FOREWORD: How Tiffany Became Farmer Tiffany The summer before my senior year of undergrad my mom suffered a massive stroke. She had to learn how to walk, talk, chew, swallow, live life all over again. I thought that I could heal her with food. This begins the story of Tiffany becoming Farmer TIffany. I began traveling to not only learn how to grow food, but to do it responsibly and in a way that protected the soil, biodiversity, and climate. As I began to learn more, I discovered that I did not have access to healthy food or land to…
I first started beatboxing when I was about 12 years old, and it quickly became my favorite pastime. I’ve always appreciated the importance beatboxing has had in my life, both as an act of spontaneous creation and as a chance for connection with others.
Episode I: Transcript Waking up to the rain around the world is always going to be special for me. I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest in the United States, and the rain feels like home. When I learned part of my Ph.D. research would include fieldwork in a rainforest, I was thrilled. When I hear the rain, I get to take myself around the world with just a sound. All I have…
This piece is for first-generation graduate students; for the first of anything. It’s for the grad students that may be questioning their position in higher education, as I often have, and continue to do so. It’s for the grad students with responsibilities beyond school. This is for the grad students that have failed a homework assignment, or exam, or class and went home to cry about it by themselves because they knew their family would…
“Use at least 5 peer-reviewed sources,” the assignment guideline says. Quickly, I search within the library catalog and use the advanced search function to set the filter as “Scholarly/peer-reviewed.” Without a second thought I start to browse through the results and look for useful articles for the project. As graduate students, we probably have worked on assignments that require students to cite peer-reviewed articles when writing essays. Peer review refers to the process in which…
by Sylvia Klein Abstract I enter the lab and don my small black nitrile gloves and papery, disposable lab coat. I look around at the sterility of the lab as I begin to gather the things I need for the experiment I’m planning to do. As I grab items I need from shelves, the freezer and fridge I think about how everything I am holding is plastic and will be thrown away. I try to…
Art is an important medium for both creativity and communication. At first it may seem that these are ‘soft’ skills, separate from the ‘hard’ skills of science. They are not. Today, infographics and animations combine art and science; historical works, such as old field guides, full of hand painted portraits, have tied the two disciplines together.
In Minnesota, the high school graduation rate for White-identifying students in 2018-2019 was about 89% and for BIPOC students that percentage is lower no matter which racial group is being analyzed. The racial group with the lowest high school graduate rate are American Indian students at about 51%, a historic high (UnitedHealth Foundation, 2022). In Minnesota the racial group with the lowest median household income are American Indians at about $35K annually compared to the average…