Conversations About Evolution and Pokémon

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Having spent two summers teaching natural science at Governor’s School West in North Carolina, I’ve absorbed some valuable lessons. These lessons include how to interact with students from a wide cross-section of backgrounds who are united by an interest in science, how to collaborate with instructors who have diverse experiences and herald from various disciplines, and how to spark curiosity in students who mostly have not considered where their interests and passions will lie. To be honest, I’d never even considered teaching high schoolers before I started working at the Governor’s School. As it turns out, there’s a lot of good that comes from teaching evolution to a bunch of budding scientists.

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A Melting Pot, or Just a Salad? Evaluating Population History Through Gene Flow

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Gene flow is superficially a simple concept; we may liken this evolutionary mechanism to a melting pot. At a fundamental level, when individuals from two defined groups exchange genes, these populations have experienced gene flow. New gene(s) are introduced into one or both populations, and the population becomes more diverse through an increase in genetic variance. When teaching evolution at an introductory level, we generally conclude our explanations at this point.However, identifying gene flow in the past is considerably more difficult.

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New Accommodations for Old Obstacles: Thoughts on Being a Young Mother in Academia

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For women in academia, it’s practically a cliché: balancing children and a competitive career is nearly impossible. A quick internet search will pull up hundreds of articles citing the many ways in which starting a family can and will adversely affect a woman’s career. For example, The US News cited in their 2013 article on “The Baby Penalty” that “[m]en with young children are 35 percent more likely than women with young children to secure tenure-track positions after completing their Ph.D.s.,” and mothers of young children are 33 percent less likely to land a tenure-track job than childless women. In addition, mothers who secure a tenure-track position are 20 percent less likely to eventually earn tenure than fathers. American academic culture was largely shaped by men who were either married to stay-at-home wives or remained bachelors, and as such, the expected trajectory of an academic career fails to take young motherhood (and engaged young fatherhood) into account. These issues and their various ramifications have been very much on my mind this last year. 

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