Applied ecology doctoral student Shana Sundstrom has earned a Maude Hammond Fling Fellowship, one of UNL’s most prestigious graduate honors.
Of the 54 applicants for the presidential, fling and dean’s fellowships, 17 earned awards, three of which are fling fellowships. The fellowship is awarded to advanced masters or doctoral students who have demonstrated the highest level of academic potential and provides a stipend that allows the student to be completely immersed in scholarship without having to hold an assistantship.
“It's very encouraging,” Sundstrom wrote after receiving notice of her award, “because awards that fund potential, such as the Fling, as opposed to awards that fund a specific research proposal, make me feel like someone believes in me and is willing to invest in training me. I certainly hope I can live up to that.”
Sundstrom studies behavior and dynamics of ecosystems as complex adaptive systems; when ecological issues are framed as complex rather than reductive, it has profound implications for management.
“If our working assumptions about system behavior are that they are more complex than linear equilibrium stability, then management focus shifts from what may be a narrow single-species or multi-species approach to one that includes the critical features that keep an ecosystem in a particular regime,” she said. “I have focused on trying to understand what measurable system features drive resilience, or the ability of an ecological system to persist in a similar regime despite disturbances.”
The fling fellowship will allow Sundstrom to dig deeply into theory but also investigate the “rabbit holes” that present themselves when analyzing the data.
“This is my chance to explore deeply and trust that it will all feed into my research and publications down the road,” she said.
Sundstrom’s path to science was not a direct one. She is a former elite speedskater who made it to the Olympics on the short track team.
“I always knew that when I was done competing I wanted to do something to help the natural world, and my master's degree allowed me to find a compelling intellectual path within the very broad discipline of environmental science,” she said. “Oddly, being an elite athlete was excellent preparation for grad school, as it taught me how to work hard even when no one is looking over your shoulder, as well as how to fail. Who we are and what we do when things go wrong is a life lesson that never stops giving.”
Craig Allen, Sundstrom’s adviser and the leader of the U.S. Geological Survey – Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Unit, said Sundstrom is very deserving of the award.
“Shana is a hardworking student who quietly gets her work done and who ensures her work is of high quality before she shares it with others,” he said. “She interacts with an international network of faculty and students interested in the management of complex social-ecological systems and focuses her work on both novel theory and on application of that theory to management. She serves as an excellent role model for others.”
- Shawna Richter-Ryerson, Natural Resources
More details at: http://go.unl.edu/b35q