2022 Advancing STEM Scholarship Recipient
By: Margaret Savoie
In fall of 2021, the Graduate School launched a new scholarship opportunity, the Advancing STEM Scholarship. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. This scholarship focuses on students whose background, achievements, and expertise demonstrate a commitment to contributing to the advancement of women in STEM, regardless of the recipient’s gender identity. Lorena Magaña Zertuche, a Ph.D. student in physics, has been selected as the 2022 Advancing STEM Scholarship recipient.
Lorena Magaña Zertuche, 2022 Advancing STEM Scholarship Recipient
“I am extremely grateful for the support of the Graduate School in awarding me this scholarship,” said Magaña Zertuche. “The fact that an Advancing STEM Scholarship exists shows that the university and the graduate school are making a serious effort to address the lack of representation of women in STEM fields and it feels rewarding to know that as a graduate student, I can make a difference.”
Dr. Cecille Labuda, an associate professor in the department of physics and astronomy nominated Magaña Zertuche.
Dr. Cecille Labuda, Associate Professor in the department of physics and astronomy
“Lorena has demonstrated a clear commitment to advancing and promoting women in STEM for many years,” said Labuda, “she cares about this deeply and the efforts she has made to promote women in STEM are commendable.”
Regarding research, Magaña Zertuche works on gravitational wave physics. In the past year, she visited UCLA for a three-month-long program. Some of the research she conducted there resulted in a recent publication in the journal Physical Review D. The title of the paper is High Precision Ringdown Modeling: Multimode Fits and BMS Frames.
For the 2022-2023 year, Magaña Zertuche was especially excited about two further projects. One of these involves building a ringdown surrogate model for binary black holes systems. The other aims to decrease the errors in parameter estimation for binaries which include black holes and neutron stars.
Magaña Zertuche said she always looks for ways to increase diversity in STEM, especially in physics. Physics, according to the American Physics Society, is one of the fields that awards the least number of degrees to women.
“I hope to continue promoting women in STEM by shining a spotlight on them–it is important to discuss the greater contributions women have made in the science, as they are often ignored or underappreciated,” said Magaña Zertuche.
A hope for Labuda is that there will come a time when efforts are no longer necessary, meaning a time when women who would like to enter STEM professions do so as easily as they would any other profession.
As an undergraduate, Magaña Zertuche remembers looking up to the few women graduate students and tries to make herself visible in the research community because it makes a difference for others to see someone like them, particularly higher up in academia.
Another significant focus for Magaña Zertuche is outreach. The first aspect of her outreach is the Oxford Science Café, where a UM faculty member is invited to Heartbreak Coffee on the Square once a month to speak with the community about their research. The Oxford Science Café aims to bring science to everyone in the community. Another component of Magaña Zertuche’s outreach is creating information booklets on physics lessons to better prepare high school teachers in the classroom. These booklets include hands-on activities that the teachers may use to help guide their students toward a better understanding of key concepts in physics. The NASA/Mississippi Space Grant Consortium (MSSGC) Fellowship provides support for the booklet outreach project.
“Apart from enjoying the interactions I have during outreach events, I hope that my presence demonstrates to young kids that women, too, can aspire to be scientists,” Magaña Zertuche continued, “I didn’t have a female role model in physics until I was an undergraduate, and I hope that in the next few years representation of women in STEM is high enough that incoming students can say they always had one.”
Promoting the advancement of women in STEM is a never-ending endeavor. The UM Graduate School launched a Graduate Women in STEM affinity group, which has now become the Association of Graduate Women in STEM (AGWiS). AGWiS is a registered student organization whose purpose is to promote networking and mentoring among graduate women and members of LBGTQIA+ community across all STEM disciplines. Their events and programming aim to foster a sense of community between these graduate students where discussions about career choices, school life, grant and fellowship opportunities, and much more can occur.
2022 Winter Newsletter
- Welcome
- And the winner is…Meet this Year’s Three Minute Thesis winner and other top performers
- Modern languages, health and kinesiology, and English – oh my!
- Lights, Camera, Action on the Las Vegas Opera Stage!
- Excelling on and off the field/court: 19 Graduate and Professional Student Athletes
- NEW SEC Emerging Scholars Program at UM Graduate School
- Meet Our 2022 SREB Scholars!
- 2022 Advancing STEM Scholarship Recipient
- Introducing the NEW Assistant Dean of Professional Development and Communications
- Five Graduate Assistants, One Graduate House
- Celebrating Our Postdoctoral Researchers
Read our previous 2022 Newsletter below.
Graduate students serve the state and region as they hone their skills and complete their degrees in mental health fields
By: Margaret Savoie
Dr. Todd Smitherman, professor of psychology and director of clinical training.
The Graduate School is lucky to have multiple programs that can give back to the community in different ways. One such mechanism is providing mental health resources to the people in the community.
The clinical psychology program has two main ways that the community is served. The first is through a campus clinic, called the Psychological Services Center. Here low-cost therapy and assessment services are provided. This is not only for individuals from the campus community but also for those from the broader community, in the county, and even some from out of state.
“We serve children all the way to older adults and a lot of what we do is therapy for things like anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar conditions, substance abuse disorders, and more,” said Dr. Todd Smitherman, professor of psychology and director of clinical training.
Katelyn Sharpe
“Our program also sends the students out into community placements, like state-run mental health facilities, private practices, and even research-focused hospitals like St. Jude,” said clinical psychology Ph.D. candidate Katelyn Sharpe from Wiggins, Mississippi. The clinical psychology program partners with about 10 different agencies in the community where one or more of the graduate students work and gain hands-on experiences.
Graduate students are also able to gain hands-on experience through the Clinic for Outreach and Personal Enrichment (COPE). Here students within the counselor education program work with students, faculty, and staff and other members of the community.
“We are free, and clients do not have to be affiliated with the University – it’s open to anyone,” said Dr. Alex Kerwin, associate professor of counselor education and clinical coordinator at the COPE. For community members to be able to access free mental health services is valuable and not something available everywhere.
Due to COVID-19, the COPE is currently only offering telehealth services.
Dr. Rick Balkin, interim department chair of the Department of Leadership and Counselor Education and professor of counselor education.
“Students are able to use our clinic and our HIPPA compliant system to offer telemental health delivery. All a kid needs is an iPad or a laptop, even a cell phone, anything that allows Zoom,” said Dr. Rick Balkin, interim department chair of the Department of Leadership and Counselor Education and professor of counselor education.
The staff at the COPE is made up of about eight counselors, who are all master’s students. These master’s students are then supervised by doctoral students who are licensed counselors.
One of the doctoral students is Kami Tran, from Arkansas.
Kami Tran
“I work under a grant that Dr. Balkin received, called the Governor’s Emergency Education Response (GEER) Fund and our program specially provides telehealth to students in Mississippi, and we’ve partnered with three different school districts to provide telehealth resources,” said Tran.
Connecting with the community is not only important for student learning, but it sets the University’s programs away from the rest.
“I have particularly enjoyed the ability to pursue avenues that most interest me, rather than follow a cookie-cutter path to graduation,” said Sharpe.
Jeff Pavlacic
Jeff Pavlacic, a clinical psychology Ph.D. candidate from St. Louis, Missouri, echoed the importance of the program’s distinction. “I chose the University of Mississippi due to the excellent clinical and research opportunities, as well as the opportunity to continue working with patients in rural settings.”
As mentioned, services at the COPE are free and open to anyone in Mississippi at this time. The on-campus Psychological Services Center operates on a sliding scale fee which means that pay for a session is based on income and life situation.
For more information on the COPE please email cope@olemiss.edu or call (662) 915-7197 and for the Psychological Services Center please call (662) 915-7385.
Spring/Summer 2022 Articles