Service and Outreach
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In the Spring of 2015, Micaela Martinez and I visited Herbison Woods School in DeWitt, Michigan to help 240 students understand the scientific method using demography and epidemiology.
After a 10 minute talk on our birth seasonality research (demonstrating births are highly seasonal, and that in Michigan these peaks are in late summer), the students formulated hypotheses on which month had the most birthdays amongst the students in the class. They predicted that July-Sept would have the most and were then each given a single sticky note, and told to place it on a board above their birth month. With the exception of one class (above left - lots of March births), all classes had peaks in August/September, meaning the students were able to accept their hypotheses! |
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In addition to outreach with elementary and middle school aged students, I am active within my department (EEB) at the University of Michigan. I served as president of the graduate students (GREEBs) during the 2014-2015 school year.
After half of my cohort had left the program prior to finishing their Ph.D., I wanted to organize activities to provide more structure for students. I organized a coffee-match program, where students were matches with others from different cohorts so they could discuss science/life/anything else. I also organized three professional development seminars regarding the transition from grad student to post-doc, led two seminars on how to survive prelims and what to do after prelims, and coordinated two workshops - one on advanced methods in R, and another on 'Grad Hacks', or how to be a more efficient grad student. |
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