As part of the North American Paleontological Convention, there was a teacher workshop all about sharing digital resources in paleontology. This was hosted by the FOSSIL Project (which employs Jen) and iDigBio with many participating partners. We advertised the workshop about two months in advance and had a webpage with information for the applicants – we were targeting local California teachers. The primary goals were to (1) Raise awareness of resources available for teachers associated with digitized paleontological collections; (2) Connect teachers with a network of professionals, to help them develop and implement collections-based curricula; and (3) Increase confidence in teaching about global change and evolution using fossils.
Jen (front left) and Adriane (front right) teaching teachers about the wonderful world of foraminifera.
The day was structured in seven hour blocks. Each presenter had ~20-30 minutes to introduce the platform, provide background content, and explain the utility of the resource. This was then followed by a ~30 minute activity using the resource. We wanted the workshop to allow educators to immediately take content back to their classroom to employ but it’s always best to do a test run so the educators and facilitators can brainstorm modifications or limitations within their own classrooms. You can see a full agenda for the day by clicking here.
We were specifically involved with the presentation on the Digital Atlases of Ancient Life. When we were working on our MS degrees with Alycia Stigall we were both employed as an RA on this project for one year. Jon Hendricks led off our hour block with a presentation explaining the atlases that are available, the Digital Encyclopedia of Life (DEAL, a free online textbook), and the Virtual Teaching Collection. Alycia followed with a short presentation on Paleozoic life and assessing ancient ecosystems. And then we used the Virtual Teaching Collection to work to identify some of the major animal groups that were around during the Paleozoic. We helped facilitate the lesson and answered any questions the educators had.
We also led our own presentation later on using myFOSSIL tools in the classroom. Sadie Mills led off with an overview of myFOSSIL and all of the capabilities of the website and mobile app. Adriane followed with a presentation on how foraminifera are the most awesome creatures to ever float on Earth. And then we walked through a lesson on using foraminifera as a tool to think about morphological shape and how they may have lived in different environments, and we provided other lessons for the teachers to think about forams as a tool for understanding climate change.
Overall, the workshop was a huge success and the participants really learned a lot and got to have lots of in depth conversations with facilitators! All the materials from the workshop can be found on the myFOSSIL website.
Members of the Time Scavengers team are writing a ‘Applying to Grad School‘ series. These blog posts are written primarily for undergraduate students who are applying to graduate programs (but will be useful for any transitioning graduate or professional students), and will cover such topics as funding and stipends in grad school, how to write and build a CV, how to craft an email to a potential advisor, and how to effectively write statements for your applications. This is the fourth post in the series on how to effectively interview with a potential graduate school advisor.
Adriane and Jen here-
This post is all about interviewing for and visiting potential graduate schools as an undergraduate student in your senior year or as someone deciding to go back to college. This can be a VERY scary process, as it involves talking with high-profile scientists in your field of study and answering questions about your science, education, and interests. Below is some advice from our own experiences, some things you should do to prepare for an interview and/or on-campus visit, and some questions we were asked by potential graduate school advisors.
Interviews
First, there are several different types of interviews you may be asked to do as a student. In-person, online (usually through a video chat platform such as Google Hangouts,Skype, or Zoom), on-campus, or on the phone.
In-Person
In-person interviews can be done through a visit to the potential advisor’s campus or at a meeting that you are both attending. You should request an in-person meeting at a conference during your first few email exchanges with a potential advisor (see our “Applying For Grad School Part III: Emailing Potential Advisors”). Simply, conference meetings are easiest when you set them up beforehand. When I, Jen, was looking for PhD programs, I requested to meet with three potential advisors at the large geology conference the fall I was applying to programs. This allowed me to also meet with other lab members – students and postdocs – so that I could ask them questions about their experiences with the advisor.
I, Adriane, asked to meet with two potential advisors at a large geology conference I was presenting research at during my senior year of undergrad. I told each person when and where I was presenting, and asked them to come there to talk with me. I did this so they could get a clearer picture of what my research was, and so they could ask me questions about my goals and such. I had two potential advisors come by my poster (both also had excellent feedback), but one was busy during that time. Instead, she and I sat down together and chatted informally for a few minutes.
Some things I, Adriane, did to prepare for our sit-down meeting at the conference was print out a copy of my poster and my CV to give to my potential advisor. I also had a notebook with me and several pens to take notes (because if you only take one pen, it’s sure to die or be dead). I also dressed appropriately for each interview, meaning I wore something comfortable but also professional.
On-Campus
In some cases, the institution or advisor will help support your visit to their university, most after you have had an in-person or phone interview first. Many universities have funding to bring out PhD students, but not MS students – this is entirely school dependent. It is within reason for you to ask if there are funds to help offset travel, especially if it is not easy (or cheap) for you to get to the university. Current students will often host you as their guest so you can have more in depth conversations with someone in the program. Just note that most schools will reimburse you for your travel- meaning you will, unfortunately, have to front the costs for travel.
Once I, Jen, was accepted into a program – I requested a visit to the campus. My visit ended up being in February and I was close enough to drive the 5 hours. I stayed with a current student (Sarah) so there were no lodging expenses and was able to get my gas mileage reimbursed. Visiting the campus was eye opening, I got to see students working in their spaces, talk with all sorts of faculty, and get a general feel for the atmosphere of the department. For the on-campus visit, I came prepared with some questions for students, faculty, and my potential advisor and ideas about projects I may be interested in. Remember, you are interviewing the school and you should question everyone you come across about their experience. If you have specific needs, make sure the school will provide them for you.
I, Adriane, did two on-campus interviews for my MS degree. I was invited to visit after I did in-person interviews at the geology meeting, and had been accepted to one of the schools. Both visits were nerve-wracking, but I highly recommend, if possible, doing an on-campus interview with your potential advisor. Doing so made me realize which advisor was the best fit for me and my career goals, and which school and city I would be most comfortable in.
Online
Online interviews are very similar to in-person interviews. There’s a few extra steps you should do to prepare for your online interview before the big day:
Test out your equipment. Make sure the microphone, camera, and software all work before the interview. In fact, do this at least a week prior, as this will give you time to troubleshoot any issues that may arise
Find a quiet space to interview. Noises in the background will distract yourself as well as the potential advisor
Make sure the background is clear. Excessive clutter behind you (posters, books, shelves, other humans, etc.) will cause a large distraction. You want your potential advisor to focus on you, not your cat swatting flies or something in the background
Phone Interviews
To me, Adriane, phone interviews are the worse. I like to be able to see the person I’m talking to, as I respond better to visual cues. When you’re doing a phone interview, just be sure to find a quiet spot where you have good service and won’t get interrupted. Also, be sure to listen closely, as you don’t want to cut off, talk over, or interrupt the person interviewing you.
TL;DR: Preparing for an interview regardless of the format (online, phone, in person)
Start by exploring the faculty and student page of the institution you are interested in, write down people that are somehow related to your interested and include a bullet of their interests and any questions they may be able to help you with. Jen suggests asking the same question multiple times to see the variation in responses – it can be very telling! You can bring a folder, clipboard, portfolio, notebook – whatever you are able to best take notes on.
Ask faculty at your current institution if they know people there or have any suggestions on people to meet with that may not be on your list.
Decide how you are most physically comfortable. Jen usually wears dark jeans and a nicer sweater or shirt but is uncomfortable dressing up so often chooses not to.
If you are doing a visit, be sure to have a separate list of questions for grad students – you will likely be taken to lunch or have some alone time with a few students. This is an opportunity to request honest feedback about how they are supported by the department and university. I, Adriane, made my decision on which MS program to attend based mostly on answers and experience from graduate students.
If you are doing a virtual meeting make sure to get to a quiet place, use headphones, and try to have as plain of a background as possible with minimal glare. It seems silly but it can distract the person on the other end and you want them to be fully tuned into you!
Interview questions we were asked (at conference meetings and during on-campus interviews):
What is the bedrock under (current undergrad institution), and what is its age? (These questions are meant to test your geologic skills and knowledge, so any variant of this could pop up)
Why are your GRE scores so low? (This really is not an appropriate question, but some professors are bold enough to ask anyway – Jen was asked this during her visit to UTK and Adriane during her visit to a NC school)
What are some of your personal goals during your (MS/PhD) degree?
What are your research interests?
Describe your research experience.
Would you be comfortable teaching in a lab or classroom setting? Do you have teaching experience?
One last note, it is hard to remember this but the department is trying to sell itself to you. They want excellent students to help increase their output numbers. At some points you’ll realize it sounds like an info-mercial. They want you to choose them, even if you don’t have other options (don’t tell them that) they will still try to recruit you.
Members of the Time Scavengers team are writing a ‘Applying to Grad School‘ series. These blog posts are written primarily for undergraduate students who are applying to graduate programs (but will be useful for any transitioning graduate or professional students), and will cover such topics as funding and stipends in grad school, how to write and build a CV, how to network with potential graduate advisors, and how to effectively write statements for your applications. This is the second post in the series on how to prepare and structure your CV for graduate applications.
Adriane and Jen here –
A good starting point for gearing up to find a STEM* (science, technology, engineering, math) graduate program is to get your Curriculum Vitae (CV) looking good. There are a variety of ways to do this in a handful of programs that may or may not give you templates. When emailing people about working with them in the future it is customary to include your interests and your CV so they can look at your experience. A CV should document all of your academic credentials, accomplishments, outreach and service, publications (of all types), and more! Read this online resource to learn more about how CV’s and resumes differ. *because we are all geoscience majors, the advice that follows is mostly applicable to STEM majors, check out CVs of people in your field by looking on their websites & research gate!
The additions to your CV all depend on what you are applying for and wish to do. If you are interested in a museum position, it’s a good idea to add when you have worked with collections, in what capacity, and for how long. Similarly, if you are applying for tech positions in a lab make sure you list out the equipment you have experience with and what you did with the machines. When applying for graduate schools specifically, what you really want to show is that you have a good, solid education, and that you are hard-working and can achieve tasks and goals.
We’ll go over some sections that should be included on your CV, but here are some general tips that apply to the entire document:
List the most important information first (Education, Professional and Work Experience), then go from there
Make sure the date for each item is very obvious and clear; provide a range of dates (e.g., 2013–2015), a year (e.g., 2016) or a specific semester (e.g., Fall 2015) for each item
Use italics and bolding, but do so in a manner that is appealing and does not distract from the overall appearance of the document
Make sure the text and any bullet points are aligned correctly throughout the entire CV
Use language that can be understood by the general public and doesn’t contain too much jargon; you don’t know who will be reviewing your application
Pick one font and stick with it
Using different sized fonts throughout is ok, but like italics and bolding, be sure this doesn’t distract from the overall look of the document
List your achievements (and other chronological things like community outreach, mentoring, etc.) in order from most recent to oldest last
As a disclaimer before diving into this post, we have been at the academic game for a long time. Do not feel discouraged if you don’t have as many lines on your CV. There are a million opportunities for you to expand your horizons and engage in research, award nominations, grants, and much more as you continue along your academic journey!
Document Header
The heading on your CV should include your name, address, and contact information. Generally, your name can be in a bigger font so the reader is drawn to that first. You can list your home address, or the address to your university. I, Adriane, always include my phone number, email address (make sure it’s a professional email address), and my website URL. It is important to make sure you are using the designated header space on your document, as this ensures you have more space on each page of your CV. There are settings that allow you to have a different header on all subsequent pages so the first can be large and then you can switch to just your name so the person reviewing it doesn’t lose track of whose CV it is. Here’s an example of a formal header:
I (Adriane) also jazzed up my CV by adding in images of fossils that represent the two major time periods I work in. Stylistic features like this may be considered as unprofessional by others. So, ask those in your lab group or your supervisor/advisor for their input before doing something like this.
Education
The first section of your CV should be all about your education. Here, you’ll specify where you attended high school (or leave it off, it’s up to you) and the college and/or university you attended for your undergraduate degree. Within this section you can also include your overall GPA. If you are attending graduate school to further your e.g., geology undergraduate degree, you can also put your major GPA. I, Adriane, did this when applying for graduate programs because my total GPA was low, but my geology GPA was pretty high. Within this section, also be sure to include the dates for which you attended each institution. If you did an undergraduate thesis or research project, you can even include that information in this section. Here’s an example:
An example of Adriane’s Education section from her CV with her undergraduate thesis and advisor information included.
After this section, you can tailor your CV sections to best fit you, the position you are applying for, and your experience. As an undergraduate, it’s important you showcase your experiences and capabilities.
Professional and Work Experience
The next section on your CV could be ‘Professional and Work Experience’. Here, you can add in any formal or informal positions you have held. For example, if you volunteered as an undergraduate teaching assistant, you could add that to this section. If you held any jobs, add those as well! Jobs that showcase team building, management, and other useful life skills are important to add even if they aren’t relevant to your target job or career. Some academics will tell you to leave off jobs that don’t have anything to do with the degree you are seeking in graduate school. I, Adriane, still include the two assistant manager retail positions I held while going to community college. I worked hard at those jobs, and including them on my CV (hopefully) signals to others that I have leadership experience and have extensively worked in teams to accomplish tasks. Both of these qualities are important in academia, although they are hardly talked about. Adding in these other professional experiences also helps fill out your CV if you are really early in your career path or haven’t found a position that will pay you for your scientific expertise (as many lab positions are volunteer based).
Peer Reviewed Publications and Conference Abstracts
One of the next important sections you should include on your CV is any abstracts you authored or were included on for academic meetings. If you contributed to a peer-reviewed publication go ahead and include it here. It’s important to be consistent with the style you cite publications and abstracts in this section because it can look messy or be confusing otherwise. This section highlights that you’ve been involved with research, and have practice presenting your research to the scientific community. If you don’t have research experience, don’t fret! Many undergraduates who apply to graduate programs don’t have that experience just yet, and that’s ok!
An example of Jen’s Publications section from her CV, this is a subheader specifically for Peer reviewed articles. In this same section she includes a separate subheader for Conference abstracts.
If you have any other types of reviewed literature you can also include it in this section. Maybe you helped edit something for a companies big annual report or contributed to a local journal or newsletter. Writing is a really difficult skill to acquire and if you can showcase you have been practicing that is great!
Funding and Awards
Next, list any funding you have received for any research projects, events, or clubs/associations you were involved with. You can title this section something like ‘Funding Awarded’. This section shows your future graduate school advisor that you can win money (a very important skill in STEM fields). In the heading, be sure to include the total amount of money that you’ve won to date. Each item in this section should also include the amount for each award. It may not seem like it, but if your college/university has helped you pay for attending a meeting, that’s money you should include in this section as well!
An example of a funding section from Adriane’s CV. Notice the total amount won is included in the heading, and then each item has its own funding amount.
If your CV is not super filled up it’s totally fine to combine sections. I, Jen, often suggest students to include funding and awards together – the heading could be funding and awards, achievements, whatever you think best describes what you are putting in the section. When you end up with more funding and/or award success it makes sense to split them into two sections so you can keep track of things. I called my Awards and Honors and also included any instance where I guest lectured for faculty members. I didn’t have another good place to put it in my subheaders so this seemed reasonable to me.
Example of Jen’s Awards and Honors section on her CV, which includes departmental and club awards as well as guest lectures for departmental classes.
Relevant Coursework
The next section you could include on a CV is any relevant coursework. For example, when I, Adriane, applied to paleontology programs, I included all the courses I took that were related to paleontology in any way (biology, invertebrate paleobiology, stratigraphy and sedimentology). Here, you can include the semester you took the course, and even a short two-sentence description of the class. If you gained specific skills in the class, it is best to include that in the short blurb. If you took a mineralogy course and also had the opportunity to prep and analyze samples for XRF or XRD, include that information!
Other Relevant Experience
The next section of your graduate school CV could include a section titled ‘Field Experience’ (or ‘Field and Lab Experience’, or ‘Lab Experience’). This section highlights the work you’ve done in the field/lab, when you did that work, and a short description of what it was you did. This section shows your future graduate school and advisor that you know your way around the lab or have experience doing science outdoors. Again, if you don’t have this experience, it’s not a huge deal!
An example of how to write and format a ‘Field and Lab Experience’ section on a CV. If you also have experience working with museum collections, include that in this section as well!
I, Jen, have titled a similar section more broadly as ‘Research Experience’. Here I include when I worked with (1) specific fossil collections; (2) specialized equipment or instruments; (3) any other things that may not have fit within the job descriptions listed above but may be useful for potential advisors or PI’s to know about.
Example of a ‘Research Experience’ section in Jen’s CV. Simple and concise phrases indicating what I did when then people can match it to specific time periods in my academic training.
Academic and Community Service
After you’ve highlighted your education, work experience, the research you’ve done, and your coursework, there are a few other sections you can include on your CV if you have the experience. If you’ve won an award as an undergraduate student, include that in a section titled ‘Awards and Honors’. If you are part of an organization, for example, president of the Geology Club, that can be included in a section titled ‘Academic Service’. Academic Service is any activity you do within the science community as a volunteer. This differs from Volunteer Experience as these are things done outside of academia. While we’re talking about it, do include a section on your CV where you highlight any volunteer or outreach experiences you have. This could be as simple as talking to a K-12 class about science, or helping at a rock and fossil sale.
Professional Memberships Organizations
The last section on your CV should be titled ‘Professional Memberships and Organizations’. This is where you will list all the clubs, organizations, and associations you are a part of. This shows that you are an involved and active member of your scientific and local community, a networking skill that will become even more important in graduate school!
Other Potential Headers
The National Science Foundation has a series of headers in their short format CV requirements and I, Jen, have worked to adopt some of the language that this large organization uses. So, I have a big header called ‘Synergistic Activities’ this includes, programmatic events I organized, ways I engage my community, professional development opportunities that I’ve participated in, professional service, mentoring experience, and invited talks and lectures. Now, that’s a whole lot of stuff but the header is something that people may specifically look for when they are analyzing your CV.
I also have a section called ‘Courses taught as instructor of record’. This is handy when applying for teaching positions because right off the bat they can see that I have taught a full course and have experience in front of a class. I have another section for ‘Collections Curated’ this is for specimens that I took care of or managed in some way. As I was applying for museum and faculty positions, it was to by benefit to include this section and showcase what I had done.
Example from Jen’s CV of the language used to describe the collections curated during my various positions.
Summary
Our last bit of advice is to seek out help with your CV! Reach out to your classmates, a trusted professor, or a graduate student for feedback. Your CV will likely go through several iterations until you end up with something you are happy with. Also, attend any resume or CV-building workshop on your campus or in your community if you can. You’ll likely receive additional advice than what we provided here, and also get really great feedback from others on your CV. And remember, your CV is a living document, meaning you should continually update it anytime you achieve something!
Members of the Time Scavengers team are writing a ‘Applying to Grad School‘ series. These blog posts are written primarily for undergraduate students who are applying to graduate programs (but will be useful for any transitioning graduate or professional student), and will cover such topics as funding and stipends in grad school, how to write and build a CV, how to network with potential graduate advisors, and how to effectively write statements for your applications. This is the first post in the series on various ways you can get paid to attend graduate school in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields.
Jen, Adriane, and Sarah here –
Attending graduate school is an exciting prospect, but you can quickly become overwhelmed with deadlines, things to do, but mostly by the expense of it all. It’s no secret that today’s college undergraduate students are facing increasing tuition costs along with inflated interest rates on loans. Within public 4-year universities and colleges alone, tuition and fees rose on average 3.1% per year from the period of 2008 to 2019. Even within 2-year public colleges (such as community colleges), tuition and fees rose on average 3.0% per year within the same period of time! For student loans, interest rates range from 4.5% to as high as 7%, and that interest is usually compounding (meaning you will pay interest on the interest that your loan accrues over time). It can seem like there’s no way to escape college and obtain an education without paying dearly for it, especially if you want to attend graduate school right or soon after your undergraduate degree.
But fear not, there are several ways in which you can avoid taking out loans while pursuing a graduate degree, both MS and PhD. Since we are all geoscience majors, the advice and information we provide herein is more applicable to graduate degrees in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields. Below, we discuss a few options to reduce the cost of attending graduate school. We also are very transparent about the debt we accrued during our undergraduate degrees and how that compounded over time. But mainly, we want to explain how you can get paid (yes, you read that correctly!) to go to graduate school.
First, we’ll discuss the different types of assistance you can be granted to go to graduate school. We’d like to stress that we do not advocate for paying for graduate school out of your own money if you’re majoring in a STEM field*, as you should be able to get an assistantship to pay for your tuition and provide a stipend (living expenses)**. *we’re uncertain about non-STEM fields-please look for good resources to help you understand how tuition waivers and stipends work in other fields!
**some STEM industries will pay for their employees to go back to graduate school. This is an awesome option, but not available to everyone.
Assistance within the University
Teaching Assistant
Teaching assistants (TA for short) are graduate (MS and PhD) students who are paid to help teach classes and labs at their university. For example, Adriane taught Historical Geology lab sections at UMass Amherst, and had a blast doing it (so many cool field trips!). As a teaching assistant, you will also be involved with setting up experiments for labs, grading students’ assignments, helping on field trips, or even leading your own field trips! Being a teaching assistant can be a ton of work, but it is a great way to make money and sharpen your skills as an educator (important for folks who want to continue teaching in any capacity after their degree). There may also be opportunities to continue working as a TA over the summer, as these jobs usually do not include summer stipends.
Teaching assistantships often include tuition remission, meaning you are not expected to pay for your education. This is important when you are looking for graduate positions in the university. You want to ensure that you are receiving a stipend and tuition remission. Even though you are getting your education paid for there often are still associated fees you have to pay each semester. These fees can range from 100’s to 1000’s of dollars every semester and cover transportation, athletic, heath, and building fees on campus.
Research Assistant
As part of her RA as a master’s student, Adriane helped curate and digitize a fossil collection at Ohio University.
A research assistant (RA) are graduate students who are funded to do research or work on some aspect of a project. Usually, the money to fund an RA comes from the student’s primary academic advisor, or it could come from some other professor in the department. In most cases, an RA is only funded during the academic year, but it’s not uncommon that money for an RA is budgeted to fund the student over the summer. For example, Adriane and Jen were each funded for an entire year from their MS advisor’s NSF (National Science Foundation) grant, where they were able to build a website while working on their own research. The benefit of RA positions is that they are usually more flexible as to when you can get your work done. When Adriane was doing her MS degree as a research assistant, she would spend an entire two days of the week doing RA stuff, that way she had huge chunks of time to focus on her research. The downside to being an RA is that you don’t receive teaching experience or get to interact with students in a formal setting. This isn’t a huge deal, as there are usually opportunities to help professors out teaching their courses while they are away at conferences, doing field work, etc.
Internal University or Departmental Fellowships
Internal fellowships (and grants) are small to large pots of money that you can win from within your university or college. You have to do some research and keep up with deadlines on these because often they have specific requirements. While Jen was at UTK there were several extra fellowships you could apply for as a graduate student. Some were specifically for MS students others for PhD students – some were mixed! One was only for students in their first year and one was only for students in their last year. Jen was fortunate enough to apply for an receive a fellowship through the university to fund the last year of her dissertation. This allowed her to reduce her teaching load and focus more on writing. You can read about it by clicking here.
External Funding Options
External fellowships
There are fellowships, like NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP for short)-you write a proposal for the research you want to work on and submit it. It’s reviewed by experts in the field you want to specialize in. These are incredibly competitive across a national or even international scope, but they are great ways to fund your research! Often, you have to apply to these either before you begin your graduate program or early into your program, so look into it as soon as possible!
There are other options to acquire competitive fellowships, often to finish off your dissertation without being restricted by teaching or other responsibilities that take time away from completing your projects. NASA has a program that graduate students can apply for, but there are restrictions – you already have to be enrolled and your project has to fit whatever the theme of their solicitation is that cycle. Adriane won a similarly competitive fellowship for foraminiferal research, which you can read about by click here.
Tuition Remission/Waivers
In some jobs and careers, your employer will reimburse your tuition costs. These are often to benefit your employer, as investing in your education and training will make you a more well-rounded and specialized employee in your field. The amount that your employer will reimburse you also varies; some may provide 50% remission or 100%. This amount can also vary depending on the number of courses you take during your graduate career. If you think your employer offers tuition remission, it is best to have an open and honest conversation with them about how much they will reimburse you for, and how many classes or credits they will cover.
The Cost of Graduate School: Examples
Below is an outline of how each of us paid for our undergraduate, masters (MS), and doctor of philosophy (PhD) degrees.
Jen
Jen exploring Ordovician life with young minds at the Paleontology summer camp at the McClung Museum.
Undergraduate: Once I left home I was given access to funds from my parents that I could use to pay for school. I lived in the dorms my first two years which used up a lot of this money. I then moved into an apartment and took up three part-time jobs (lifeguard, gym manager, research assistant) to maintain my living and school expenses. This allowed me to save the remainder of the money in my college fund and use it to move to Ohio for my MS program. MS: My first year at Ohio University I was a TA. My first semester I taught lab for Introduction to Paleontology and my second semester I taught Intro to Geology and Historical Geology. My second year I was on an NSF grant as an RA and worked on the Ordovician Atlas project for Alycia. Both summers I was awarded summer pay through this NSF project. My pay at OU was ~$14,000/year. My student fees at OU were ~$600/semester (summer was less like ~$200). Instead of taking out loans I took advantage of a loophole and paid late. There was a payment system but it cost extra. There was no fee (at the time) for simply paying a month late. It took some serious budgeting but was possible to slowly save for these extra fees. PhD: I was a TA all four years at UTK and taught a variety of classes: Intro to Paleontology, Earth’s Environments, Earth, Life, and Time, Dinosaur Evolution. During my time here my department stipend was $15,000 and I earned another $5,000 annual award from the university. I was able to split my pay over 12 months rather than 9 months. I was also able to work extra jobs over the summer at the university to augment my pay. Year 1 I was TA for a 4-week summer course for an extra $1000. Year 2 I taught a 4-week summer course as instructor for $3000. Year 3 I taught governor’s school (4-week program for high school students) for $2000. Year 4 I taught a paleontology summer camp at the local natural history museum for $500 (but also had the fellowship, where I got $10k but was reduced teaching so only received $7.5k from department).
Sarah
Undergraduate: Full need based scholarship (shout out to UNC Chapel Hill for making my education possible!). My scholarship covered everything but summer school for the most part and I was hired as a federal work study student to pay for books and other necessities. I worked other jobs at the same time-I worked as a geology tutor and a lab instructor, namely, to cover other needs (medical care that wasn’t covered by insurance, transportation, etc.). I took out $7,000 in federally subsidized (i.e., interest doesn’t accrue until you begin paying) to cover summer classes and a required field camp. MS: I was paid as a half RA/half TA for one semester. I worked the remaining 3 semesters as a full TA teaching 3–4 lab courses per semester (I was paid extra to teach in the summer). My base pay was $14,000/year in Alabama. I worked as a tutor for the athletics department one summer to help pay for groceries. I did not take out loans for my degree, though I was not able to save much money. PhD: I was an RA on my advisor’s NSF grant for 2 years and a TA for two years. I also worked as a TA or a full course instructor for 3 of the 4 years. My base pay was $15,000/year in Tennessee. I took out $15,000 total in federally unsubsidized loans (i.e., loan interest began accruing immediately) to cover unexpected medical, family, and car emergencies. I also did small jobs, like tutoring individual students, helping professors, and babysitting to make a little extra money-my PhD department had a rule that we weren’t allowed to work outside tax-paying jobs on top of our assistantships.
Always looking to find that extra dollar in graduate school.
Adriane
AS (Associate of Social Science): I spent four years in community college, and lived at home while doing so. I worked 20–30 hours a week at a retail store to pay for courses and books. My grandmother did help me significantly during this time, so I was able to save up a bit for my BS degree when I transferred. Undergraduate (Bachelor of Science): I took out loans for 3 years worth of classes and research at a public 4-year university, in total about $40,000. I received a research fellowship ($3500) to stay and do research one summer. I still worked at my retail job the first summer and on holidays to make some extra money. MS: The first year I was a teaching assistant and my stipend was about $14,000 for the year. Over the summer, I won a grant from the university ($3000) that covered rent and living expenses. The second year I was a research assistant and made about the same as I did the first year. I think I took out about $5,000 worth of loans to help cover university fees and supplies. PhD: Throughout my first 3.5 years, I was funded as a teaching assistant making $25,000 the first two years, then was bumped up to $28,000 the third year (the teaching assistants at my university are in a union, so we won a huge pay increase). For the last year of my PhD, I won a fellowship (click here to read about it) from a research foundation ($35,000) that pays for my stipend, research expenses, and travel to research conferences. Early in the degree, I took out about $5,000 worth of loans to help cover fees and supplies.
Microplastics alter feeding selectivity and faecal density in the copepod, Calanus helgolandicus
Rachel L. Coppock, Tamara S. Galloway, Matthew Cole, Elaine S. Fileman, Ana M. Queirós, & Penelope K. Lindeque
Summarized by Adriane Lam
The Problem: There is a growing body of research that shows that microplastics, tiny (1um-5 mm) pieces of plastics, have made their way into the deepest reaches of our oceans and are being ingested by marine life. Microplastics ingested by animals have been shown to cause adverse health effects to them, but as consumers of marine animals, these same microplastics are making their way into our diets. As yet, we do not know the exact ways in which microplastics can affect human health on longer time scales.
Zooplankton, which are small animals and protists that float in the water column and feed on primary-producing phytoplankton, are an important link between phytoplankton and other, larger animals. Zooplankton make up the base of the food chain, and are the main food source of marine mammals such as blue whales.
Different species of copepods.
One type of zooplankton is especially common in our oceans today. Copepods are marine crustaceans that are found in nearly every freshwater and saltwater habitat. In addition to being an important food source, copepod poop is an important part of the biological pump. In other words, these animals’ poop transports atmospheric carbon dioxide (which is trapped in organic matter, or fixed carbon) to the seafloor, where it is stored in seafloor sediments. The poop also provides important nutrients to other animals that live within or on top of these sediments. Copepods have been shown to ingest microplastics in the wild. The ingestion of microplastics by copepods may alter the way in which these animals select their food. And of course, if microplastics are being ingested, they are also being exported to the seafloor in fecal pellets. This study was designed to look at how microplastics alter how copepods choose their food and how the ingested plastic materials affect the sinking rate of copepod poop.
Methods: In this study, the scientists grew three species of microalgae (all that copepods like to feast on) in the lab and spiked it with different types of microplastics. The microplastics included things such as nylon, which is commonly found in clothing, especially active wear, and polyethylene, which is the most commonly-used plastic in the world (it is used to make shopping bags, shampoo bottles, and toys, to name a few uses).
The microalgae with microplastics was then fed to the copepods back in the lab, where the amount of microplastics ingested was measured. The fecal pellets from the copepods were then collected and rinsed over a screen. To determine if microplastics contained in the poop affected the sinking rate of the pellets, the scientists dropped the pellets into cylinders filled with filtered seawater. They marked where the pellet was in the cylinder every 40 mm. To determine how different each pellet sank with microplastics, the scientists also measured the rate at which copepod poop without microplastics fell through the water column. When the poop reached the bottom of the cylinders, they were taken out and examined under a microscope. This way, the scientists could count the number of plastic pieces in each pellet.
Results: The scientists found that copepods preferentially liked to eat microplastics in a smaller size range (10-20 um), with a preference for the polyethylene over nylon fibers. When the copepods were exposed to microplastics, they preferentially did not eat as much algae. In addition, the copepods shifted their preference for one species of algae over others. Nylon fibers impeded ingestion of algae that was a similar size and shape to the microplastics. The scientists think the copepods associated algae of similar size and shape with microplastics, and thus avoided eating that algae species in an attempt to avoid plastic consumption.
Images of the contaminated copepod poop. Image a contains nylon fibers, image b contains polyethylene spheres, and image c contains polyethylene spheres.
The study confirmed that fecal pellets that contained both polyethylene and nylon particles were slower to sink through the water column. There was a difference in sinking rates between poop that contained more polyethylene, a denser microplastic, compared to nylon, a less dense material.
Why is this study important? This study is one of several that highlight the ways in which plastics are negatively affecting the food web in the marine realm. The reduced sinking rate of fecal pellets may also affect the rate at which carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, can be removed from the atmosphere through photosynthesizing algae who are then eaten by zooplankton. If fecal pellets are left to float for longer, there is also a higher potential of the microplastics being re-ingested by other zooplankton through coprophagy (ingestion of fecal pellets). On long and short timescales, the decreased export of poop and fixed carbon dioxide to the seafloor may have large consequences, as plastic within poop could keep more carbon from being exported and stored on the seafloor.
Citation: Coppock, R. L., Galloway, T. S., Cole, M., Fileman, E. S., Queirós, A. M., and Lindeque, P. K., 2019. Microplastics alter feeding selectivity and faecal density in the copepod, Calanus helgolandicus. Science of the Total Environment 687, 780-789. Online.
This post is a follow-up to one I wrote previously called ‘Plankton Photo Shoot‘. In that post, I described how I take images of my fossil plankton using a scanning electron microscope, or SEM. But that was really just the first phase of taking images. In this post, I’ll talk a bit about what I do with the SEM images once I have them, and how I clean them up.
After I have SEM images, I save them to a few different folders. When taking images of fossil plankton, we usually take several pictures of the same specimen: one of the spiral side, the umbilical side (think of this as your back and front), and one of the side view of the specimen. After the images are organized into the appropriate folder that corresponds to the side of the plankton I took an image of, I then begin the editing process!
This is a screenshot of an image of a plankton species called Globorotalia tumida. Here, the image is imported into Adobe Photoshop.
The first thing I do is open the image I want to work with in Adobe Photoshop. Once imported, I then use the ‘Quick Selection’ tool to draw an outline around the fossil. I do this so I can copy and past just the image of the fossil into a new document and cut out the background. One I have the fossil isolated, then the real fun begins!
This is another screenshot of the fossil isolated from the background using the ‘Quick Selection’ tool in Photoshop.
The first thing I do with an isolated fossil image is to zoom into the image. The reason I do this is because I want to inspect the image to see how well the ‘Quick Selection’ tool worked. Sometimes, if an image does not have a lot of contrast, or the background looks the same color as the fossil, some of the background will be included in the selection. If this happens, I then use the Eraser tool to go around the outside edges of the image. This makes the image more crisp and defined!
This is what the fossil image looks like when I zoom into the image at 400x magnification. The edges already look quite good, but notice there is a small gray ‘halo’ around the image, which is especially apparent on the left side.
This is what the image looks like after using the eraser tool on the edges of the image. You can’t tell too much, if any, of a difference, but it does help give the image a bit more definition! I also delete the white background before I save the image as a .PNG file type (.PNG files don’t have a background, which is great because then I can put the image against any color background I want to later).
The final image! From here, the image is saved as a .PNG file for later use!
And that’s it! I now have a beautiful fossil image that will be used later in a publication! Of course I have to repeat this process for each fossil (which, right now, I have over 200 to edit!). Stay tuned for Part III of Plankton Photo Shoot, where I’ll show you how these images will be displayed in a publication for other scientists!
This year’s pamphlet for the 25th Annual UMass URC! This is the first year the conference has gone ‘green’, meaning the program is now in a downloadable app instead of printed.
Adriane here-
Every Spring, the University of Massachusetts Amherst has a one day event for undergraduate students to present their research, called the UMass Undergraduate Research Conference. This year was the conference’s 25th anniversary. During this event, over 1,000 undergraduate students from the commonwealth’s 28 public colleges and universities come to UMass to present the research they have been conducting, in the form of posters, e-posters, and talks. The conference is open to the public, and is totally free. In addition, the conference is open to students in any and all disciplines, such as Anthropology, History, Nursing, Sociology, Kinesiology, Social Work, and Political Science, just to name a few. The conference is set up so that there are eight sessions, each 45 minutes long, where students present their posters or e-posters (entire 45 minutes) or give talks in sessions (each talk is 15 minutes long, so three per session).
This year, the undergraduate student I have been working with, Solveig, presented her research on the northwest Pacific Ocean. In addition, there was one other student, Kurt, who also presented his research on reconstructing temperatures from sediments in the high northern latitudes. Both of our UMass students did great, and were continuously talking with professors, the public, and other students about the research they have been working hard on this past year.
A row of poster presentations. Altogether, there were probably around 6 to 8 rows of posters!
While our UMass students were presenting, I walked around to chat with students about their research. In short, I was totally blown away by all the cool research being done at campuses across Massachusetts! The first student I talked to was from the nursing school here at UMass. She compiled data that has already been published to quantify how nurses and doctors introduced themselves to their patients. Interestingly, her findings suggested that not every nurse or doctor likes to introduce themselves by their first and last names, as they felt this might give away too much information, and might lead their patients to distrusting them more.
The second student I talked to developed a survey to assess how much trust the public has in their family, community, local government, and national government and agencies with respect to climate resiliency. She surveyed adults in western Massachusetts from a more liberal demographic and found some interesting results. Firstly, she found that people are willing to trust their family, friends, neighbors, and local governments more than national government agencies. This result is a bit off-putting because money for remediation after natural disasters comes mainly from national agencies, not local communities. Secondly, the results from the survey indicate that when it comes to investing in climate resiliency, people would rather put funding towards cleaner energy sources. This is interesting because making a switch to clean energy is something that should be done to curb climate change rather than a resiliency effort.
Solveig presenting her poster to our UMass Geosciences professors.
The third student I talked to had built a model for where clean energy plants should be built in Mexico. This student was in the Department of Engineering, and his data and models could be given to policy makers to help them determine where to build such plants. From this student, I also learned that Mexico has very ambitious national sustainability goals. They plan to generate 35% of their electricity from clean energy sources by 2024, and 50% by 2050! The last students I chatted with were working with moths to determine how their bodies change during metamorphosis. The students put moth larvae (pupa) into a machine that determines the lean mass and total body fat of small animals in a non-invasive way. I had never heard of such a technique, but here at UMass, there is a lab that uses this technology to scan birds to determine how much body fat they lose during migration. These students were the first to ever use the technology on moths! The students first began the study by keeping the pupa in the machine for a few days. They then injected the pupa with hormones to make the animal’s body think it is a certain time a year, and will thus begin the process of metamorphosis. The machine measures the amount of body fat throughout this process until the pupa hatches into an adult moth. They found that the process of metamorphosis takes a lot of energy, and thus uses up a lot of fat. The undergraduate students are writing up the results of their findings for a journal, which will eventually be published!
All in all, this was a wonderful experience for the undergraduate students that attended and presented. They received crucial feedback on their projects, and were asked questions by professors outside of their respective departments. Because members of the public were also there, the students had to think about how to talk about their research to non-scientists. I would love to see such a conference at other large state universities, as this was a wonderful event for everyone who attended!
I’ve done a lot of stuff during my time here at UMass Amherst, probably too much stuff (including building this website with Jen and collaborators, which is definitely something I have no regrets about!). Because of the amount of teaching, outreach, and large research projects I’ve done and continue to do, my PhD, which is funded by my department for 4 years, will take an extra year. However, my funding runs out at the beginning of May 2019.
It’s not uncommon for a PhD degree to run over the 4 year mark; in fact, it’s really quite common. But how to sustain oneself for this extra time is the tricky part. There is money available to graduate students to support us in our final year(s) of our degree through fellowships and grants. These are often very competitive and hard to win, but totally worth applying for. So I decided to apply for a fellowship to fund the remainder of my time here at UMass.
The fellowship that I applied for is through the Cushman Foundation for Foraminiferal Research, an organization specifically for scientists who work with fossil plankton. The organization has been around for quite a while, and its members include professors, researchers, and students from all over the world. The Foundation is great because they have several grants and awards for students, to fund their research and travel to local, regional, and international meetings.
A photo of Dr. Resig and her pet cat! I was thrilled to find this photo, as I too am obsessed with foraminifera and cats!
The Johanna M. Resig Foraminiferal Research Fellowship is named after its namesake, who was a life-long foraminiferal researcher and editor of one of the most prominent journals for foraminiferal research, the aptly-named Journal of Foraminiferal Research. Johanna was born in Los Angeles, California on May 27, 1932. She found her love for geology at the University of Southern California, where she received her Bachelor of Science in 1954 and her Master of Science in 1956. After graduation, Johanna went to work for the Allen Hancock Foundation. There, she studied foraminifera that live off the southern coast of California. In 1962, Johanna was awarded a Fullbright grant, a very prestigious award that gives money to scholars to study abroad for a few years. With this grant, Johanna continued her research at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany. While in Germany, she earned her PhD in natural science in 1965. Once she had her doctorate, Dr. Resig began a professorship at the University of Hawai’i as a micropaleontologist in the Institute of Geophysics. She was the first woman recruited in the Hawai’i Institute of Geophysics, and remained the only one for several years. She was a professor at the university for over 40 years, where she published over 50 articles and book chapters on foraminifera. Dr. Resig published mainly on benthic foraminifera (those that live on the seafloor) as well as planktic foraminifera (those that float in the upper water column). She worked with sediments from all over the world, and also used the shells of foraminifera to construct geochemical records of our oceans. During her career, Dr. Resig described and named five new species of foraminifera and even a new Order! Dr. Resig was not only known for her research, but she was also a dedicated mentor and teacher at the University of Hawai’i. While there, she taught hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students in her courses, and mentored about a dozen graduate students. When Dr. Resig passed away on September 19, 2007, her family gave funds to the Cushman Foundation in her name, and thus the Johanna M. Resig Foraminiferal Research Fellowship was established.
Interestingly, my PhD advisor, Mark, worked with Dr. Resig during her career. They sailed together on a large drillship called the Glomar Challenger, which took sediment cores of the seafloor for scientists to study. During an expedition together to the western equatorial Pacific (called ‘Leg 130’), they were both micropaleontologists (scientists who use tiny fossils to interpret the age of the sediments and reconstruct the ancient ocean environments). Mark is a huge fan of country music, and he recalled that he loved to play country music on the ship while the scientists were working. One song he was particularly fond of, ‘All My Exes Live in Texas’ by George Strait, was deemed entirely comical by Johanna! Mark describes Johanna as a dedicated scientists, a wonderful micropaleontologist, and someone that was a joy to be around.
A group photo of the scientists who sailed on Leg 30 in the western equatorial Pacific Ocean in 1990. Dr. Johanna Resig is circled in red.
The fellowship named after Dr. Resig will support the remainder of my time as a PhD student at University of Massachusetts Amherst. The money will be used as stipend (which is a fancy academic word for income), but it can also be used for analyses and lab expenses and travel to conferences. One way in which I’ll use the money is to pay an undergraduate student to process sediment samples that I will use in my next research project. This way, I’ll get a jump-start on my next project, and a student will be earning money doing science. They will also learn more about the samples that are collected as part of scientific ocean drilling. It’s totally a win-win situation, and I feel that by using part of the fellowship to mentor and help the next generation of students, I am honoring Dr. Resig’s memory and her commitment to mentoring and advising.
Solveig at the fossil table. Here, she is telling kids and parents about whale baleens. Visible on the table is a walrus vertebrae and a piece of a whale vertebrae (the large, plate-sized fossil).
Adriane here-
Recently, I participated in the first-ever Amherst Elementary Science Night. This event, held at one of the local middle schools in Amherst, Massachusetts, was designed to introduce elementary-aged children to the different areas of science. Several professors, graduate, and undergraduate students from the University of Massachusetts Amherst attended to help out with fun activities for the kids! Several professors and students from our department also attended to teach the kids about aspects of geology. Of course, I was there to tell anyone who would listen about the wonderful world of paleontology and showcase different fossils.
The event was held in the cafeteria space of the middle school, which was divided into two areas. The first area included tables with activities and fun science stuff for the younger kids. The second area was for older kids, with more advanced science activities. Altogether, there were eight of us from the geology department who attended, with three of us (me, Solveig, and our advisor, Mark) who were in the younger section with a table full of fossils!
Helen working with kids at the core table. In front of her is an image of a sediment core.
At our fossil table, we brought specimens from the three major time periods: the Paleozoic to show people what early life looked like, the Mesozoic (or time when the dinosaurs were alive), and the Cenozoic (the time after the dinosaurs went extinct to today). Some of the awesome fossils we brought along were stromatolites (fossil cyanobacteria), brachiopods, a piece of a Triceratops dinosaur bone, a ~350 million year old coral fossil, coprolite (fossil poop), a mammoth tooth, whale ear bone, a piece of whale baleen, and a modern coral (to compare to the fossil coral). Of course all the kids wanted to touch the dinosaur bone, and the mammoth tooth is always a big hit! But my favorite part of the night was asking kids what they thought the coprolite was. Most didn’t know, whereas other kids would throw out a guess. When I told them it was fossil poop, almost all immediately started giggling, and some even made some really funny faces! It was great fun!
In the second room, two of our UMass Geoscience professors (Bill and Julie) and three other graduate students (Helen, Hanna, and Justin) ran two other tables. Julie and Helen did an activity in which they taught kids about sediment lake cores, and the different types of sediment layers in cores that can be used to interpret Earth’s ancient climates. To do this, they rolled different-colored Play-Doh into thin layers and stacked them into bowls. The different colors represented different sediment layers on the seafloor or lake bed. The kids then took their own ‘cores’ from the Play-Doh using segments of clear plastic straws! Helen and Julie also had images of real sediment cores laid out on the tables so the kids could see what these look like.
Justin (foreground) and Bill (background) at the sandbox.
Next to Julie and Helen’s table was Bill, Hanna, and Justin. They brought along our sandbox, which we use in our classes to illustrate how faults are made. The sandbox is a bit more complex than it sounds: the box is wooden, with clear plastic sides. One side of the box has a hand crank, which will push the side of the box towards the other, thus pushing the sand in front of it. The sandbox is meant to demonstrate plate tectonics, specifically what happens when one tectonic plate moves towards another. The sand represents the upper layer of our Earth’s crust. To begin, we fill the sandbox with a neutral-colored sand, then add a thin layer of blue sand, another thin layer of neutral sand, and a second layer of blue sand. Then, when we crank the handle and the sand is pushed, it creates tiny ‘faults’ that can be seen in the sand layers. This is always a fun activity for the kids (and our students!), and is a great way to communicate how an otherwise complicated geologic phenomenon occurs.
The event only lasted about two hours, but we all interacted with several kids, their siblings, and parents! Doing outreach activities like this is always fun, and reminds me of when I was younger and excited about the natural sciences. For us scientists who do a lot of serious work, events like these are important reminders of why we love doing what we do, and share that passion with others around us.
The SEM I use to take images of my foraminifera. The open part is looking into the chamber, which becomes a vacuum when the machine is on and running.
Adriane here-
I do a lot of research for my PhD, and some of that research is painstaking and tedious. But some aspects of research are just downright fun! Today I’m going to talk about one of my favorite parts of my research: taking very high-resolution and close-up images of my fossil plankton, foraminifera!
Because the fossils I work with are so small (about the size of a grain of sand), we need a very unique system to take high-quality and close-up images of them. To do this, people who take images of microfossils use scanning electron microscopes, or SEM for short. An SEM uses electrons reflected off the surface of the fossils to create an image. To do this, the interior of the SEM is a vacuum, and the fossils need to be coated with a conductive material. At our university, we use platinum to coat our fossils.
A close-up image of the stub. This is after the slide was coated in platinum, thus the reason why everything looks dark grey. The copper tape at the top of the image helps to reduce charging and increase conductivity within the SEM.
The first thing I do before I can take images of my fossils is to pick out specimens that I want to photograph. These are then placed onto a small, round piece of double-sided sticky tape. The fossils are so tiny, I can fit tens onto one small piece. This sticky piece is then placed onto a glass slide. We call the fossils, tape, and glass a ‘stub’. Once all the fossils are in place, I then put the stub into a coating machine. This machine coats all the fossils with a very thin layer of platinum while in the presence of xenon gas. The entire process is very quick (about 30 minutes at most). Once the specimens are coated, they’re ready for imaging in the SEM!
The stub mounted to the stage inside the SEM.
The SEM itself is a rather large contraption, but incredibly amazing! The entire machine is operated from a computer that sits on a desk beside the SEM, so everything is pretty self-contained and right there. The first thing I do after coating is to mount the stub on the stage within the SEM. This is simple: it involves taping the stub to a metal piece, which in turn fits snugly onto the stage element of the SEM.
Once in place, I then slide the door to the SEM shut and vent the machine. Venting means I push a button on the computer, which tells the machine to begin creating a vacuum inside its chamber. This process takes about ten minutes or so.
Here, I’m focusing on a smaller spot on the image.
After the chamber inside the SEM is under vacuum, I can then begin the process of photographing my fossils! Everything from this point forward is operated using software on a desktop computer that talks to the SEM. Just like a camera, the images have to be focused before taking the actual picture. This can be either very easy, or very tedious. There are several factors to determining how the image looks on the screen: are the levels balanced, is there charging on the fossils that’s causing a disturbance, the distance of the stub fro’m the camera, etc. There are controls on the computer program that allow the user to make changes and adjustments as necessary.
An image of one of the whole foraminifera shells. This image was taken at 198 times magnification. Remember, these shells are the size of a grain of sand, so the SEM really allows us to see all the beautiful details of the shells!
I find that the best way to focus the image is to zoom in very close to the fossil I want to photography. In this case, ‘very close’ means zooming in more than 2,000 times or more, so I’m really getting up close and personal with the fossils! I use a technique where I select a small window of the entire image, and use the tools in the program to tweak and focus the image in that smaller box. This is a faster way to focus, and when I’m happy with the results, I can apply the changes made to the small area to the entire image.
Once the settings are adjusted and correct for my fossils, I can then get through taking images pretty quickly! Each image includes a scale bar to indicate the size of the fossil and the magnification, which is helpful and necessary to include with each fossil picture. For this project, I was very interested in taking close-up images of the surface of my specimens, and also taking a side-view of the shells (quite unfortunately, this means I had to break open some foraminifera shells once placed on the stub and before coating).
This is looking at a broken piece of a foraminifera shell! Those tiny holes are where it’s spines used to be when the plankton was alive and floating in the water column.
Once all the images are taken, I can then download them onto a thumb drive and work with them on my own computer. This involves using other photography programs such as Adobe Photoshop to crop the fossil images and place them onto a black background.
Although the process of taking SEM images of fossils is incredibly fun, it’s also vastly important for research. I will include images of all my fossils in a publication. This way, other researchers will know how I tell one species apart from another, and the different characteristics of each plankton species. Ideally, I’ll have pages and pages of fossil images, called plates, included with my publications!
