their trees more from leaf damage than more docile colonies. Why is this important? Marting wants to better understand how the personality of an ant colony can affect its symbiotic relationships and whether there are identifiable factors that determine personality.

Studying animal personalities is a relatively new field and observing animals in the wild can be extremely difficult given the challenges in observing consistent behavior in the same animal. However, the study system Marting uses allows him to revisit the same trees with the same colonies on a regular basis over the course of months and years. Marting takes his research one step further through a marriage with artistic expression. He has created interactive sculptures representing the ants and plants that blink with data collected from real ant colonies. To learn more about Peter’s work, visit the Arizona State University website.

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Photo Credit: Peter Marting

Zachary Labe, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine, has become a bit of a Twitter celebrity because of his satellite data images on Arctic sea ice. Labe sees the ability to communicate his research to a broad, public audience as imperative to the success of his work. With almost 14,000 followers, Labe has demonstrated that there is a public eager to learn.

Labe’s primary research happens in Dr. Gudrun Magnusdottir’s Modeling Lab on UCI’s campus. Their focus is to better understand the crucial relationships between the circulation patters in the atmosphere and oceans and the external processes that affect them. These outside forces include things like concentration of greenhouse gases, variability from volcanic eruptions, or anomalies in the surface temperatures of the water. This research is particularly important given the accelerated rate of temperature increase in the Arctic – it’s twice what it is in the rest of the world.

“The way I see it, why should I do this science if I can’t better explain and share it with the public?” says Labe, who wrote his own algorithms for the data. “Climate change is already affecting everyone, even if they don’t realize it, and this is a perfect opportunity to communicate the science.” To learn more about Zack’s work, visit the University of California, Irvine website.

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Photo Credit: Steve Zylius / UCI

Invertebrates comprise roughly 97 percent of life on Earth and “ensure habitat quality, serve as the foundation for most food chains, and sustain both marine and terrestrial ecosystems.” Their rapid decline poses significant risk to this planet’s future. Jacquelyn Dale (JD) Whitman, an MFA candidate in art at the University of Iowa, combines art with marine ecology to educate the public on a decline in marine biodiversity due to human threats like habitat destruction, overfishing, invasive species, pollution, and climate change.

Whitman’s thesis project presents Ireland’s Blaschka Invertebrate Models—glass replicas of marine invertebrate species from our 19th-century oceans—through an interactive, sculptural installation made from recycled plastic and animated video projections. She intends for her installations to combat ecophobia – “a negative response or automatic desensitization to visual images of environmental disasters” – an issue she’s studied since her time as a student in Ireland. 

“This installation will positively educate viewers on the global decline in marine biodiversity due to the threat of plastic pollution,” says Whitman, a native of Philadelphia, Pa. “Almost every single food chain and ecosystem depends on invertebrates. If we eliminate the invertebrates, it is doubtful that we as a species will survive. If we remove just one of the human threats—if we work to resolve the plastic pollution crisis—that could help to reverse this potentially catastrophic, global decline.” To learn more about JD’s work, visit the University of Iowa website.

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Photo Credit: JD Whitman is pictured at the National Museum Ireland-Natural History.

According to the American Psychological Association, as many as 1 in 7 women experience postpartum depression. Adriana Dyurich, a recent doctoral recipient in counselor education from Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi, developed an innovative mobile application called VeedaMom to help combat this illness. The app was created to screen for and manage symptoms of perinatal depression and promote maternal wellness, and it’s designed to support and accompany women during their pregnancy and the first year after the birth of the baby.

Dr. Dyurich wrote her dissertation based on research collected from pregnant women who used VeedaMom. “The app features the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale for the screening of depression, psycho-educational videos, and mindfulness exercises, plus a variety of other features designed to facilitate professional care and make the app fun and user friendly.”

Dr. Dyurich presented her research at TAMUCC’s Doctoral Three Minute Thesis Competition (3MT®) and won first place. She will be competing at the regional competition in Arkansas. To learn more about Adriana’s research, visit the Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi website.

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