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PhD student selected to talk to Congress about science funding

Milica Radanovic.
Radanovic

A doctoral candidate in the School of Biological Sciences at Washington State University, Milica Radanovic is among 23 graduate students selected nationwide by the Ecological Society of America (ESA) to speak with Congress about the importance of funding scientific research.

As a winner of ESA’s Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Award, Radanovic will attend virtual training to learn about the federal legislative process and science funding, hear from ecologists working in federal agencies, and review policy and communication best practices before she meets with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

“We are living during a time of global change, and scientists have a social responsibility to push for positive change,” she said. “This will be achieved when scientists learn to effectively communicate with policymakers and the public. Voices in policy need to be diversified, barriers keeping people from science need to be torn down, and we need to work together for the greater good.”

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WSU Insider

WSU Police partner with student legal group on arrest data

The Student Legal Research Association will help evaluate arrest data from WSU’s police department as part of measures to address racial disparity in arrests on the Pullman campus. The campus police are also taking collaborating with university researchers to address implicit bias.

These actions are part of an effort to address disproportionate arrests of Black people by campus police, a problem identified by a Daily Evergreen article in fall 2019 and a following report by WSU Office of Compliance and Civil Rights (CCR) in May 2020. The term “arrest” in police data includes non-custody interactions such as issuing traffic citations.

David Makin.
Makin

The CBTSim program is just one that the WSU campus force will undertake, Gardner said.  The department is working on another project with WSU criminal justice professor David Makin and the Complex Social Interactions Lab where officers will review body camera footage in very specific ways to try to understand the effect their actions have.

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WSU Insider

Writing, fighting for ‘true liberation’

Mahogany Browne.
Browne

Mahogany Browne dropped out of high school after she was told not to write poetry during an English honors class.

Browne will speak as part of the Washington State University Visiting Writers Series hosted by the Department of English at 6 p.m. Wednesday via YouTube Live. Browne said in an email that she will discuss how to recognize one’s rage as a useful tool “to get free” during her scheduled talk.

“I feel like there are so many ways we can show up and engage,” Browne wrote. “My art is communal, and therefore, everything I do is intentional in our fight for true liberation. … I’ve used my platform to speak to those that may not have the articulation or understanding of how we all are affected by injustice. I practice solidarity and look forward to continuing the efforts of groups that are responding to the lack of food and food quality for neighborhoods, policy, as well as educational symposiums to challenge the antiquated curricula plaguing our young people.”

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The Lewiston Tribune

Explainer: What is statistics?

When describing statements with numbers, people often refer to them as statistics. For instance, if 70 out of 100 students got a B on an English test, that would be a statistic. So would the make-believe statement “90 percent of toddlers love tuna.” But the field of statistics involves much more than a collection of factoids.

Statistics is a different kind of animal than other fields of STEM. Some people consider it to be a type of math. Others argue that while statistics is like math, it’s too different from math subjects to be viewed as part of that field.

Researchers see data all around them. Data are waiting to be gathered from penguin poop and the weather outside. They lurk in the motion of planets and talks with teens about why they vape. But these data alone don’t help researchers get far. Scientists need to think through how they structure their studies to glean meaningful information from these data.

Leslie New.
New

“I have skills marine biologists need — and those skills are statistics,” says Leslie New. She is a statistical ecologist at Washington State University in Vancouver. New uses statistics to study study marine mammals, such as whales and dolphins.

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Science News for Students

Crimson Reads author explores family history in Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness

Debbie Lee.
Lee

Many of DJ Lee’s stories in Remote: Finding Home in the Bitterroots embody the powerful force of the Selway River that carves out a portion of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in Idaho and Montana, the spiritual home Lee discovered in midlife. Lee’s 2020 memoir is also the culmination of research into her family history with the wilderness area, as well as a tribute to her missing friend and retired wilderness ranger, Connie Saylor Johnson.

“My family has been connected to the Selway-Bitterroot for nearly a century, but I never set foot there until I was almost forty-five years old,” wrote Lee, WSU Regents Professor of Literature and Creative Writing. “I’ve spent the past 15 years trying to piece together the history of the wilderness and of my grandparents, who lived there for decades. The memory of those years is like the Selway River itself. What seems to be a singular waterway is actually hundreds of streams and creeks, each with its own course, its own confluence.”

Lee and other WSU authors in the past year would have normally been honored in person during the WSU Libraries’ Crimson Reads, but this and other WSU Showcase events this year will be held virtually. For more information on all WSU authors who published in 2020, visit the Crimson Reads library guide. More author spotlights can be read this week on the WSU Libraries Facebook page.

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WSU Insider