School of Environmental Studies

Student and Alumni Awards

EVS Ph.D. Student Brooke Grubb Brooke Grubb, an Environmental Sciences Ph.D. student specializing in crayfish conservation, has been honored with the distinguished Robert D. Hevey and Constance Filling Fellowship in Invertebrate Zoology with the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). This esteemed fellowship recognizes graduate students who demonstrate exceptional dedication and promise in advancing research within the field of invertebrate zoology. Brooke's research with NMNH focuses on improving researchers' understanding of crayfish diversity by exploring how the environment can shape a crayfish's body plan. Leveraging NMNH's extensive crayfish collections, Brooke will collaborate with NMNH staff to expand her research impact and contribute to the broader understanding of crayfish conservation.

Brooke Grubb's Crayfish Figure

Cory Highway, an Environmental Science Ph.D student, was awarded the Waterfowl Research Foundation Fellowship from Ducks Unlimited. This prestigious international award recognizes a graduate student who is engaged in research that will provide critical scientific information about waterfowl and wetland conservation. Cory’s research will focus on examining how waterfowl respond to a network of private land rest areas. He works closely with government agencies, private landowners, and NGOs to enhance the impact of his research.

Natalie with her dog Lucy.

Congratulations to the College of Interdisciplinary Studies' 2021 Alumna of the Year, Natalie Robbins! Natalie graduated from the P.S.M.-EI program in 2019. She currently works at Vanderbilt as a Research Analyst in the Spatial Analysis Research Lab. She serves as a geospatial consultant on faculty and student research projects across the university and medical center. Last year, Natalie developed the Tennessee COVID-19 Data Portal and the Parsing the Pandemic Grand Challenge Initiative site. The data portal shows COVID-19 infection counts for each county in Tennessee, so viewers get a quick and accurate sense of the COVID numbers for the places where they live and work. It also shows the COVID- 19 deaths in relation to a variety of demographic, health, and socioeconomic variables. Natalie is currently working on several projects looking at mobility through different lenses. The first project, Mapping Self in Society (MaSelfS), uses personal mobility data to foster critical spatial inquiry. In February, the MaSelfS team launched a public website for teachers and researchers to use the MaSelfS framework to help students “take back their data” by collecting personal movement data using their smartphones and visualizing their data on top of thematic maps in space and time. The goal of this project is for students to reflect on their movement in relation to their community and peers, while identifying missed learning opportunities (such as art installations or museum locations) in their everyday paths. The second project looks to understand mobility among persons living with HIV in Tennessee and its effect on continuum of care. Natalie Lives in Nashville, TN with her rescue puppy Lucy.

COVID TRACKER

Nick Masto, an environmental sciences– biology PhD student, won the Best Student Poster Award at the 74th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (SEAFWA) this year. Nick's poster, titled “Pre-breeding migration strategies of mallards wintering in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley” detailed an ongoing collaboration with other researchers across the Southeast to understand waterfowl movements in the winter and spring. Competition for these awards is always fierce so many congratulations to Nick, Abby Blake-Bradshaw and Cory Highway who all worked together on this research project!

PhD student, Rachel Kaiser, was awarded the first Dr. Rengao Song Water Research Scholarship from AWWA and Louisville Water Company!