The Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources has announced the 2018 recipients of its graduate student scholarship awards.
“We are very thankful to our donors for making these generous scholarships available to Rubenstein School graduate students,” said Kimberly Wallin, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs. “These valuable awards support graduate students to successfully undertake and complete their research and scholarship goals.”
Heiser Graduate Award
Master’s students Hannah Lachance and Sydney Diamond have each received a Heiser Educational Graduate Award made available through the generosity of Arthur J. and Claire Heiser in honor of Florence Tinker Matteossian.
Hannah Lachance is a second-year master’s degree student concentrating in aquatic ecology and watershed science. She is applying her molecular genetics skills to a study of cisco, a cold water fish, and how changes in lake ice coverage related to climate change affect fish development and survival.
Hannah, who works with Professor Jason Stockwell, director of the Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory on Lake Champlain, earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Vermont in animal sciences and wildlife biology. She is a graduate student fellow in UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment.
“I’m extremely grateful for this award,” said Hannah. “It can be difficult to find research funds as a master’s student, therefore resources such as the Heiser Award are indispensable. Without this award I would not have been able to complete a meaningful masters project.”
Sydney Diamond is a first-year master’s student concentrating in aquatic ecology and watershed science with Assistant Professor Mindy Morales-Williams. Her research interests include paleolimnology, aquatic and ecosystem ecology, and harmful algal blooms.
Previously, she studied diatom community shifts in a high alpine lake in the southern Peruvian Andes. Using a sediment core, she identified indicator species and related these changes to long-term effects of climate change including reductions in water clarity, as a result of warming and glacial melt and/or regional wind speed. She earned her undergraduate degree in environmental studies from Dickinson College.
“I am honored to be a recipient of the Heiser Award and am extremely excited to move forward with my Master’s thesis project," said Sydney. "My current research focuses on assessing New England lake response and recovery to acidification using modern ecology and a multiple decade, long-term sediment record. Among many other analyses and activities, this award allows me to carbon date the sediment core, thus providing insights into a specific timeframe and diatom species change over time, which will allow me to better understand lake response to climate change.”
Chrysalis Graduate Award
Ph.D. student Alison Adams has received a Chrysalis Graduate Award made possible by a gift from F. Peter Rose (UVM ’54), a former longtime member of the Rubenstein School Board of Advisors, who established the Chrysalis Graduate Fund in 2007.
For her doctoral research with Assistant Professor Rachelle Gould, Alison is studying the nonmaterial benefits humans receive from nature, especially how the biophysical effects of climate change impact individuals’ well-being and cultural practices, and the justice and equity implications of these effects. She will use the Chrysalis funds to examine how coral reef decline in Hawaii is affecting how Hawaiians relate to these reefs in terms of cultural heritage, sense of place, and individual and community identity.
As a graduate student fellow at the Gund Institute and a student in the Economics for the Anthropocene program, Alison will use her background in spatial modeling and land cover change to also explore how spatial patterns affect and emerge from people’s interactions with nature and climate change. She has a B.A. from Yale in history of art and received her master’s degree in natural resources from the Rubenstein School.