Staff Appreciation Day, "Luncheon in the Junction"
The Graduate Staff Having Fun.

Congratulations to the Graduate School’s own Graduate Assistants

Myron Cathey, Dr. Karen Coats, Associate Dean, Nate Peterson
Mary Catherine Lindsay-Thomas (not pictured)

Myron Cathey, Mary Catherine Lindsay-Thomas and Nate Peterson received their masters in Public Policy & Administration. Mary and Myron have been selected as interns for the summer with the Secretary of State's office in Jackson, MS. Nate plans to pursue a law degree with an emphasis on family law from Mississippi College in the Fall.

Congratulations to Karin Lee and Forest Sparks

Congratulations to Karin Lee and Forest Sparks (Office of the Graduate School) for 15 years of service to Mississippi State University. Their service was recognized at the annual Years of Service Recognition Ceremony.

Dr. Gary Ervin Received the 2013 Outstanding Graduate Student Mentor Award

(2013-05-03) 2013 Outstanding Graduate Student Mentor Award - Dr. Gary Ervin, Professor of Biological Sciences, received the 2013 Outstanding Graduate Student Mentor Award, sponsored by the MSU Alumni Association and Office of the Graduate School. Dr. Ervin was nominated by his current and former graduate students who documented his exceptional dedication to student professional development, the highest standards of integrity, and exceptional mentorship.

A mentor can be a major advisor or a member of a graduate committee, but being an outstanding mentor is much more than simply advising. A mentor provides wisdom, technical knowledge, assistance, support, encouragement, empathy and respect throughout, and most probably beyond, your graduate career. A graduate student reaps exceptional benefits from the mentor’s support, skills, wisdom and coaching. Mentoring also brings to a graduate student an understanding how his/her distinctive skills and ambitions fit into the opportunities offered by a graduate education. The mentor emphasizes the importance of scholarship, and university life and offers guidance in career choices.

Historian awarded first NSF grant to MSU in humanities

Assistant History Professor Alexandra Hui

STARKVILLE, Miss.--A member of the Mississippi State history faculty is receiving the first major National Science Foundation grant ever awarded to a humanities department at the university.

Assistant history professor Alexandra E. Hui recently was selected for a year-long $155,000 grant to study how the perception of sound has changed over time.

"It is the first NSF grant awarded to this department in the history of Mississippi State University and the first major senior scholar grant from NSF to an MSU humanities professor," said history department head Alan Marcus.

"It is an indication that the department is emerging among the national leaders in the history of science," the professor added.

With an interest in the role culture plays in the practice and perpetuation of science, Hui studies how musical tastes influenced German scientists' experiments on sound sensation. Her research also involves physics, physiology and psychology of the 19th century.

Hui said the idea for her grant proposal stemmed from a discussion with colleagues about Muzak, source of the background tunes that often permeated high-rise elevators, hotel lobbies, shopping malls, and similar public locales.

"The topic lends itself to an interesting way to talk about American culture and the way over the course of the century, new technology has changed the way we engage the space around us," Hui said.

She brings to the research project a somewhat unique background: fluent in English, French and German; a bachelor's degree in astrophysics; and internships with NASA and the Smithsonian Institution. After receiving master's and doctoral degrees in history from the University of California, Los Angeles, she came to MSU in 2009 to teach and research the history of science.

"I'm going to be studying the history of this new type of listening that develops when you have the technology and culture of background music," she said of the NSF grant.

As it happens, Muzak recently ceased to exist as a brand name. In early February, the New York Times reported how it was being retired "as part of a reorganization by its owner, Mood Media." The Times report also noted that Ontario, Canada-based Mood would be consolidating its services "under a single brand, Mood, thus eliminating the Muzak name."

Whatever the service now is called, Hui said her research project will cover much of the 20th century--and into 2001, when Apple Inc. released the iPod and gave people a convenient technology to again begin personalizing musical selections.

She plans to spend the year traveling, visiting archive collections and interviewing people to gather information for her final report.

11th Annual Graduate Student Association Awards Banquet

The Graduate Student Association, with the support of the Office of the Graduate School, hosted the 11th Annual Graduate Student Association Awards Banquet on the evening of Tuesday, April 3. Six outstanding graduate students, nominated by their mentors or supervisors, were recognized for their exceptional accomplishments in teaching, research, and service. The following awards were presented:

2013 Donald Zacharias Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year, Ph.D. level - Ashley Baker, Sociology
Nominated by Dr. Kimberly Kelly, Assistant Professor, and Dr. Lynn Cossman, Professor and Head, Department of Sociology

2013 Donald Zacharias Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year, Ph.D. level - Mark Pelletier, Marketing
Nominated by Dr. Jason Lueg, Professor and Head, Department of Marketing, Quantitative Analysis, and Business Law

2013 Donald Zacharias Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year, Master's level - Caroline Baker, English
Nominated by Dr. Lara Dodds, Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator, and Dr. Ann Spurlock, Director of Composition, Department of English

2013 Graduate Research Assistant Award, Ph.D. level - Siyam Ansar, Chemistry
Nominated by Dr. Dongmao Zhang, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry

2013 Graduate Research Assistant Award, Master's level - Chase Samples, Agronomy
Nominated by Dr. Darrin Dodds, Assistant Extension Professor, Department of Plant and Soil Sciences

2013 Graduate Service Assistant Award - Anna Claire Morris, Master's student, Business Administration
Nominated by Ms. Brandy Akers, Director, Business Operations, High Performance Computing Collaboratory (HPC2)

Graduate and Professional Student Appreciation Week

Dr. Ansley Abraham, Director, SREB Doctoral Scholars Program spoke to students on Monday. The topic was “20 years of Success and Progress of the SREB-State Doctoral Scholars Program”. Appreciation Week activities will continue until Friday. Please review the schedule.

11th Annual Graduate Student Research Symposium

The Graduate Student Association (GSA), in collaboration with the Office of the Graduate School (OGS), sponsored the 11th Annual Graduate Student Research Symposium (GSRS) on March 23, 2013. 61 students participated (authors and co-authors) with 49 presentations reviewed at the Symposium.

Zadia Codabux, PhD Student from Port-Louis, Mauritius,
has been selected to receive an IBM PhD Fellowship

Zadia is a Fulbright Fellow in Computer Science and Engineering working with Dr. Byron Williams. She will receive an academic year stipend and an internship at IBM to work on her research on Agile Predictive Analytics. This is a very competitive worldwide program.

The IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Awards Program is an intensely competitive worldwide program, which honors exceptional Ph.D. students who have an interest in solving problems that are important to IBM and fundamental to innovation in many academic disciplines and areas of study. These include: computer science and engineering (including cyber security and cloud computing), electrical and mechanical engineering, physical sciences (including chemistry, material sciences, and physics), mathematical sciences (including analytics of massive scale data with uncertainty, operations research, and optimization), public sector and business sciences (including urban policy and analytics, social technologies, learning systems and natural language understanding), and service science, management, and engineering (SSME).

The IBM Ph.D. Fellowships are awarded worldwide. IBM Ph.D. Fellows are awarded a stipend for one academic year. Fellowships vary by country/geographic area. Award Recipients were selected based on their overall potential for research excellence, the degree to which their technical interests align with those of IBM, and their academic progress to-date, as evidenced by publications and endorsements from their faculty advisor and department head.

All IBM Ph.D. Fellows are matched with an IBM Mentor according to their technical interests, and they are strongly encouraged to participate in at least one internship at IBM while completing their studies.https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/university/phdfellowship/

Mississippi State University Scientists Study Ducks in the Delta

MSU Wildlife and Fisheries – Graduate Research - Joseph D. Lancaster, M.S.

Results from a Mississippi State University study of mallard ducks in the state's south Delta revealed information that could help shape conservation and habitat management programs.

For several years, Brian Davis, assistant professor in MSU's Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture and researcher in MSU's Forest and Wildlife Research Center, has been studying how mallards use the overall landscape and how the landscape affects their survival.

"Ultimately, we want to know how mallard survival is influenced by its use of several habitats of the Delta," Davis said. "Survival of birds in relation to hunting seasons is also important."

Studying the mallards over the course of time yielded a lot of information. Davis said the birds' movements, habitat use and survival reflect landscape quality.

"We can learn more about survival by examining habitat use among ducks of different ages and body masses," he said.

To determine habitat use and survival rates, Davis and his team captured and equipped a sample of 126 female mallards with backpack-style, very-high-frequency radio transmitters. Researchers used the transmitters to track the birds' locations daily and note mortalities.

"The problem is that you have to be in close enough proximity—two miles or less—to receive a signal to pinpoint where the bird is," said Joseph Lancaster, a wildlife, fisheries and aquaculture graduate student involved in the study.

To track the ducks, the researchers drove around in trucks and chartered a fixed-wing airplane, each fitted with special antennae.

Data from the 2010-2012 study showed an overall winter survival rate of 76 percent. The highest daily survival rate occurred in moist-soil habitats, such as shallowly-flooded wetlands of annual grasses and weeds, followed by agricultural, forested and permanent water habitats.

Hunting impacted mallard survival, but not as much as researchers expected.

"We saw a higher percentage of non-hunting mortalities than hunting mortalities," Lancaster said.

Davis said shooting a radio-marked duck is not illegal, and invited hunters to contact them to add to the study's data, which can benefit them as it is translated into land management strategies that lure more ducks to the Delta.

"The data might reveal where conservation programs should be focused," Davis said. "For private landowners, we can help them with habitat management that could attract more mallards to their land," Davis said.

Davis and Lancaster plan to continue their study through 2014.

"I’m staying on to do a Ph.D. with Dr. Davis, and we’re expanding the study northward," Lancaster said. "The first part focused on an area south of Highway 82. We’re going to expand to the north part of the Delta where there’s a higher concentration of mallards."

Davis said the last study of this kind in Mississippi was in the 1980s, and on-going study is needed.

"As the landscape changes, we need to revisit the same questions," he said. "Survival rates may be different in subsequent eras, as farming and conservation practices change. When government programs, such as reforestation incentives for landowners, come and go, or when soybeans come and go, it modifies the landscape."

From November to early March, mallards and other waterfowl make the Mississippi Delta their seasonal home. The Mississippi Alluvial Valley extends southward along the Mississippi River from the Bootheel of Missouri through eastern Louisiana and annually supports about 40 percent of the Mississippi flyway mallard population during the winter.

The studies were primarily funded by the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks and the NRCS’ Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative. Drs. Rick Kaminski of MSU and Alan Afton, assistant leader for wildlife with the U.S. Geological Survey (LSU), and Ed Penny, wildlife bureau director with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, collaborated on the project.

Click here for more information.