November 2013

Visit us Hemenway Hall 212

http://gso.hawaii.edu

gso@hawaii.edu UH Manoa Graduate Student Organization

@GSO_UHM

Newsletter of the

GRADUATE STUDENT ORGANIZATION of UH Mānoa

The Mānoa Graduate

Inside

Apply for GSO Funding!

The Grants & Awards Appl ication process is now online:

http://tinyurl.com/GSOfunding

Please visit the GSO website for more information.

GSO TAILGATING! On November 15th the GSO hosted a tailgate at the Stan Sheriff Center for out Rainbow Wahine Basketball team. The pupus disappeared quickly as students gathered to support their team. The UH pep band joined as well, to play some songs and lead us into the arena before the game commenced. The Rainbow Wahine went on to defeat the Washington State Cougars 77-66!

GSO Tailgating HERO at UH Mānoa Upcoming Events • GSO Meetings & Deadlines

• SLSSA Academic Workshop

G&A Awardees Congratulations! Read about the various kinds of projects that the GSO G&A program supports.

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November 2013

The Mānoa Graduate HAWAIIAN EDUCATIONAL RADAR OPPORTUNITY (HERO)

Exciting Meteorology research comes to UH Mānoa From October 21nd to November 13th the graduate students in the Radar Meteorology class were very busy “chasing rain” around O'ahu. This was part of a National Science Foundation Educational Deployment of the Doppler on Wheels radar. The class, led by Dr. Michael Bell, made forecasts, launched weather balloons, and collected high-resolution radar observations of a variety of weather from trade showers to thunderstorms. Meteorology undergraduate students as well as National Weather Service employees also got the chance to participate in some hands-on fieldwork. The project had several distinguished visiting scientists including Dr. Wen-Chau Lee from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Drs. Karen Kosiba and Joshua Wurman from the Center for Severe Weather Research. The data allowed for a detailed and never-before-seen view of how rain forms around the islands. A lot of community and educational outreach was also done at the SOEST Open House, with several thousand students, teachers, and families visiting the radar. HERO was also featured on the local news and National Public Radio.

Did your lab or department recently feature a unique research project? Made a groundbreaking discovery?

Tel l us about i t at gso@hawaii .edu !

The Mānoa Graduate

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November 2013

Calendar of Events

This presentation will address the following questions: Why would you want to publish? What are some of the things you should remember in publishing both books and articles? What are some of the things you need to know when publishing journal articles (learning about the journals; sending in the manuscript; surviving the review; increasing your chances of getting an article accepted; handling rejection; handling acceptance; and dealing with letters to the editor)? What do you need to keep in mind when publishing professional books or teaching materials (getting ready; submitting; increasing your chances of getting a book accepted; handling rejection; dealing with the editing/publishing process; and dealing with book reviews)? Other resources will also be cited, including both articles and books on getting published in academia.

Academic workshop sponsored by the Second Language Studies Student Association (SLSSA)

Publishing Books and Articles in Applied Linguistics Dr. James Dean Brown, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

December 5, 2013 :: 12:00-1:15pm :: St. John 11

GSO

November 28 Deadline for December G&A Applications

December 5 Executive Council Meeting 6pm, GSO Office Hemenway 212

December 12 General Assembly Meeting 6pm, Campus Center Dining Room

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November 2013

The Mānoa Graduate

Congratulations! to the following graduate students whose GSO Grants & Awards applications were approved during the October & November Reviews:

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Anna Lou Abao Abatayo :: Economics

Vanessa Almanza :: Meteorology

Chasuta Anukoolthamchote :: Economics

Keisha Bahr :: Zoology

Sherri Binder :: Psychology

Thuy Thi Ngoc Bui :: Curriculum Studies

China Byrns :: Cell and Molecular Biology

Catherine Dacanay :: History

Rika Dunlap :: Philosophy

Giacomo Giorli :: Oceanography

Melia Iwamoto :: Civil Engineering

Casey Albert Jones :: Botany

Hanbyul Jung :: Second Language Studies

Julia Kim :: Second Language Studies

GSO Grants & Awards

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Chih-Yun Lai :: Tropical Medicine, Medical Microbiology and

Pharmacology

Kasey Larson :: Second Language Studies

Kathryn Linan :: Dance and Theatre

Kendra Lynn :: Geology/Geophysics

Kelsie Okamura :: Psychology

Richard Page :: Anthropology

Tanya Peacock :: International

Management

Shahin Rahman :: Urban & Regional Planning

Aaron Rose :: Cellular Molecular Biology

Adam Smith :: Biology/Zoology

Christopher Sugai :: MBBE

Monica Vidal :: Second Language Studies

Leif Walcutt :: Public Administration

The Mānoa Graduate

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November 2013

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Featuring G&A

Awardees

Cheri Kau Hello there fellow graduate students, my name is Cheri Kau. I am a first semester MEd student in Educational Administration for Higher Education. I am extremely thankful for the recent GSO Travel grant I was awarded, which helped to make my conference attendance a reality. The funds were used to afford my lodging accommodations for the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) 2013 Annual Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah on October 6-9, 2013. The conference provided me with many firsts: my first application and award for a GSO grant, my first professional conference attendance, my first presentation at a professional conference, and my first opportunity to meet academic advisors from across the nation. I presented my completed undergraduate honors thesis, Advising Beyond Graduation, in the poster session, which was possible because of the support and advice of my thesis committee and mentors: Dr. Loriena Yancura, Denise Nakaoka, Dr. Megumi Makino-Kanehiro, Kiana Shiroma, as well as Matthew Eng and Dr. Ruth Bingham, who also attended the conference. During the session, I was able to network and share my findings with professionals practicing in the field who hope to incorporate life-planning concepts into their own advising. The session gave me the opportunity to collect valuable feedback on how to expand my study for my Masters thesis and helped to authenticate the potential significance of my research topic.

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If it were not for the support I received from GSO, and the additional support of NACADA through their 2013 Annual Conference Graduate Student Scholarship, I do not know if I would have been able to afford the experience. And while one newsletter entry cannot accurately portray my gratitude for NACADA, GSO, the UHM Honor’s program, my mentors and advisors, and my peers, I will say that the NACADA Annual Conference was an unforgettable and inspiring experience, which I hope to return to in the near future. I am very thankful to the GSO for supporting me, and my peers, in our graduate student endeavors.

Cheri Kau and NACADA President Joshua Smith Photo credit: NACADA

Sam O’Hanlon I am in my second semester as a PhD student in the Department of Psychology; my area of concentration is cognition. My current research focuses on how we make judgments of similarity, including how children develop the concept of “sameness.” Understanding what it means for two things to be similar, and that they can be similar in different ways and to varying degrees, underlies the uniquely human capacity for abstract thought.

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November 2013

The Mānoa Graduate

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The $200 awarded to me by the GSO was used to pay for my 2013 Brain Symposium registration fee. This year’s topic was The Resilient Brain: From Research to Practice; presentations focused on applying current scientific findings to educational practices. As both an instructor and a researcher, attending this symposium provided me with a number of opportunities for learning and professional development. Furthermore, one of the presentations I attended gave me an idea of how my work could be applied to numeracy research. I am currently in the beginning stages of collaborating with the researcher who gave said presentation. Should my pilot study prove fruitful, the full-scale version will be conducted as part of my dissertation. The ability to recognize similarities and draw parallels across situations is a key component of successful learning because it allows students to generalize rules they learn in one context in order to apply them in another. By attending this symposium, I gained some insight into how to better assess which similarities students are recognizing (and failing to recognize) in various problem-solving situations (e.g., in the laboratory and in the classroom). Additionally, at this symposium, I was given the opportunity to learn about several promising techniques that I plan to implement in my own classes here at UH.

Stephanie Barayuga

My name is Stephanie Barayuga and I am a second year master’s candidate in the Molecular Bioscience and Bioengineering program. The generous support from GSO allowed me to attend the annual meeting for Society for Neuroscience (SFN), which was held in San Diego, CA Nov. 9-13, 2013. I was able to present my poster on my research, which focuses on the role of selenoproteins in

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protecting against methamphetamine-induced dopaminergic neurodegeneration. This conference was the premier venue to showcase my research, meet with experts in the field, and learn about new technologies and tools. I attended presentations by leading scholars in the field of drug addiction and neurodegenerative diseases. The most exciting moment during the conference was meeting the author of a paper that I cited in my poster. Being that I plan to graduate in the spring 2014, the funding I received from GSO allowed me to attend my first and possibly the last major international conference of my research career. Thank you GSO!

Katharina Decanay

Aloha! My name is Katherine Dacanay and I am a second-year Master’s student in the History department. I am very fortunate to have been awarded a GSO grant that helped me to attend my very first academic conference: the 23rd Annual Rocky Mountain Interdisciplinary History Conference, held this past September at the University of Colorado-Boulder. I presented preliminary research for my thesis, a paper comparing American

The Mānoa Graduate

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November 2013

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colonial education for Filipino girls with Dutch colonial education for Javanese girls between 1900 and 1930. The supportive and welcoming atmosphere at RMIHC greatly boosted my confidence as a researcher and presenter. I gained invaluable experience presenting my research and was able to network with other graduate students from across the country. I also attended a professional development panel on teaching history, where I was exposed to new teaching and lecturing strategies that will be very useful in my future career as a teacher. After the conference, I was surprised to receive an email that informed me that my paper was chosen as the best non-CU student paper! While this was a pleasant surprise, the experience that I gained at the conference is the real reward. I am extremely grateful to GSO for giving me the opportunity to attend this conference!

Jul ia Kim

My name is Julia Kim, and I would like to share my story of how GSO funding has positively affected my academic development. Being an M.A. student in the Department of Second Language Studies is not just building onto your language-related B.A program. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but it took me two semesters to realize how demanding it is to be an M.A. student. The most difficult part for me was networking with my classmates, professors, community members, and research participants, just to name a few. Networking is important for researchers because conducting research requires gathering resources from people in the same field. I believe I’ve done a decent job at maintaining good relationships with people I met. Eventually, I was given an opportunity to present my research findings at a conference

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in Korea. This is when I realized there are global networking opportunities for graduate students. I was amazed by how people from all over the world made the effort to gather in one place to share similar interests and exchange ideas. This was my first experience presenting at a conference, and it did more than just networking. I gained confidence to further expand my research, received helpful feedback from other professionals in my field of research, and was invited to work for some of the companies seeking my expertise. This is an important experience for any graduate student, and I would not have even dreamed of attending this conference if GSO funding was unavailable to me. So thank you, GSO members, for this opportunity!

Mel ia Iwamoto

My name is Melia Iwamoto, I am finishing up my master's in geotechnical engineering this semester. The GSO travel award made it possible for me to attend the GEOMATE conference in Nagoya, Japan where I presented my research which was published in the GEOMATE journal and which was my first professional presentation. At the conference I met some of the top geotechnical engineering professors, researchers, and professionals in Japan, Malaysia, Australia, Tunisia, China, and Libya. Those who attended my presentation gave valuable feedback and recommendations for my research and I was able to meet other young professionals who are researching similar topics and much more advanced topics. The presentations I watched were highly technical and were focused on the cutting edge and highly unknown areas of our field; seismic loads and unsaturated soil mechanics. If anything, this conference humbled me and refreshed my motivation to learn more and do

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November 2013

The Mānoa Graduate

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more with my research like my counterparts around the world. This was my first trip to Japan. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and hope this is just one of many future trips to the country. I never thought ramen, tonkatsu, miso soup, candy, and mochi could get better than what we have in Hawaii, but I was so very wrong. Their transportation system was light years superior to any other I have seen and their people were very nice and helpful. It was also meaningful to me because I am half Japanese and don't know much about my Japanese side. Thank you for funding my trip to Japan. A lot of my other funding resources have been cut off this year and I was worried on how to pay for my trip. Thank you UH GSO!

Christopher Sugai

I was very fortunate to be a recipient of the GSO research grant. The grant funded a reagent, time on a mass spectrometer, and Edman degradation by an outside university. The GSO has furthered what is possible with my project, and has cultivated greater connection within the university. Determining novel peptide sequences is a difficult process, as is research in general, which is why I am happy to have met great scientists to aid me.

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How did the GSO Grants & Awards Funding change

your l i fe?

Email your story to gso@hawaii .edu