At a brisk 18 miles per hour, the wind off Monona Bay whipped students’ hair, clothing and papers, but Dr. Emily Stanley’s strong voice carried to the far edges of her classroom circle.
“As we wrap up, I wanted to ask: how are each of you doing?” she queried. One by one, the graduate students in her scientific writing seminar offered feedback. The general consensus: feeling isolated.
It is not an easy time to be a student—or a teacher. The global pandemic has upended college campuses, where togetherness has always been a joyful, taken-for-granted experience. Remote learning and physically-distanced settings make campus safer, but the lack of events and activities casts a pall.
“Undergraduates and graduate students alike are missing that in-person contact,” Stanley explains. “But for graduate students it’s even more acute. Collaboration is so important when doing science. You need to bounce ideas off of one another, to analyze samples together. It’s a difficult proposition to do research alone from the comfort of your bedroom. It makes these opportunities to get together in person and talk just that much more valuable.”
For her Limnology Seminar: Scientific Writing, Stanley and her students choose to meet at a different Madison park each week. The weather has been cooperative lately, offering up clear blue skies and crisp fall temperatures. For limnology students, a lake view (like the one from Brittingham Park) is a bonus.
“I have been appreciating this seminar,” says Ashley Trudeau, a PhD student who studies recreational fisheries. “I’ve been doing a lot of writing, which is kind of a coping mechanism. The good thing is that I’ve been able push some things forward—I’m getting some feedback on the second chapter of my dissertation right now.”
Trudeau, who moved here this semester from New Jersey, says she misses the in-person networking and community-building she would be doing in normal times. But coming from a former coronavirus “hotspot,” she prefers caution over risk.
“It feels safe to meet in the park in a big circle with masks on,” she says. “It is nice to talk to people and getting out to the parks has been a benefit. But having lived through March on the east coast, I’m scared.”
Elliot Hendry, a first-year graduate student working towards a masters degree in Freshwater and Marine Sciences, says he’s confident he’s in the right place at the right time, if maybe not under ideal circumstances.
“My focus is uniquely lake ecosystems,” he says. “I’ve always loved water and want to understand more about its place in the landscape and its movement, its history. There is great aquatics research happening at UW-Madison.”
The biggest challenge, he says, is the lack of social connection.
“Everything about our normal social life is so different right now. Moving to a new place, beginning a new program, and not having the ability to easily start conversations, work through questions and problems—that’s a challenge.”
Hendry cites a missing element of “serendipity.” When the pandemic abates, he says, he’s looking forward to regaining that by grabbing lunch with new people, attending events in person, experiencing the richness and excitement of music and art.
If moving a graduate writing seminar outdoors was one response to the pandemic, moving a large limnology field course indoors was another. Normally, undergraduates in ZOO 316 would be out on Lake Mendota every week, gathering samples. The size of the boats they use—called “Boston whalers”—means the students can’t adhere to physical distancing guidelines. The annual trip to Trout Lake Station, UW’s research outpost in the northwoods of Wisconsin, is off the table, too.
Without field opportunities this year, Stanley and her co-lecturer, professor Hilary Dugan, pivoted to focus on data analysis.
“In ecology, R is the default coding language,” explains Dugan. “These days it's difficult to succeed in the ecology without some knowledge of R, and it's gotten to the point where undergrads must get exposure to R if they are looking for jobs in the field.”
They’d been considering introducing R in the classroom, she says, and the pandemic was the push they needed. The hope is that if undergraduates, who are “at the perfect age for learning a new language,” have working proficiency in R, it will benefit them in other classes and the workforce.
Stanley calls the graduate student teaching assistants who have helping with this lab course “stunningly awesome.” Without them, she says, the switch from field work to data analysis and coding work would have been much harder.
“This coding is completely opaque when you start,” she says. “You have to approach it calmly, and they are patient and creative. Our graduate TAs are the unsung heroes of the pandemic.”