Amanda Benoit (Kalisz Lab) has won a Botanical Society of America’s 2017 Graduate Student Research Award for her proposal, “Sit-and-wait predators as drivers of plant mating system evolution.” She will be recognized at the Botany conference in Fort Worth, TX, in June. Congratulations!
Sergey Gavrilets has coauthored a recent paper in PNAS called “Collective action and the evolution of social norm internalization.” Following social norms can sometimes be costly for individuals if norms require sacrifice for the good of the group. The study sheds light on the power of norms and the origins of cooperation. Read the NIMBioS press release about the article, here.
Shelby Scott (Gross Lab) has been awarded a three-year 2017 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship! The NDSEG Fellowship is sponsored and funded by the Department of Defense (DoD). NDSEG selections are made by the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Office of Naval Research, and the Army Research Office. The American Society for Engineering Education administers the NDSEG Fellowship.
Congratulations, Shelby!
1) Student Assistant – Herbarium Curation Technician, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The TENN herbarium is seeking highly organized, detail-oriented individuals, to join our team as an Herbarium Curation Technician. Students will assist members of our staff with plant specimen curation. The TENN herbarium houses over 600,000 plant and fungal specimens, which is one of the largest plant research collections in the southeastern United States. Research in the herbarium focuses on taxonomy, systematics, conservation of rare plants, floristics, and field botany.
Duties and responsibilities may include but are not limited to: Mounting dried plant specimens and labels onto archival quality paper; Quality control: Confirming that plants and labels match each other; Sorting and filing plant specimens by geography (TN county, state, world region) and by taxonomic relationship (family, genus, species); Assisting introductory botany students with class projects during the semester. Training will be provided.
Qualifications: All aspects of this position require strong attention to detail and organizational skills. Strong work ethic with the ability to work independently and as part of a team is required. Good verbal and written communication skills are required. Students majoring or minoring in a biological science, information science, or a related field are preferred. Previous experience with plants and familiarity with geography is preferred.
Please submit a cover letter, resume, and contact information for two references as a single document. Send applications to Dr. Jessica Budke (jbudke@utk.edu). Please put “Student Assistant – Herbarium Curation Technician” in the subject line.
Paid hourly, approximately 8 – 15 hours per week. Work study students are encouraged to apply.
Maria Daniela Rivarola (Simberloff Lab) won the Sigma Xi Student Superior Presentation in November 2016, at the Sigma Xi Annual Meeting & Student Research Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. Congratulations!
The June 2017 issue of Discover Magazine has an article on play behavior in non-mammalian animals. Called “The Play’s the Thing,” it features interviews with Professor Gordon Burghardt and alumnus Jonathan Pruit (PhD 2010, Riechert Lab, now on the faculty at UC-Santa Barbara). The article references a paper published in 2012 that was written by Burghardt, Pruitt, and Riechert.
The article is now available online. Tennessee Today also has a story about the article
Graduate student Jordan Bush (Simberloff Lab) will receive the J. Paul Blakely Award of Excellence in the category of Science Writing, Graduate Division at an awards ceremony on May 4, 2017. This award from the East Tennessee Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication (STC-ETC) recognizes students with an interest in technical/professional communication or science writing, from any accredited institution of higher education in East Tennessee. Congratulations, Jordan!
The significant achievements and exemplary careers of six graduates from Central Methodist University will be celebrated at Central Methodist University’s 71st annual Alumni Awards banquet on Saturday, May 6. Among them is George K. Schweitzer, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Schweitzer came to UT in 1948 to initiate the inorganic division of the newly-established Ph.D. program in chemistry and to participate in the early UT-Oak Ridge graduate instructional and research program. He has mentored over 130 graduate students, has been elected UT Phi Kappa Phi lecturer, served as UT’s first Mace Bearer, gave the 1996 UT commencement address, has been named a Distinguished Service Professor by the UT Alumni Association and received the Joe Johnson Lifetime Service Award in 2014 in recognition of his 65 years of dedicated service to UT.
Dr. George K. Schweitzer, Class of 1945
Knoxville, Tenn./Hometown: Poplar Bluff, Mo.
The lifetime achievements of CMU Distinguished Alumni Award recipient Dr. George K. Schweitzer of Knoxville, Tenn. abound, and continue to this day. A native of Poplar Bluff, Mo., he earned the first of his six degrees, a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry, from then-Central College in 1945. His degrees include: MS in Geochemistry, MA in Theology, PhD in Chemistry, PhD in History and Philosophy of Religion, ScD for work in the History of Science.
He began teaching chemistry at the University of Tennessee in 1948 and remains active in the department. Schweitzer also served a faculty fellowship at Columbia University (New York, N.Y.). The author of over
200 scholarly articles and publications, mainly scientific, but including some on the topic of genealogy, he has lectured to over 200 scientific, historical, and genealogical societies and universities in Europe and North America.
While his professional preparation has been in science, Schweitzer also taught university-level course on the Civil War, the History of Religion, the History of Technology, and more. A man of many interests, he has done research in radiochemistry, nanoparticles, PET body scanner detectors, and solvent extraction, and his memberships range from the American Chemical Society to the American Philosophic Association.