The SEEDS program of the Ecological Society of America
Empowering the next generation of ecologist!
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2016 SEEDS Spring Newsletter
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Greetings SEEDS Friends,
Happy Spring! We have been very busy in 2016 and there are many more trips and opportunities to come. We hope that you are enjoying the warmer weather, we sure did, for our 2016 SEEDS Leadership Meeting in Otto, NC this month! The ESA Annual Meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida is coming up and applications are still open for SEEDS Alumni and Undergraduates. We have partnered up again with the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program to host 50 students this year and we need a lot of mentors to sign up for them! Also, in a few weeks we are hosting a SEEDS National Field Trip to the Mark Twain National Forest in Rolla, Missouri. This and more in this edition of the SEEDS Newsletter and... SEEDS IS CELEBRATING 20 YEARS!!!
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2016 ESA Annual Meeting Travel Awards
Applications are OPEN for SEEDS Travel Awards to the ESA Annual Meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida!
The SEEDS Program offers travel awards for Undergraduate Students (fully funded) and
SEEDS Graduate Alumni ($800). Travel awards help expenses to attend the ESA Meeting including air travel, meals, lodging, and registration. Travel awards are funded through support of the National Science Foundation and ESA member donations.
Are you an ESA Member who has attended other ESA Annual Meetings? Are you attending the 2016 ESA Annual Meeting in Fort Lauderdale? If you answered YES to both these and would like to know more about becoming a SEEDS Mentor, please visit out Mentor Sign-Up page for more information. Help us guide our students through this amazing event! SEEDS Chapter advisers are welcome to sign up.
Sponsor your student to Fort Lauderdale!
If you are in the position to support one or more underrepresented undergraduate students to participate in the 2016 th ESA Annual Meeting and would like for him/her to be included in all of the amazing SEEDS program activities, including a meeting mentor! Send us an email to seeds@esa.org or visit our Annual Meeting Packages page for more information. |
2016 SEEDS Leadership Meeting
This past month the SEEDS program hosted its 11th Leadership Meeting themed: Diversity for Healthy Forests: The connection between forestry science and society. We sponsored 19 students from all over the US to join us in Otto, North Carolina for a weekend full of science and leadership skills! With funding from the USDS Forest Service and our hosts at the Coweeta Hydrologic Lab we were able to learn about forestry and hydrology sciences in an amazing location. We had workshops about science communication and policy, hosted a career panel and was honored by the participation of ESA President, Dr. Monica Turner! Stay tuned for the Forestry toolkit that we prepared for the meeting and the education activities that our students developed during the meeting. To check out all the amazing images from the meeting follow us on Facebook!
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SEEDS Chapter Grants - updates!
Congratulations to these SEEDS Chapters who received a SEEDS Chapter Grant! Our Chapter Grants are available every fall - visit our SEEDS Chapter Grants page. Funding for this part of the program comes from donations of ESA members and friends, to help SEEDS continue its mission to increase diversity within ecology please donate. For information on how to start a SEEDS Chapter at your institution, please visit our Start a Chapter page!
North Carolina State University SEEDS Chapter
The North Carolina State University SEEDS chapter will host a vermicompostiing workshop in June with world renowned vermicomposting expert Rhonda Sherman. SEEDS @ NCSU has built victory gardens throughout the year, empowering people in the local community to grow their own food. The students also constructed a little free library that is now featured at NCSU's student-led SOUL Garden.
Univeristy of California, Davis SEEDS Chapter
The Davis chapter is collecting and identifying native bees to make a reference collection for scientists and create a long-term data set. So far, we've collected about 600 bees and identified about 250 to genus level. We've collected at two University of California Natural Reserves, and visited both vernal pool wildflowers at Jepson Prairie and post-fire wildflowers at Stebbins Cold Canyon.
Livingstone College SEEDS Chapter
The Chapter students, under the advisory of Dr. Sashi Sabaratnam, have been working hard this spring getting ready for their campus garden to promote teaching of gardening / growing crops, to Livingstone students and community members. Students visited the farm to prepare the soil and plant culinary 'herbs' like rosemary, basil, thyme etc. on raised beds that existed from last year's planting. The project also attracted local church members, veterans, USDA personal and local farm owners to the farm. This small project brought together the 'local brains in horticulture, environmental science, and conservation' together.
Dillard University SEEDS Chapter
The Dillard University SEEDS chapter participants are re-vitalizing the campus greenhouse by growing and collecting data on numerous bee pollinated and local plants while collaborating with schools and community outreach programs to disseminate knowledge. Plants with a rich tradition of culinary and medicinal uses have been established and will continue to be monitored. Seventy-four percent (20 out of 27) of the plants attempted to grow are
successfully established. Future research directives should include enhancing educational outreach with the community and schools and the creation of raised beds on campus to successfully transfer plants from the greenhouse to an outdoor environment so that they can be used by faculty, staff, and students.
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