{"id":2022,"date":"2015-08-24T12:57:15","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T19:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/impact\/?p=2022"},"modified":"2017-03-23T13:11:22","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T20:11:22","slug":"phd-students-receive-prestigious-nsf-awards-to-address-global-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/impact\/2015\/08\/phd-students-receive-prestigious-nsf-awards-to-address-global-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"PhD students receive prestigious NSF awards to address global challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"African <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Coral <\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

Integrative Biology doctoral students Holland Elder and Caroline Glidden have both received the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program<\/a> (NSF GRFP) 2015 awards. Elder and Glidden are among two of 11 students at\u00a0Oregon State who received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship this year.<\/p>\n

The highly competitive and coveted NSF GRFP awards went to 2,000 individuals from among 16,500 applicants in 2015. Established in 1952, the NSF GRF Program recognizes and supports outstanding master\u2019s and doctoral students in STEM disciplines at accredited United States institutions.<\/p>\n

The GRFP provides three years of financial support within a five-year fellowship period ($34,000 annual stipend and $12,000 cost-of-education allowance to the graduate institution) for graduate study that leads to a research-based master’s or doctoral degree in science or engineering.<\/p>\n

Glidden also received an ARCS Scholar Award from the\u00a0ARCS Foundation Portland Chapter<\/a>\u00a0which helps\u00a0recruit top applicants to PhD programs in OSU’s departments of biochemistry and biophysics, chemistry, mathematics, microbiology, statistics and integrative biology. The award is $18,000, payable over three years.<\/p>\n

Although Elder and Gladden\u2014both in the Department of Integrative Biology\u2014are beginning their second year of doctoral studies and look forward to dedicating more time to their research thanks to the GRFP\u2019s generous financial support, that\u2019s where the similarities end.<\/p>\n

Glidden focuses on conservation science in South Africa where she spent the summer, and Elder recently returned from Panama, where she conducted research on coral reefs at the Institute for Tropical Ecology and Conservation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love teaching but it can be difficult to balance the teaching with a\u00a0research and full time class schedule.\u00a0The GRFP award is one of the most prestigious awards and one of the most helpful to graduate students,\u201d said Elder.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The additional time will allow Glidden to pursue a statistics minor alongside her biological research. Glidden was awarded the NSF fellowship to study the heterogeneity of immune response to hemoparasites in African buffalo, specifically how nutritional variability influences variation in disease resistance and tolerance and the implications for disease super-spreading. <\/span>She spent part of her summer collecting data on foot and mouth disease in the African buffalo in Kruger National Park<\/a>, one of the largest game reserves in Africa. She raised money to buy books for about 400 nearby schools. Glidden’s\u00a0work in South Africa this summer involved this research supported by a grant of her advisor’s–Associate Professor Anna Jolles–exploring foot and mouth disease. Jolles<\/span>\u00a0studies tuberculosis in African buffalos, including \u00a0individual as well as population-wide effects of TB co-infection with gastrointestinal parasites. <\/span><\/p>\n

Glidden\u2019s mother grew up in South Africa and she feels very much at home in the country. She is eager to return for a year-long research trip in 2016 to conduct more data collection and field work for her doctoral studies.<\/p>\n

Glidden\u2019s personal and research experiences in South Africa have inspired her to bring conservation science to school children in the country. In 2014, she started her own conservation non-profit organization called the \u201cDiana Education Conservation Fund\u201d which seeks to distribute books on conservation issues in South African schools to raise awareness. Glidden was able to raise money to distribute 100 copies of Charlotte\u2019s Web <\/em>and Dowlina<\/em>\u2014a book on rhino poaching based on actual events\u2014to four South African schools. She was also able to persuade the author of Dowlina <\/em>to visit the school and share the true story and pictures of a rescued South African rhino.<\/p>\n

Glidden has more ambitious plans for her South African outreach program in the future, and she hopes to make lasting educational changes among young South Africans.<\/p>\n

\u201cNext year I will organize a teacher training workshop to develop a conservation environmental education curriculum for younger school children,\u201d said Glidden.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While Glidden focuses on conservation education in South Africa, Holland Elder will use the GRFP award to study the genomic basis of thermal tolerance in corals. She has focused her research on the disturbing global phenomenon of coral bleaching in steamy temperatures, whereby corals lose their brilliant colors when they reach their tolerance limit for warmer temperatures. As part of her doctoral research, Elder will sequence the genotype of individual coral samples to look for genomic differences between the corals that pale and the ones that do not.<\/p>\n

Elder grew up near oceans in Washington and California and fell in love with sea creatures and marine biology early on. Even so, it would take some years after finishing high school before Elder could study science again.<\/p>\n

Trained in ballet since the age of 8, Elder chose to pursue a career as a professional dancer after high school. However, an injury at 21 ended her career as a ballerina, bringing her back to academics and rekindling her passion for biology. Nonetheless, she found herself facing hurdles on her path toward becoming a biology major.<\/p>\n

Elder began her college career at a community college in San Marcos, California, where her advisors actively discouraged her from studying science.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause there was a chunk of time when I wasn\u2019t in school, my advisors thought there was no way I would be able to handle a biology major. They told me ‘you won\u2019t be able to do it. There is too much math and chemistry,’\u201d said Elder.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Holland Elder, PhD student, Department of Integrative Biology<\/p><\/div>\n

Elder conceded and studied classical literature\u2014her other passion\u2014for a year. But she still yearned to study science and knew literature wasn\u2019t what she wanted to pursue. On a whim, she enrolled in an oceanography class, which was the turning point in her college career. Elder was captivated when the professor brought in a coral core to the classroom one day to show layers of coral growth over time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember taking it apart with tweezers and thinking, \u201cOh my god, this is it! I have been doing the wrong thing my entire life. I need to do this. I don\u2019t care what the advisors say,\u201d said Elder.<\/p>\n

Elder\u2019s persistence paid off. She eventually earned her degree in biology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where she worked on a thesis on thermal tolerance of limpets\u2014an aquatic snail with a conical shell. A fortuitous meeting with Oregon State biology professor Eli Meyer<\/a> at a conference, while Elder was on the verge of finishing her undergraduate studies at Cal Poly, opened up further academic avenues for her.<\/p>\n

Elder was intrigued by Meyer\u2019s research on thermal tolerance in corals and after exploring OSU\u2019s Integrative Biology program decided that it would be the right fit for her.<\/p>\n

\u201cOSU Integrative Biology was my top choice because there is a great cluster of cnidarian biologists here. Resources at OSU were the best for what I wanted to do.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Elder, who is currently a second year doctoral student in Meyer\u2019s lab, keeps a busy schedule and she excitedly lists her numerous marine biology projects. She is part of a team that maintains her lab\u2019s coral accessions. A collection of anemones that she amassed last year as part of a project while on a road trip through California, Washington and Oregon are thriving and will soon be part of a spawning experiment. Her enthusiasm about her upcoming experiment is evident.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody has the spawning patterns down exactly and nobody has got the anemones to develop in the lab from egg and sperm all the way to adult,\u201d remarks Elder.<\/p>\n

Elder\u2019s journey from her hesitant forays into science at a community college to winning the National Science Foundation\u2019s GRF award as a budding marine biologist is both exceptional and inspiring.<\/p>\n

\u201cI look back and I think it was a lot of really hard work and then happening to be in the right place at the right time. Above all, I enjoy my work every day. Every day I wake up and get to see something new, something no one else has ever seen,\u201d said Elder.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Integrative Biology doctoral students Holland Elder and Caroline Glidden have received the prestigious NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program awards this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5667,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[641038,523,911,708950],"tags":[653942,650784,2477],"class_list":["post-2022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ib","category-research","category-students","category-winter-2016","tag-awards-and-recognition","tag-school-of-life-sciences","tag-women-in-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6vHeb-wC","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11300,"url":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/impact\/2019\/05\/biology-and-biochemistry-seniors-graduate-students-alumna-win-nsf-fellowship-for-outstanding-research\/","url_meta":{"origin":2022,"position":0},"title":"Biology 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