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Perhaps you are thinking that there should be more to your life than just what you are doing as a student. It certainly must seem daunting to invest ANY of your time into something not immediately applicable to your graduate career; maybe even impossible. This is, thankfully,not the case. Even as a full time student researcher or instructor, you can have a life outside of your department. And, sometimes, you can be making a difference in the lives of others. Keeping that in mind, we’ve interviewed a student who exemplifies one who can excel both academically in the community. Dawn Williams is a third year in the Language, Literacy, Society and Culture program in the Education department. The former External Affairs Vice President, she was a co-recipient of an award for graduate student excellence this year. If you thought reaching out locally would be impossible,perhaps this will prove that you too can be an active member of the Berkeley community.
Where are you from?
DW: Hoo, that's an interesting question. I've lived in Texas, Arizona, and California;but I was born in California. Newport Beach, and then I've lived most of my life hereabouts. In Newport Beach, Long Beach, Wilmington,Fresno,San Francisco,and Oakland.
Where did you do your undergraduate work?
DW: Arizona State.
Cool. Did you like it there?
DW: It was hot. AZ was also going through a lot of political climate changes. Evan Mecham was the governor when I was there;he was the one that was known for being a racist--there was no MLK holiday when all that stuff went down; and it was the Superbowl that changed it: when all the pro football players would refuse to play when the Superbowl was in Phoenix and the city was standing to lose a LOT of money. That's what changed it.So that was interesting.
Do you know how many years until you're going to get out of here?
DW: HA, that's another good question.Um,probably 3.
I'd imagine that's probably the average in most departments...maybe. So tell me about this award...
DW: I guess I got a graduate student uh...hehe, I'm not even sure what the award says;I'm in the process of moving,so I don't even know what's on the plaque because just kinda' got it and packed it in a box. I didn't even get to attend the award ceremony because I found out about it so late. But, I think what it has to do with is basically...many graduate students are too busy to do anything besides grad school,and I think that the undergrads in the the Black Recruitment and Retention Center in the African American Student Development Office were probably seeing that I was able to devote a lot of time to working with undergrads. There was a black movement class that was an independent class last fall semester, and in that capacity I sort of served as a mentor for black undergrad students along with Kofi Charu Nat Turner. In that process we talked a lot about going to graduate school and the importance of working collectively...I have also done a lot of work with education and incarceration, both in the community and the grad assembly,so I brought a lot of that to the class and was able to recruit some of the undergrads to go with me and teach at local high schools...so really I guess it was mostly about serving as a mentor.
How did you get involved with the BRRC initially?
DW:Um,you know,I think there was just some name dropping.I don't know who for sure... Dave Stark from Stiles hall was one of the people organizing
this class;...and Lamont Snare and Danika Thomas, they were undergraduates at Berkeley but then they graduated and were looking for some grad-
uate students who'd commit to joining this class and serving as mentors;and I have the feeling they got my name from Cynthia Molina who was
External Affairs Vice President before I took the position in January. I was working for the campus community organizer at the GA, so I think that
was how it was all hooked up.
So...and this is really my most important question: Where do you get your time from, in order to be able to go and mentor undergraduates and teach high school students and what not...Do you ever sleep?
DW: No, I don't sleep very much...let's see. In budgeting time, I tend to do what's close to my heart-- even in grad school,doing research,it's got to be close to my heart otherwise I can't devote the time or energy to it. There's got to be some passion in what I'm doing. I taught for 5 years before entering grad school at the middle school and high school level. And just knowing the importance of education and seeing these students in undergrad and where they're going with the choices that they're making and where they're going with their majors are...I know I did a lot of plugging for the school of education because I see that as a vehicle for change:too often,we as black students are pushed into these fields...to become business majors or whatever where you need to work for somebody else--we need to be able to work for ourselves and not choose a job that's going to pay all this money if we're going to be working for somebody else because I don't think that serves the community in the way that “...but these are things that I'm really passionate about and that is what enables me to just go do it, you know?” I firmly believe in supporting black economics and using our money to make our communities thrive.I feel that education is a vehicle for that change because we can be in the classrooms and we can rewrite history and just rethink the way that students are taught.
So you just put all your time into this then?
DW:Well, the cool thing was that it was a class,right,so we'd have a scheduled 2 or 3 hours every week to devote to an issue. I know Kofi did a lot talking about reparations and it was like we were teaching that class.I did a seminar on education and incarceration and there was the one on reparations and we had discussion groups on various issues; that was the main crux of time in that mentor capacity. Just trying to get it to all tie together,writing papers and making all these disparate ideas one take home message, that was the big challenge.
Hm...about time management:It's really hard.Because I feel...I taught in West Africa the year before graduate school and I became really conscious of a different way of living;a more simple way of living; and I was able to appreciate having a car and going to the farmers market eating fresh food,not boxed or canned or T.V.dinners...just recognizing that there's a different way to live-- more simply,more healthily,more conscientiously--that makes it really difficult because it's really easy to just go get some fast food or make it out of a box or whatever, but it takes a lot of time to really prepare things right...but these are things that I'm really passionate about and that is what enables me to just go do it, you know? I don't know where I get my time from... My little weekly trip to the farmers market,I'll read my book,or read the reader on the bus..it's all that kind of scheduling.I think the bus is great;you know, you can always read on the bus for a little bit.
Don't get me wrong,things DO suffer when you put too much into things, you know...I know my first semester...er..fall semester of this last
year wasn't so hot academically, but spring is better...you know, it's graduate school...grades don't matter SO much...I don't know if that should be
put in though.
Heh, of course it should. Well, cool. Thanks so much for agreeing to do this interview.
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Status of GA Autonomy Bill
by Rebecca Rosen
Over the past four years,the Graduate Assembly (GA) has waged a campaign to gain autonomy from the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) so that graduate students can have an independent governing body. Currently, it falls under the constitutional jurisdiction of the ASUC Senate, an organization primarily composed of undergraduates.
This is an important issue to the GA for several reasons. First, no other graduate governing body in the UC system is subordinate to an undergraduate governing body. The GA represents a diverse population of graduate students consisting of GSIs, parents, and many international students. As such, the graduate students generally have different interests than those
of the undergraduates.
Additionally, while the GA receives all graduate student fees, it is otherwise under the legislative and fiscal control of the ASUC.In this past,this relationship has fostered tension and debate between the GA and the ASUC Senate and has fueled the GA’s campaign for autonomy. For example, the GA was required to contribute $30,000 to the ASUC 2003 student government elections. GA members contend that the GA should not have to pay the full amount because it did not have a role in appointing the committee that coordinates the elections and because the Senate has repeatedly mismanaged its financial affairs in the past. For example,the Senate originally estimated the GA’s share of the election costs to be $9,000,but cost overruns led to the new, larger figure.
This past spring,ASUC Senator Eugene Chung proposed a bill that requested GA independence from the ASUC. The bill initially appeared to have the favor of the Senate. In the past, members of the ASUC Senate have opposed this action on the grounds that the GA has misused funds for large executive stipends and food. These issues have been at least partially resolved, and the GA was confident that the issue of the GA autonomy would be up for a campus-wide vote in the April 2004 elections.
However, the Attorney General of the ASUC, Ryan Powell, took over a month to approve the bill, stating that the language of “autonomy” was too vague and that it was unclear from the bill exactly how much of the commercial revenue from the ASUC store would go to the GA.This delay left little time for the GA to collect the required 1,000 signatures for the bill to appear on the ballot. The GA’s Autonomy Committee will spearhead the continued push this coming year to put the autonomy bill on the ASUC’s 2005 ballot by working with the Attorney General to clarify the language of the bill.
Over the past four years,the Graduate Assembly (GA) has waged a campaign to gain autonomy from the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) so that graduate students can have an independent governing body. Currently, it falls under the constitutional jurisdiction of the ASUC Senate, an organization primarily composed of undergraduates.
This is an important issue to the GA for several reasons. First, no other graduate governing body in the UC system is subordinate to an undergraduate governing body. The GA represents a diverse population of graduate students consisting of GSIs, parents, and many international students. As such, the graduate students generally have different interests than those
of the undergraduates.
Additionally, while the GA receives all graduate student fees, it is otherwise under the legislative and fiscal control of the ASUC.In this past,this relationship has fostered tension and debate between the GA and the ASUC Senate and has fueled the GA’s campaign for autonomy. For example, the GA was required to contribute $30,000 to the ASUC 2003 student government elections. GA members contend that the GA should not have to pay the full amount because it did not have a role in appointing the committee that coordinates the elections and because the Senate has repeatedly mismanaged its financial affairs in the past. For example,the Senate originally estimated the GA’s share of the election costs to be $9,000,but cost overruns led to the new, larger figure.
This past spring,ASUC Senator Eugene Chung proposed a bill that requested GA independence from the ASUC. The bill initially appeared to have the favor of the Senate. In the past, members of the ASUC Senate have opposed this action on the grounds that the GA has misused funds for large executive stipends and food. These issues have been at least partially resolved, and the GA was confident that the issue of the GA autonomy would be up for a campus-wide vote in the April 2004 elections.
However, the Attorney General of the ASUC, Ryan Powell, took over a month to approve the bill, stating that the language of “autonomy” was too vague and that it was unclear from the bill exactly how much of the commercial revenue from the ASUC store would go to the GA.This delay left little time for the GA to collect the required 1,000 signatures for the bill to appear on the ballot. The GA’s Autonomy Committee will spearhead the continued push this coming year to put the autonomy bill on the ASUC’s 2005 ballot by working with the Attorney General to clarify the language of the bill.
Friday, August 13, 2004
Psychology in Schools
By Lee Drutman
According to recent studies, an African-American student is three times more likely than a white student to be placed in special education, 3.2 times less likely to be placed in a gifted class, and twice as likely to be suspended or punished.
Psychology graduate students Anne Gregory and Michael Strambler, along with Psychology professor Rhona Weinstein, have a theory about why this continues to happen: self-fulfilling prophecies. According to their research, this marked achievement gap is due, at least in good part, to expectations. Put simply, teachers convey different expectations to minority and non-minority students, and students respond to these cues, filling the roles expected of them. As minority students progress through schools, a vicious cycle of expectations and responses to expectations keeps them from achieving.
Recently, Gregory, Strambler, and Weinstein argued this theory in an 10 The Berkeley Graduate article in American Psychologist entitled, “Intractable Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Fifty Years After Brown v. Board of Education.” “As seen through ecological theory,” they write,“complex, multilayered, and interactive negative self-fulfilling prophecies create or perpetuate educational inequities and unequal outcomes. Society has failed to grapple with its entrenched roots in the
achievement culture of schools.”
“The point we make,” explains Professor Weinstein, “is that little about schools has changed as a result of the Brown decision except for change in demographics.The achievement culture did not change, nor did the way we instructed kids who came to schools with different life experiences,
different cultural beliefs, different readinesses for learning. We never had classrooms of equal status, and this article speaks to what kinds of teaching practices and school climate changes are going to be critical to give all children an equal chance to learn.”
Most of the current thinking on the subject tends to focus on the individual and ignore the context. But this trio of psychologists argues that context is crucial in explaining the achievement gap. Even such seemingly subtle factors as the expectations that teachers convey can have profound implications.
In order to demonstrate this, both Gregory and Strambler went into local high schools and conducted separate sets of observations and interviews.
Anne focused on what she calls “the discipline gap”-that is, that African Americans are the most overrepresented group in defiance referrals (referrals where a student challenges an authority figure). To figure out what was really going on, she studied 33 students who had been kicked out
of class for defiance and had been suspended.Then she conducted interviews with the student, the “referring teacher” who had kicked them out of class, and a “nominated teacher,” the teacher each disciplined student picked to speak positively on his or her behalf.
Anne found that the referring teachers said the students had poor attendance, low grades, and were not cooperative. But the nominating teachers found the students cooperative, attending class more often, and getting higher grades.The students themselves, meanwhile, perceived themselves as less cooperative and conscious of the power struggles in the classes with the referring teachers.
Among the referring and nominating teachers, there was no pattern across race or gender. “But what they did differ on,” Gregory says,“was a really important construct: Degree to which the teacher trusted the student. They also differed on their warmth or caring. And the students perceived that warmth and caring.” “There was also an expectancy piece,” adds Gregory. “If teachers are communicating expectations for behavior, especially for African Americans, they are going to be particularly sensitive on picking up on cues around being treated unfairly.
Teachers who exhibit warmth and really get to know students and hold higher expectations are doing the best in keeping the kids in class and keeping them cooperative.”
All told, Gregory transcribed 75 interviews totaling about 60 hours, on which she will base her dissertation.
“Her dissertation research is critical in demonstrating that the defiance these children might show to authority figures and teachers is context dependent,” says Professor Weinstein. “Her research has implication for training teachers and thinking about a school culture where discipline excludes students from education.”
Strambler's research focused on a parent-initiated program for minority ninth graders who were underachieving in school.The program provided extra help and extra support for the students. Strambler evaluated the program, getting data and conducting interviews with students, parents, and teachers.The program, however, only lasted one semester and a summer.
“What I found was that the supports provided for the program, such as extra help and better relations between students and teachers, benefited the students during the first semester,” Strambler says.“The students increased their grades and their attendance.When the program was removed, students dropped their grades.”
Strambler found that the relationships were stronger and the expectations were higher in the program, all of which contributed to more achievement. This would seem to indicate that many of these underachieving students were perfectly capable of achieving when somebody took an interest in them and expected them to do well.
According to Professor Weinstein, Strambler's research “argues for the importance of more sustained intervention that has high expectations and all the supportive behaviors. Unfortunately, what happens under No Child Left Behind is that they've raised the standards and upped the ante for increased accountability, but they've not paid critical attention to ways of thinking about how to better meet the instructional needs of a diversity of students and to maintain high expectations.”
“As a culture, we believe that people either have intelligence or they don't, and these beliefs are also many times associated with group stereotypes, such as African Americans being less intelligent than whites,” explains Strambler. “Based on these beliefs, we do not provide those deemed as less capable with the same level of instruction as those who we believe are more able to learn. Ultimately, what we need to do to address this situation is to change our philosophy of teaching and learning to one that is more consistent with developing a student's potential.”
According to recent studies, an African-American student is three times more likely than a white student to be placed in special education, 3.2 times less likely to be placed in a gifted class, and twice as likely to be suspended or punished.
Psychology graduate students Anne Gregory and Michael Strambler, along with Psychology professor Rhona Weinstein, have a theory about why this continues to happen: self-fulfilling prophecies. According to their research, this marked achievement gap is due, at least in good part, to expectations. Put simply, teachers convey different expectations to minority and non-minority students, and students respond to these cues, filling the roles expected of them. As minority students progress through schools, a vicious cycle of expectations and responses to expectations keeps them from achieving.
Recently, Gregory, Strambler, and Weinstein argued this theory in an 10 The Berkeley Graduate article in American Psychologist entitled, “Intractable Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Fifty Years After Brown v. Board of Education.” “As seen through ecological theory,” they write,“complex, multilayered, and interactive negative self-fulfilling prophecies create or perpetuate educational inequities and unequal outcomes. Society has failed to grapple with its entrenched roots in the
achievement culture of schools.”
“The point we make,” explains Professor Weinstein, “is that little about schools has changed as a result of the Brown decision except for change in demographics.The achievement culture did not change, nor did the way we instructed kids who came to schools with different life experiences,
different cultural beliefs, different readinesses for learning. We never had classrooms of equal status, and this article speaks to what kinds of teaching practices and school climate changes are going to be critical to give all children an equal chance to learn.”
Most of the current thinking on the subject tends to focus on the individual and ignore the context. But this trio of psychologists argues that context is crucial in explaining the achievement gap. Even such seemingly subtle factors as the expectations that teachers convey can have profound implications.
In order to demonstrate this, both Gregory and Strambler went into local high schools and conducted separate sets of observations and interviews.
Anne focused on what she calls “the discipline gap”-that is, that African Americans are the most overrepresented group in defiance referrals (referrals where a student challenges an authority figure). To figure out what was really going on, she studied 33 students who had been kicked out
of class for defiance and had been suspended.Then she conducted interviews with the student, the “referring teacher” who had kicked them out of class, and a “nominated teacher,” the teacher each disciplined student picked to speak positively on his or her behalf.
Anne found that the referring teachers said the students had poor attendance, low grades, and were not cooperative. But the nominating teachers found the students cooperative, attending class more often, and getting higher grades.The students themselves, meanwhile, perceived themselves as less cooperative and conscious of the power struggles in the classes with the referring teachers.
Among the referring and nominating teachers, there was no pattern across race or gender. “But what they did differ on,” Gregory says,“was a really important construct: Degree to which the teacher trusted the student. They also differed on their warmth or caring. And the students perceived that warmth and caring.” “There was also an expectancy piece,” adds Gregory. “If teachers are communicating expectations for behavior, especially for African Americans, they are going to be particularly sensitive on picking up on cues around being treated unfairly.
Teachers who exhibit warmth and really get to know students and hold higher expectations are doing the best in keeping the kids in class and keeping them cooperative.”
All told, Gregory transcribed 75 interviews totaling about 60 hours, on which she will base her dissertation.
“Her dissertation research is critical in demonstrating that the defiance these children might show to authority figures and teachers is context dependent,” says Professor Weinstein. “Her research has implication for training teachers and thinking about a school culture where discipline excludes students from education.”
Strambler's research focused on a parent-initiated program for minority ninth graders who were underachieving in school.The program provided extra help and extra support for the students. Strambler evaluated the program, getting data and conducting interviews with students, parents, and teachers.The program, however, only lasted one semester and a summer.
“What I found was that the supports provided for the program, such as extra help and better relations between students and teachers, benefited the students during the first semester,” Strambler says.“The students increased their grades and their attendance.When the program was removed, students dropped their grades.”
Strambler found that the relationships were stronger and the expectations were higher in the program, all of which contributed to more achievement. This would seem to indicate that many of these underachieving students were perfectly capable of achieving when somebody took an interest in them and expected them to do well.
According to Professor Weinstein, Strambler's research “argues for the importance of more sustained intervention that has high expectations and all the supportive behaviors. Unfortunately, what happens under No Child Left Behind is that they've raised the standards and upped the ante for increased accountability, but they've not paid critical attention to ways of thinking about how to better meet the instructional needs of a diversity of students and to maintain high expectations.”
“As a culture, we believe that people either have intelligence or they don't, and these beliefs are also many times associated with group stereotypes, such as African Americans being less intelligent than whites,” explains Strambler. “Based on these beliefs, we do not provide those deemed as less capable with the same level of instruction as those who we believe are more able to learn. Ultimately, what we need to do to address this situation is to change our philosophy of teaching and learning to one that is more consistent with developing a student's potential.”
Profiles: Brendan Borrell
By Lee Drutman
Three years ago, integrative biology graduate student Brendan Borrell was in Costa Rica, trying to come up with a topic for his research. Nothing seemed to be working out.
“I was having a pretty depressing day,” Borrell relates. “I wasn't happy with what I was doing.”
Then he noticed a couple of Euglossia imperialis orchid bees, which he thought were interesting because they have tongues that, when fully extended, are four times their body length.
“I just started playing with these bees, getting them to drink sugar solutions,” Borrell says. “It was a pretty neat experience, to have this completely bizarre organism drinking sugar off my finger tip. That was the beginning.”
Now, three years and six trips to Costa Rica later, Borrell's research on big-tongued bees has been featured in The Royal Society Biology Letters and Science Magazine (see other article).
Good luck or hard work? Perhaps a little of both.
“The biggest thing is just never knowing what's really going to work when you try it,” Borrell says. “It's so hard to know what direction things are going to take, and if you're going to get lucky. I sort of stumbled on a neat system and a whole bunch of questions to answer.”
Then again, Borrell has never been short on leaving a lot of options open.“My philosophy has always been to come up with as many ideas as possible,” he explains. “If you come up with 10, 9 are not going to work. Always have a backup plan when you do field work.”
Professor Robert Dudley, Borrell's advisor in the Department of Integrative Biology, describes Borrell as “diligent.” “He's just hard-working,” Dudley said. “He's obviously well-traveled, and if you want to work in tropical biodiversity, you have to be just willing to come to terms with new flora and fauna.”
“It's easy to work in well-tempered ecosystems,” adds Dudley.“But the tropics are amazing and confounding. Most biologists are not tropical biologists. It takes a certain open-mindedness to put in the time and have the breadth of appreciation for these sort of faunas.There are hundreds of thousands of species. It's a bigger playground, and you have to be willing to work and play in that playground.”
There are also logistical difficulties of operating in the tropics. “Last time I was there, we had a huge flood at the station where we were working and one of the houses we were working in had a tree fall on it,” Borrell says. “Someone else had his data stolen on a bus. Two years of work on his laptop, and somebody came and stole his laptop.”
Then there's all the stuff that Borrell has to bring down there every time he goes-basically his entire experiment, power supply and all. It means that he has to be prepared for anything.
FROM BOOKS TO BEES
As a kid, Borrell played with lizards and snakes. But it was literature that really got him going, and as an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Barbara, he started out as a literature major. Then, halfway through, he made a fateful switch.
The formative experience, he says, was doing computer animation in a geology lab that was modeling the ocean floor.A semester later, tired of taking literature classes and inspired by his newfound interest in science, he switched to biology.
As for his interest in bees, Borrell says,“They're very smart and they have personality, individual differences. For example, in my artificial flower study, I had ten bees, all marked with a color, and I'd say, here comes the pink bee, and I'd know what it was going to do. It would look at the
flower longer than the others and sometimes probe it.Whereas the blue bee would just charge toward to flower and feed quickly and leave.”
Holding a preserved bee from a set, Borrell says,“Right now it's just a piece of insect cuticle on a stick, but when it's alive, it's just incredible. How does something that small work?”
Though most people think of honeybees or bumblebees when they think of bees, orchid bees are in many ways quite different. Native to a range of tropical countries from Mexico to Argentina, they pollinate about 20 percent of the world's species of plants. Unlike honeybees, orchid bees
are not social-they have no hives.
Most are solitary, except for the mating part. They also live longer than honey bees-up to 8 months, compared to just one month for honeybees. In particular, Borrell has focused his energy on one specific orchid bee, the Euglossa imperialis (Euglossa means good tongue), which has the
remarkably long proboscis.
When he's not working with bees, Borrell enjoys mountain biking in Tilden Park, hanging out in San Francisco, and playing on the Integrative Biology ultimate Frisbee team.
And eating breakfast, which lab mate Matt Medeiros called the secret of Borrell's success. “He likes to get his day going,” Medeiros says.“Waffles, eggs, things with cream cheese. Breakfast is an important part of life. Unlike many graduate students, Borrell always takes time out of the day to pay attention to his physical health. He's a tremendous ultimate player, a racquetball player. He eats healthy food, exercises and does science.”
“Breakfast is important,” Borrell says. “Breakfast is a critical part of the day. Waffles. Cream cheese. Smoked salmon.”
Of course, there's a scientific reason for it, too.“Your brain consumes 20 percent of your metabolic expenditures,” explains Borrell. “It's critical!”
Three years ago, integrative biology graduate student Brendan Borrell was in Costa Rica, trying to come up with a topic for his research. Nothing seemed to be working out.
“I was having a pretty depressing day,” Borrell relates. “I wasn't happy with what I was doing.”
Then he noticed a couple of Euglossia imperialis orchid bees, which he thought were interesting because they have tongues that, when fully extended, are four times their body length.
“I just started playing with these bees, getting them to drink sugar solutions,” Borrell says. “It was a pretty neat experience, to have this completely bizarre organism drinking sugar off my finger tip. That was the beginning.”
Now, three years and six trips to Costa Rica later, Borrell's research on big-tongued bees has been featured in The Royal Society Biology Letters and Science Magazine (see other article).
Good luck or hard work? Perhaps a little of both.
“The biggest thing is just never knowing what's really going to work when you try it,” Borrell says. “It's so hard to know what direction things are going to take, and if you're going to get lucky. I sort of stumbled on a neat system and a whole bunch of questions to answer.”
Then again, Borrell has never been short on leaving a lot of options open.“My philosophy has always been to come up with as many ideas as possible,” he explains. “If you come up with 10, 9 are not going to work. Always have a backup plan when you do field work.”
Professor Robert Dudley, Borrell's advisor in the Department of Integrative Biology, describes Borrell as “diligent.” “He's just hard-working,” Dudley said. “He's obviously well-traveled, and if you want to work in tropical biodiversity, you have to be just willing to come to terms with new flora and fauna.”
“It's easy to work in well-tempered ecosystems,” adds Dudley.“But the tropics are amazing and confounding. Most biologists are not tropical biologists. It takes a certain open-mindedness to put in the time and have the breadth of appreciation for these sort of faunas.There are hundreds of thousands of species. It's a bigger playground, and you have to be willing to work and play in that playground.”
There are also logistical difficulties of operating in the tropics. “Last time I was there, we had a huge flood at the station where we were working and one of the houses we were working in had a tree fall on it,” Borrell says. “Someone else had his data stolen on a bus. Two years of work on his laptop, and somebody came and stole his laptop.”
Then there's all the stuff that Borrell has to bring down there every time he goes-basically his entire experiment, power supply and all. It means that he has to be prepared for anything.
FROM BOOKS TO BEES
As a kid, Borrell played with lizards and snakes. But it was literature that really got him going, and as an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Barbara, he started out as a literature major. Then, halfway through, he made a fateful switch.
The formative experience, he says, was doing computer animation in a geology lab that was modeling the ocean floor.A semester later, tired of taking literature classes and inspired by his newfound interest in science, he switched to biology.
As for his interest in bees, Borrell says,“They're very smart and they have personality, individual differences. For example, in my artificial flower study, I had ten bees, all marked with a color, and I'd say, here comes the pink bee, and I'd know what it was going to do. It would look at the
flower longer than the others and sometimes probe it.Whereas the blue bee would just charge toward to flower and feed quickly and leave.”
Holding a preserved bee from a set, Borrell says,“Right now it's just a piece of insect cuticle on a stick, but when it's alive, it's just incredible. How does something that small work?”
Though most people think of honeybees or bumblebees when they think of bees, orchid bees are in many ways quite different. Native to a range of tropical countries from Mexico to Argentina, they pollinate about 20 percent of the world's species of plants. Unlike honeybees, orchid bees
are not social-they have no hives.
Most are solitary, except for the mating part. They also live longer than honey bees-up to 8 months, compared to just one month for honeybees. In particular, Borrell has focused his energy on one specific orchid bee, the Euglossa imperialis (Euglossa means good tongue), which has the
remarkably long proboscis.
When he's not working with bees, Borrell enjoys mountain biking in Tilden Park, hanging out in San Francisco, and playing on the Integrative Biology ultimate Frisbee team.
And eating breakfast, which lab mate Matt Medeiros called the secret of Borrell's success. “He likes to get his day going,” Medeiros says.“Waffles, eggs, things with cream cheese. Breakfast is an important part of life. Unlike many graduate students, Borrell always takes time out of the day to pay attention to his physical health. He's a tremendous ultimate player, a racquetball player. He eats healthy food, exercises and does science.”
“Breakfast is important,” Borrell says. “Breakfast is a critical part of the day. Waffles. Cream cheese. Smoked salmon.”
Of course, there's a scientific reason for it, too.“Your brain consumes 20 percent of your metabolic expenditures,” explains Borrell. “It's critical!”
Biology and Bees
By Lee Drutman
It has been estimated that bees pollinate 80 percent of our food crops and 80 percent of all pollinated plants. “Bees are important pollinators,” explains Robert Dudley, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley.
However, since most species of bees live in the tropics and most research is done in more temperate climates, there are a lot of unknowns about how bees operate.
Enter Brendan Borrell, a graduate student in the department of integrative biology and a self-styled man of the tropical bees. Borrell has been asking interesting questions about bees and coming up with interesting answers for years now. Recently, his article, “Thermal stability and muscle efficiency in hovering orchid bees,” coauthored with fellow graduate student Matt Medeiros, was published in the August 2004 issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology. Additionally, his article, “Suction feeding in orchid bees,” was published in the Royal Society Biology Letters and the relevant research was featured in Science Magazine online.
Borrell's first project was attempting to understand how orchid bees regulatetheir body temperature during flight. “It was actually a controversial topic,” Borrell explains.
That's because the conventional wisdom among scientists was that the flight muscles of the bee, which account for one-third of the insect's body mass, were used merely to lift the bee off the ground. Since the metabolic rate of the bee while in flight was so high-100 times that of a bee at rest-the bee would be unable to regulate body heat while in flight.
In order to determine whether this was an accurate assessment, Borrell did a combination of things. First, he filmed bees flying so he could examine closely the motion of their wings. Then he recorded how much carbon dioxide the bees were producing, their body temperatures after flight, and how much heat they were producing. Using an energetic model, he was able to determine how much heat energy was going into flight at cold temperatures as compared to warm temperatures.What he found was that at cold temperatures, the bees were beating their wings faster and producing a lot more heat.
“It's neat that they are able to regulate how much heat they produce,” Borrell says.“People didn't think this happened for flying insects….This helps to change the view of how sophisticated insect flight muscles are.”
But Borrell admits,“There's still controversy. It's a new approach and it's a difficult question to approach. Anything trying to measure a hovering insect is bound to be complicated.”
More recently, Borrell has turned his focus to the proboscis tongue of the orchid bee, which, when fully extended, is four times the length of its body. How and why did this superlong tongue-which operates as a soda straw-like tube-evolve and what impact does it have on how these bees gather nectar? That's what Borrell set out to answer.
“I wanted to look at the mechanics of how they drink nectar, and how this influences their behavior of foraging and how they pick which flowers,” Borrell said.
So, he caught 71 of the male orchid bees, since only males visit orchids, and let them roam around in an enclosure where he had created fake flowers out of cardboard and styrofoam, with artificial fragrance and sugar syrups of various concentrations ranging from 5 percent to 75 percent. Borrell found that the bees were most happy with the 35 percent solutions, whereas honeybees, who have a more cat-like tongue, prefer the 55 percent solution. As Borrell wrote in his paper in the Royal Society Biology Letters,“Energy flux during nectar feeding is maximized at an intermediate sugar concentration, the value of which depends on the morphology of the feeding apparatus and the modality of fluid feeding.” In other words, the type of tongue that bees have corresponds with the type of nectar that they prefer.
And how did such an odd tongue evolve in orchid bees, while most other bees have a smaller tongue in proportion to the rest of their bodies? “One probable evolutionary scenario is that as proboscis length evolved in concert with floral morphologies, anatomical constraints on glossal reciprocation would have rendered nectar transport via lapping less effective than suction feeding,” wrote Borrell. In other words, there was some co-evolution going on, with plants adjusting their shape so that longer tongues would be more effective at getting the desired nectar, and vice versa.
Still, Borrell is mulling over the data, which is going to be the basis of his dissertation.“What I found isn't totally clear yet,” he says. “Mechanics influenced decisions for sure, but I haven't decided how important these variables are when weighed with other ecological factors that influence decisions in the wild.”
As for what's next in Borrell's research, he says, “I'm getting more interested in behavior questions. Cognition is interesting in general because there are more complicated behavior tasks like looking at color and shape perception and other more complicated choice behaviors…. I'm interested in understanding how bees make decisions.”
With 300 species of orchid bees and most of them not well understood, Borrell will likely have plenty more fruitful research to conduct in the years to come.
“Most of the tropical insects are not real well known,” says Professor Dudley. “It takes a bit of effort to work there. It's a lot easier to stay at home and study lab rats or fruit flies.”
It has been estimated that bees pollinate 80 percent of our food crops and 80 percent of all pollinated plants. “Bees are important pollinators,” explains Robert Dudley, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley.
However, since most species of bees live in the tropics and most research is done in more temperate climates, there are a lot of unknowns about how bees operate.
Enter Brendan Borrell, a graduate student in the department of integrative biology and a self-styled man of the tropical bees. Borrell has been asking interesting questions about bees and coming up with interesting answers for years now. Recently, his article, “Thermal stability and muscle efficiency in hovering orchid bees,” coauthored with fellow graduate student Matt Medeiros, was published in the August 2004 issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology. Additionally, his article, “Suction feeding in orchid bees,” was published in the Royal Society Biology Letters and the relevant research was featured in Science Magazine online.
Borrell's first project was attempting to understand how orchid bees regulatetheir body temperature during flight. “It was actually a controversial topic,” Borrell explains.
That's because the conventional wisdom among scientists was that the flight muscles of the bee, which account for one-third of the insect's body mass, were used merely to lift the bee off the ground. Since the metabolic rate of the bee while in flight was so high-100 times that of a bee at rest-the bee would be unable to regulate body heat while in flight.
In order to determine whether this was an accurate assessment, Borrell did a combination of things. First, he filmed bees flying so he could examine closely the motion of their wings. Then he recorded how much carbon dioxide the bees were producing, their body temperatures after flight, and how much heat they were producing. Using an energetic model, he was able to determine how much heat energy was going into flight at cold temperatures as compared to warm temperatures.What he found was that at cold temperatures, the bees were beating their wings faster and producing a lot more heat.
“It's neat that they are able to regulate how much heat they produce,” Borrell says.“People didn't think this happened for flying insects….This helps to change the view of how sophisticated insect flight muscles are.”
But Borrell admits,“There's still controversy. It's a new approach and it's a difficult question to approach. Anything trying to measure a hovering insect is bound to be complicated.”
More recently, Borrell has turned his focus to the proboscis tongue of the orchid bee, which, when fully extended, is four times the length of its body. How and why did this superlong tongue-which operates as a soda straw-like tube-evolve and what impact does it have on how these bees gather nectar? That's what Borrell set out to answer.
“I wanted to look at the mechanics of how they drink nectar, and how this influences their behavior of foraging and how they pick which flowers,” Borrell said.
So, he caught 71 of the male orchid bees, since only males visit orchids, and let them roam around in an enclosure where he had created fake flowers out of cardboard and styrofoam, with artificial fragrance and sugar syrups of various concentrations ranging from 5 percent to 75 percent. Borrell found that the bees were most happy with the 35 percent solutions, whereas honeybees, who have a more cat-like tongue, prefer the 55 percent solution. As Borrell wrote in his paper in the Royal Society Biology Letters,“Energy flux during nectar feeding is maximized at an intermediate sugar concentration, the value of which depends on the morphology of the feeding apparatus and the modality of fluid feeding.” In other words, the type of tongue that bees have corresponds with the type of nectar that they prefer.
And how did such an odd tongue evolve in orchid bees, while most other bees have a smaller tongue in proportion to the rest of their bodies? “One probable evolutionary scenario is that as proboscis length evolved in concert with floral morphologies, anatomical constraints on glossal reciprocation would have rendered nectar transport via lapping less effective than suction feeding,” wrote Borrell. In other words, there was some co-evolution going on, with plants adjusting their shape so that longer tongues would be more effective at getting the desired nectar, and vice versa.
Still, Borrell is mulling over the data, which is going to be the basis of his dissertation.“What I found isn't totally clear yet,” he says. “Mechanics influenced decisions for sure, but I haven't decided how important these variables are when weighed with other ecological factors that influence decisions in the wild.”
As for what's next in Borrell's research, he says, “I'm getting more interested in behavior questions. Cognition is interesting in general because there are more complicated behavior tasks like looking at color and shape perception and other more complicated choice behaviors…. I'm interested in understanding how bees make decisions.”
With 300 species of orchid bees and most of them not well understood, Borrell will likely have plenty more fruitful research to conduct in the years to come.
“Most of the tropical insects are not real well known,” says Professor Dudley. “It takes a bit of effort to work there. It's a lot easier to stay at home and study lab rats or fruit flies.”
From the Editor: Summer 2004
In science it often happens that scientists say, "You
know, that's a really good argument; my position is
mistaken," and then they would actually change
their minds and you never hear that old view from
them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as
often as it should, because scientists are human and
change is sometimes painful. But it happens every
day. I cannot recall the last time something like
that happened in politics or religion.
--Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer
The University of California at Berkeley wouldn't be such a highly esteemed (and highly ranked) place if we weren't chock full of great innovators, great researchers, and great thinkers. That being said, Berkeley is also host to a terrible case of incestuous amplification. That is to say, because this place is such a haven for “free thinkers” (because there is such a draw to be among likeminded intellectuals), it is often the case that there is that much more of a reinforcement of the “standard Berkeley beliefs”: and this reinforcement can occasionally cause errors in individual and collective judgments.
In order to avoid the onslaught of the lynchmob rising up among you, let me assure you that I'm not necessarily reprimanding you for what you might have recently said or done in your blue-hot rage. While you can feel free to think about such things, I'm not touching that. What I mean to say is that, often, people find themselves critical of everybody but themselves. What have you done to really change things for the better today? If you've got an answer that you feel you could confidently and comfortably tell your boss, your peers, or your students, maybe you're on the right track, and you can feel free to discuss what's wrong with everyone else (for at most the next couple hours,) until tomorrow. If, however, you find yourself drawing a blank…perhaps it's time to cut the carping and get your nose back to the grindstone. Or go watch some delightful internet cartoons. Either way.
This issue of The Berkeley Graduate not only includes the expected news and information about the Graduate Assembly's recent activities, but also a look at some of the compelling research of your peers and an examination of some of the local problems that might have been escaping the purview of your usual criticism. Do your best to keep an open mind…and keep reading!
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