Emory GIVE Partners with Trees Atlanta to Protect Urban Forestry→

By Sydney Sunna

Caitlin Sojka (left) and Adam Hamilton (right), first year neuroscience students admiring the tree that they planted together.

Often regarded as the ‘City in the Forest’, Atlanta’s rich urban forestry provides the community with countless economic, environmental, and health benefits. Lush tree canopies mitigate air pollution, cool down sidewalks and buildings, obviate flood damage, and augment residential and retail property value. Emory University, whose verdant virtues earned its campus the title of “Tree Campus USA” by the Arbor Day Foundation, appreciates the benefits sowed by the hands of Atlanta’s arborists. Despite these adorned titles, a recent report from the U.S. Forest Service reveals that Georgia is leading the nation in tree loss. The study, published by Nowak and Greenfield (2018), found that Georgia lost an average of 18,000 acres of urban tree coverage each year from 2008 and 2014. This rate of depletion of Georgia’s forests is unmatched by any other state in the nation (Nowak and Greenfield, 2018). According to the Georgia Forestry Commission, the main factors driving deforestation include urban development, drought, and insects like the southern pine beetle. Preservation of Atlanta’s beloved greenspaces demands a consistent, concerted, community effort addressing those factors.

Thomas Shiu (left) and Sherry Ye (right) cover their sapling with fresh soil.

Several times each year, the student-led organization, GDBBS Involved in Volunteerism at Emory (GIVE), coordinates with the non-profit group Trees Atlanta to engage its students in protecting green spaces in the community beyond the campus. The mission of Trees Atlanta is to protect and improve Atlanta’s urban forest by means of educating the public, planting trees, and removing invasive species. In the thirty years since its establishment, this non-profit organization has planted 113,000 trees, thanks in part to a growing number of community volunteers. For this fall’s annual day of service, the GIVE team embarked to Brook Run Park to plant saplings in sparse areas of the estate. Relishing the opportunity to spend a Saturday morning outside for a study break, my neuroscience colleagues and I eagerly enlisted.

As we pulled into the parking lot on that crisp bright fall morning, we perused the farmer's market and helped ourselves to the light breakfast provided by GIVE. After outfitting ourselves with durable gloves and shovels, we joined dozens of volunteers from all over the greater Atlanta area, including students from Morehouse College, students from Emory University, and regular volunteers of Trees Atlanta. After filling up 72 barrels of mulch in under fifteen minutes and hauling them onto a trailer, we all assembled around the Trees Atlanta guide to learn how to plant a sapling. Caitlin Sojka, a fellow first-year neuroscience doctoral student, and I received the instruction with attention and appreciation, as neither of us had ever planted a tree before. The instructions were simple enough: dig a hole in the shape of a cereal bowl with a depth not exceeding the top roots of the tree, bang on the makeshift tree planter to loosen up the dirt and roots, pull out the tree and massage the roots to remove old dirt, poke holes in the side of the “cereal bowl” in the soil, place the tree inside, and fill up the bowl with mulch before watering. The instructor was a skilled presenter, as he gave detailed and concrete advice such as “Dig a hole the diameter of your shovel shaft, shaped like a cereal bowl” and “Shovels are good for digging, while mattocks are useful for cutting”. After the demonstration, we descended upon a remote region of the park that lay beyond an expanse of green lawn.

Sydney Sunna (left) and Thomas Shiu (right) finish making the ring of soil around the sapling.

A plot of barren land interrupted an array of trees, where we found more than 70 saplings awaiting a new home. Thick carpets of wet pine needles covered the stubborn maroon clay beneath. As we took to the landscape, we broke off into groups of around three or four and set to work. My group consisted of people from my first-year neuroscience cohort. As we had only known each other for two months up until this point, this experience was one of our first opportunities to get to know each other outside of the program. Arguably more attuned to the arbors of dendrites than flora, we tentatively approached a sapling. Puzzled, we covertly looked to the more seasoned volunteers for guidance on how to start. Mumbled questions hung in the air: “So should we just… start digging anywhere then?”, “Yeah, I think so?”, “Is this wide enough, you think?” Adam Hamilton, who had experience planting trees, hopped on the shovel step and the blade cut into the earth. Just like that, we began to dig the first hole. Amused by the enthusiasm of his “jack hammer” approach, Sojka doubled over laughing. Sherry Ye and Thomas Shiu helped liberate the tree from its temporary container and began whittling away at the old soil. After we securely embedded the trees in their new mulch, we watered them each with a gallon of clean water. Elated by our accomplishments, we traded tree selfies with volunteers nearby before starting on another plot.

Our group alone planted five trees that morning. Sherry and I triumphantly stood beside one of our saplings, the Cornus florida, more commonly known as Cherokee Princess Flowering Dogwood; the newest resident of Brook Run Park. I dropped a pin in my Google Maps App to mark where the princess was, so that we could monitor the health and growth of our tree upon returning to the park. As a team, we planted more than 70 trees in the course of a few hours. The good company, vivid sunshine, and hard work left me with a feeling of happiness and fulfillment that I won’t soon forget. It was a wonderful way to become more acquainted with my neuroscience peers as we explored the greater Atlanta area, learned a new skill together, and participated in something truly impactful. After the last sapling was planted, we made our way back to campus for some free food. After a day of friendship and forestation, the Trees Atlanta NeighborWoods Campaign has certainly gained a few new avid adherents.

Neuroscience group photo with the last sapling planted.

From left to right: Sydney Sunna (1st year), Thomas Shiu (2nd Year), Caitlin Sojka (1st year), Adam Hamilton (1st year), and Sherry Ye (1st year)

References:

1. Nowak D, Greenfield E (2018) Declining Urban and Community Tree Cover in the United States.

Why I (A Successful Scientist) Decided to Run for Political Office and Why You Should Get Involved, Too→

By Valerie Horsley

While many of my community members have thanked me for running for State Senate in Connecticut, many others have wondered why I would step into this political world when my career as a scientist is going well. Yet, when I think of the students struggling with student loan debt, the women in our society who battle to have their voices heard or to be paid equal to their male peers, or the brown and black youth who have lost their lives too early due to violence, I think, “we need smart leaders to solve these problems.” 

Scientists are trained to create innovative solutions to complex problems. We use the available tools, generate data by taking risks (i.e. doing experiments), and solve the problem.  By 2018, I had spent 20 years honing my problem-solving skills, first as a part of Emory’s BCDB program in the laboratory of Grace Pavlath, then at Rockefeller University in my postdoctoral fellowship with Elaine Fuchs, and finally as a faculty member at Yale.  I had used my organizational and problem-solving skills to protect postdoctoral rent subsidies at Rockefeller and to help open a new daycare facility at Yale, but I had not considered running for public office until I began paying attention to the political landscape after the 2016 Presidential Election.

In November of 2016, I started Action Together CT, a local organization launched with the goal of helping my neighbors and friends engage in political work: volunteering in elections and supporting legislation. Through my activism, I realized that the values of science— truth and scientific inquiry— were lacking in both our national and state politics. I also saw that legislators use skills like public speaking and debate, skills that I had cultivated as an educator and scientist. And finally, I knew I wanted to see more problem solvers leading our nation and states.

So, a year later, I decided to run for State Senate in Connecticut.  Legislators in Connecticut have other jobs, so I wanted to balance my service for my state with my scientific career at Yale. During my campaign, I learned several important lessons.  

1) Voters trust scientists and want new smart leaders leading their state and nation. 

2) Courage is contagious. Many people stepped out of their comfort zones to knock on doors or make calls as volunteers for my campaign because I took a courageous step by becoming a candidate. 

3) Candidates influence the conversation. Many of the issues that I emphasized became issues that my opponents started to emphasize as well.  

Although my first campaign was not successful, I am even more committed to encouraging a diverse discourse in our democracy. Scientific perspectives and skills have the potential to impact economic and social issues that will make our states and nation stronger, more successful, and more equitable.  Innovation in biosciences and technology can build a strong economy for the future. Yet, perhaps more importantly, the ability of scientists to “follow the data” has resulted in positive policy changes. For example, later start times for high school students in Seattle to allow for more sleep that scientists have shown teenagers need, or changing our carbon emissions to thwart the climate changes that persist in our environment.  

I believe that as citizens of our states and nation, we, as scientists, have a responsibility to ensure that our communities support the values of truth and foster the success of everyone, not just a few. I am encouraged by groups like 314 action that support candidates with a STEM background in their quest for election to public offices. From school boards to U.S. Congress, the voices of scientists are needed to ensure that public policy is based in fact and rigor.  Therefore, I encourage you to get involved in your community either by volunteering for a candidate that holds your values, holding your elected officials accountable by calling or emailing them, or even running for public office. Only by stepping out of the laboratory and into the public sphere will we, as scientists, be able to ensure that science and truth are the foundation of our government.

GDBBS Embraces GRExit→

By Miranda McDaniel

Most of us likely remember the horror that was the experience of standardized testing. Armed with a sharpened #2 pencil, an interrupted too-few hours of sleep, and a healthy sense of self-doubt, we marched onto the intellectual battlefield ready to prove our entirely knowledge-based academic worth. Although standardized testing certainly reared its ugly head during our K-12 days, the most important of the exams appeared to bookend our undergraduate studies. The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) or the American College Test (ACT) awarded us the perceived qualifications of being prepared for college and, even after earning our pre-doctoral degrees, the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) was necessary to measure and predict our ability to perform well in graduate school.

Now I don’t know about you, but the ability to correctly use the word “jejune” in a sentence or to determine which train will make it to the station first if one left at time W with speed X and the other at time Y with speed Z, doesn’t exactly represent my ability to troubleshoot a failed experiment or design a new one. As it turns out, more and more universities are also becoming skeptical about the validity of the exam for evaluating academic potential. Recently, several universities across the country have begun investigating the effectiveness of GRE scores for predicting successful completion of doctoral programs, performance on qualifying exams, time to degree, publication count, and more. 

Relationships between GRE Quantitative quartile (Q) scores and PhD completion rates for men in four state flagship universities.

In one study, GRE scores and PhD completion data were collected from institutions in the Northeast Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (NEAGEP)(1). The multi-institutional study investigated the relationship between GRE scores and degree completion specifically for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) doctoral programs. Their results showed that the GRE Verbal (GRE V) and the GRE Quantitative (GRE Q) scores were similar for women who completed STEM PhD degrees and those who did not, implying that the GRE score was not a good predictor of future graduate school success. Moreover, GRE scores were significantly higher for men who left their programs than those who completed their degrees. So, the exam is not only a poor predictor of degree completion, but at least for men, it appears to select for students who are less likely to complete their degree! Now, I’m not going to sit here and say “I told you so”, but I will say that I am feeling extremely validated by this finding. 

Vanderbilt University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill similarly explored the relationship between GRE scores and graduate student success in biomedical research(2,3). Their results showed that the GRE did not prove to be a reliable indicator for predicting who will graduate with a PhD, pass the qualifying exam, earn their degree faster, or achieve a more notable research presence. In addition to providing evidence to show that the GRE is not sufficient to predict success, these universities also advocate for consideration of the more qualitative credentials that students use in their applications, including letters of recommendation or research experience, without relying too heavily on one specific component of the application. In this way, more recognition is granted to those of us who meticulously balanced classwork with research obligations during our undergraduate studies with the stringency usually reserved for checkbooks or Thanksgiving dinner preparation. 

While GRE scores appear not to correlate with graduate school performance, they do trend with socioeconomic status, gender, and ethnicity. According to an article published in The Atlantic, research from the University of Florida, Stanford, New York University, and the University of Missouri showed that the GRE under-predicts the success of minority students(4). This message was echoed by an article featuring data from Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, New Jersey(5). The article explains that women, minorities, and those with a lower socioeconomic status perform lower on average, stating that “in simple terms, the GRE is a better indicator of sex and skin colour than of ability and ultimate success”. This relationship becomes increasingly important to consider when a minimum acceptable GRE score is used as a threshold to easily identify applicants who are “most qualified” to join a graduate program before the application reviewing process even begins. Such elimination criterion lends itself to a lack of diversity in the applicant pool and, ultimately, the graduate program itself. 

So, if the GRE doesn’t predict future success and selects for limited diversity, why has it stuck around for more than 80 years? An article featured in Inside Higher Ed addressed this question, arguing for the GRE to be upheld as a requirement(6). The appeal of the GRE for admission committees is, of course, its quantitative and objective nature. The article points out that without such a measure, admission committees are challenged to eliminate subjective interpretation of application materials that could introduce bias into the decision-making process. This task is made more difficult by the inability for admission committees to reliably compare letters of recommendations or grade point averages across universities. The article states that, “the objective, comparative data that scores yield is especially helpful when comparisons are difficult to make, such as when evaluating applicants from unfamiliar undergraduate institutions or from countries with different educational and grading systems.” 

While a single numerical score certainly aids in reducing biases and other comparative discrepancies, this value alone is insufficient to serve as an elimination criterion or predictor of success. So how should universities decide which students to accept into their graduate programs? An article published in Nature states that “the best way of predicting a scientist’s future success is for peers to evaluate scientific contributions and research depth”(7). As such, admission committees stand to benefit from diligent consideration of testimonies provided by recommendation letters. While the in-depth review of such material will take longer to process than a single numerical score, this approach would greatly increase the ability of graduate programs to select for the students that are most likely to find success in graduate school. If additional time spent reviewing recommendation letters has the potential to protect graduate programs from selecting students who will not follow through with their degrees, then this certainly seems like a worthwhile investment.  

In response to these studies, there has been a trend among biological and biomedical graduate programs to no longer require the GRE. Universities have begun dropping the requirement altogether, shifting their focus toward the more accurate criteria for predicting graduate student success and a more holistic approach to evaluating academic acumen. In fact, seven of the eight programs in the Graduate Division of Biological and Biomedical Sciences at Emory University no longer require the GRE

By moving away from the inherently inequitable standardized test, graduate schools are able to expand their applicant pool to select for a diverse student population with the highest chances of success. This adjustment to the way admission decisions are made benefits both the programs and the students and can provide opportunities to students who might otherwise have been overlooked as a result of less-than-stellar GRE scores. Beyond just the weight of standardized testing being lifted from the shoulders of the already anxious college senior, more emphasis on undergraduate research experience is likely to encourage more students to start early on building a presence in the academic arena. Instead of undergraduate students putting all their metaphorical eggs in the GRE basket, students will be motivated to gain research experience, inspired to develop a wider skillset, and more likely to head into their graduate studies with a better chance of success. 

 References:

1.     Petersen, S. L., Erenrich, E. S., Levine, D. L., Vigoreaux, J., & Gile, K. (2018). Multi-institutional study of GRE scores as predictors of STEM PhD degree completion: GRE gets a low mark. PloS one, 13(10), e0206570.

2.     Moneta-Koehler, L., Brown, A. M., Petrie, K. A., Evans, B. J., & Chalkley, R. (2017). The limitations of the GRE in predicting success in biomedical graduate school. PloS one, 12(1), e0166742.

3.     Hall, J. D., O’Connell, A. B., & Cook, J. G. (2017). Predictors of student productivity in biomedical graduate school applications. PloS one, 12(1), e0169121.

4.     Clayton, V. (2016, Mar 1). The Problem with the GRE [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/the-problem-with-the-gre/471633/

5.     Miller, C., & Stassun, K. (2014). A test that fails. Nature, 510(7504), 303-304.

6.     Payne, D. (2018, May 21). The Value of Testing in Graduate Admissions [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/views/2018/05/21/standardized-testing-needed-graduate-school-admissions-opinion

7.     Acuna, D. E., Allesina, S., & Kording, K. P. (2012). Future impact: Predicting scientific success. Nature, 489(7415), 201.