On Friday, September 20 at 12 pm Pacific / 3 pm Eastern, SSAR’s DEI Committee will host a 1.5-hour virtual event on preparing graduate school application materials. DEIC members will give short presentations on several relevant topics. We will include time for questions and breakout room discussions.

If you are interested in joining, please mark your calendar, fill out the form below, and we will send you a Zoom link about a week before the workshop. If you fill out the form less than a week before the workshop, we will send a Zoom link shortly before the workshop (probably on the day of).

We plan to record the presentations, and we will send the recording and application materials to everyone who registers.

Registration form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSduxZIY24REJuZxM3r7sl0xYQdDafwWbIp5NwFRgKnxI-_ulA/viewform?usp=sf_link

Victor Hutchison Graduate Poster Award

The SSAR graduate student poster awards honor Victor Hutchison for his extensive contributions to herpetology and the development of future herpetologists. We held the 14th annual SSAR Victor Hutchison Student Poster competition in Ann Arbor on 28 June 2024. Awardees received a check for US $250 and a SSAR book

Many thanks to this year’s judges:

Patrick Baker (United States Military Academy), Micah Nneji (Howard University), Chris Parkinson (Clemson University), Theodora Pinou (Western Connecticut State University), RJ Rao (Jiwaji University), Bibiana Rojas (University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna), Ed Stanley (Florida Museum of Natural History), and Meredith Swartwout (University of Toronto Mississauga).

The 2024 recipients of the Hutchison Graduate Poster Award are:

Physiology and Morphology

Sudipta Kalita (University of Dayton), “Functional morphology of the lower jaw in fanged frogs”

Evolution, Genetics, & Systematics

Mustafa Erkaya (Villanova University), “Population structure analysis of geckos of the genus Bavayia (Diplodactylidae) by utilization of rapidly evolving long exon capture (RELEC) datasets”

Conservation & Management

Adam Austin (Western Michigan University/ The Rattlesnake Conservancy), “Efficacy of a novel eDNA assay in locating a lost aquatic salamander”

Ecology, Natural History, Distribution, & Behavior

Ricardo Gibert (California State University Northridge), “Does competition explain the regional supplantation of Mediterranean house geckos (Hemidactylus turcicus) in Gulf Coast states?”

George B. Rabb Undergraduate Poster Award

SSAR’s George B. Rabb Undergraduate Poster Award is sponsored by Zoo Atlanta and honors our colleague George Rabb (1930-2017), former Director of the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, IL, and highly respected advocate and spokesman for wildlife conservation. 2024 marked the 6^th year of this competition and the largest group of competitors to date, with 19 posters. Due to the number of posters, for the first time two awards were given and three posters were chosen for honorable mention. The recipients received a check for US $250 and a SSAR book.

Many thanks to this year’s judges:

Avi Berger (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign), Emily Bierbaum (University of Tulsa), Lauren Chan (California Polytechnic State University), Dick Durtsche (Northern Kentucky University), Harrison Goldspiel (University of Maine), Aaron Griffing (Princeton University), Marina Gerson (California State University, Stanislaus), Chun Kamei (Field Museum of Natural History), Bonnie Kircher (The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center), and Shelby Timm (Missouri Department of Conservation).

The honorable mentions are:

In Ecology and Behavior: Jaden Kinney (Loyola University New Orleans) “Does social environment impact multimodal signaling in bird-voiced tree frogs (Hyla avivoca)?”

In Conservation and Management: Celina Eberle (University of New Mexico) “Invasion genetics of introduced bullfrogs (Rana catesbeina) in New Mexico”

In Development and Morphology: Riley Stanton (Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates), “Do big mouths make bad biters? Gape limitations appear to constrain evolution in the jaws of snakes”

The award recipients are:

In Physiology: Madeline Russelburg (Benedictine University), “Validating the use of bacterial killing assays to investigate immune health of spotted turtles living in contaminated environments

In Evolution and Genetics: Jonathan Eubanks and Hayden Hanna (Louisiana State University Shreveport), “Phylogenetics and rang-wide phylogeography of Garthia – a phyllodactylid gecko genus endemic to Chile”

Note: The Graduate Student Mentorship Program is a new program in 2024, and it is different from the Conference Mentorship Program. For more information on the conference program, check out this post: https://ssarherps.org/2024/05/ssar-2024-conference-mentorship-program/

Program overview:

Healthy mentorship relationships and strong professional networks help mentees excel academically and reach their career goals, while also increasing their sense of belonging in an institution or profession. Mentors can also benefit from a successful mentor/mentee relationship. However, many mentors have never received formal mentorship training, leaving them to learn through trial and error.

The SSAR Graduate Student Mentorship Program (GSMP) aims to serve both mentees and early-career mentors through two major aims: 1) to provide new grad students (master’s students plus 1^st and 2^nd year Ph.D. students) in the field of herpetology with near-peer mentors in the same field who can help them reach their academic and career goals while building connections within the herpetological scientific community, and 2) to provide mentorship training and experience to their peer mentors, who are Ph.D. students in herpetology who have advanced to candidacy or postdocs within two years of finishing their Ph.D.

In this program, each peer mentor will be paired with 1-2 mentees, with whom they will meet at least once per month throughout the year-long program (September 2024 – August 2025). All participants (mentors and mentees) will attend online training and orientation sessions at the beginning of the program. Peer mentors will attend three additional special topics training workshops throughout the year, also virtual, and mentees will be offered virtual workshops on a variety of topics. Peer mentors will complete brief monthly reflections on their experiences, which will help guide ongoing development of their mentorship strategies.

For the program’s first year, we expect it will include 12-14 mentees and 6-8 peer mentors. Because the program is enabled by an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, the aim of which is to broaden participation of people from groups underrepresented in biology, we will prioritize applicants from groups that have been historically underrepresented in the biological sciences based on race, ethnicity, LGBTQIA+ identities, disability status, neurodiversity, veteran status, or other forms of identity, as well as their intersection. The program coordinator has substantial leadership experience in SSAR (former Chair of the Student Participation Committee, current Co-Chair of the DEI Committee, and current member of the Long-Range Planning Committee) as well as experience coordinating UC Riverside’s Graduate Student Mentorship Program.

Program expectations

To participate in the Graduate Student Mentorship Program, successful applicants will need to agree to a set of program expectations, listed below. Note that all training, workshops, and other events will be held virtually, over Zoom. Applicants do not have to be current SSAR members, but if they are not, then we will help them secure membership upon acceptance into the program.

Participants will be encouraged (but not required) to attend the Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (JMIH) in July 2025. SSAR has several travel grants to which students can apply to help with the cost of attending a conference.

Expectations for peer mentors:

• Attend a 2-hour training session in late August or early September
• Attend a 1.5-hour mentor + mentee orientation in September
• Meet virtually with each mentee within 1 week after orientation
  • For each mentee, the mentor-mentee pair will develop a written agreement of expectations, to be submitted to the program coordinator
• Meet with each mentee at least once per month, and communicate via email, phone, etc. as needed
• Submit a monthly reflection (~½ to 1 page) to the program coordinator
  • The program coordinator will read and respond to each reflection, helping to connect mentors to resources as necessary
• Attend three 1-1.5-hour professional development workshops, spread throughout the year

Expectations for mentees:

• Attend a 1.5-hour mentor + mentee orientation in September
• Meet virtually with peer mentor within 1 week after orientation
  • The mentor-mentee pair will develop a written agreement of expectations, to be submitted to the program coordinator
• Meet with peer mentor at least once per month, and communicate via email, phone, etc. as needed
• Attend 1-2 academic/professional development workshops per semester (2-3 will be offered, 1-1.5 hours each)

Application forms and contact info:

Peer mentor applications are due on August 2, 2024.

Peer mentors should be current Ph.D. candidates, or postdocs who defended their dissertation within the past two years, with a research focus on amphibians and/or reptiles. Here is the application form for peer mentors: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSep5-a7R_nF5P34Iuq5sRxUI4_3p2va7GkLUza3P8C-faY-Fw/viewform?usp=sf_link

Mentee applications are due on August 9, 2024.

Mentees should be 1^st or 2^nd year Ph.D. students (start date between July 2023 and September 2024) or master’s students with a research focus on amphibians and/or reptiles. Here is the application form for mentees: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdYQEJEpEMMzscIQncshagJqeo7jnsmbg3IdpBaqbtcGnEBCQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

Questions can be directed to Jessica Tingle, jessica_tingle@brown.edu.