Pitching YOUR Uncharted Territory: How to think of your proposal in relation to your supervisor when applying to grad school

by Kai Chan

This is an extra post in a series, How to Write a Winning Proposal—in 10 Hard Steps

Every day, millions of prospective graduate students reach out to prospective graduate supervisors. If that’s you, or it will be soon, you’re probably wondering:

“Should I pitch my own unique idea? Or just indicate a general interest in a professor’s area? What’s the best strategy to win over prospective supervisors, and land a great Master’s / PhD position?”

The unfortunate truth is that neither of those choices is quite right. In the space of interdisciplinary research related to people and nature, the likely winning strategy requires both independent creativity and adaptability to fit your supervisor’s interests and expertise.

Although neither “pitch your own” and “interest in professor’s area” is sufficient, both could be a good starting point. But the process that needs to ensue requires more careful thought than the vast majority of prospective students put in.

In many cases, this seems to be because students just don’t know how to approach this complex problem. That’s where this post comes in, to help.

In some cases, prospective students aren’t yet capable of doing the careful thought that I call for below. In my opinion, if the careful thought below feels too hard or onerous and boring, this might indicate that now is not the right time for you to apply to a research-based graduate program.

Why “pitch your own” often won’t work alone

The motivation for “pitch your own” is obvious. You want a research project that will be fulfilling, and you need to demonstrate originality. What better way to achieve both goals than to propose your own independent project?

It’s thinking of “independent” as not in close conversation with your prospective supervisors’ work that problems arise. If you go it alone here, and you don’t attend to what you can learn from the research that prospective supervisors have conducted, it’s likely that your prospective supervisor won’t be able to fund your work. Even if they could, they’re unlikely to take you on because professors need to grow our knowledge and research portfolio strategically and robustly. Venturing out into new, disconnected territory is a recipe for us to spread ourselves thin and to fail to serve our students well.

If your research isn’t in close conversation with your supervisors’ work, you can’t benefit much from their supervision. And that draws away from our motivation as supervisors, because we seek mentorship relationships where we contribute meaningfully.

Moreover, without putting your research in conversation with a nuanced set of other research, it’s likely to seem “basic”. Every question worth investigating has been considered carefully by many researchers before you. Only by engaging directly with those other efforts can you identify where you can add meaningful value.

Writing a proposal is like drawing or painting a landscape picture of a mountain. It takes nuance to do it well, and it needs the landscape. Credits: Mountain icon created by azmianshori - Flaticon; Peaks icon created by PLANBSTUDIO - Flaticon; Landscape icon created by Freepik - Flaticon 

Why “interest in professor’s area” won’t work alone

Given the difficulty of pitching a novel piece of research before even starting a grad program, it’s understandable that many students resort to a chameleon strategy of appearing to be adaptable to work on any project their supervisor might suggest. But I’m wary of this strategy, for several reasons.

Students are not, in fact, equally motivated by all kinds of problems. If they are, it’s because they’re not really motivated by any of them. And intrinsic motivation, that sense of purpose and curiosity, is essential to a successful graduate program.

Moreover, most supervisors are looking for students who can and will advance projects substantially without micromanaging. This isn’t laziness; it’s because great things only happen when there are multiple brains, each with their own rich history and insights, come together.

And, so, even if this strategy seems to be paying off in attracting a prospective supervisor, the student should be wary. Because supervisors who are not steered by the student’s own curiosity and creativity might not be the kind of professor you want in charge of your life for the next few years.

The solution: Fleshing out nuance via supervisors’ research

The only real way forward is to braid together your interests with those of prospective supervisors (Figure 1?). You can start anywhere, the point is to keep reading and braiding.

You can begin with your own idea, and identify prospective supervisors based on that. Then read some of their papers, and refine your idea based on those. If it’s too much of a reach, rethink the prospective supervisors until you find a good fit. Refine your ideas based on their research, then reach out, get more input, and refine some more.

You can also begin by identifying prospective supervisors, reading their research. If you’re bored by a paper, pass it over. If you’re bored by all of a professors’ papers, move on to the next candidate. Once you get to papers that interest you, pay special attention to the latter parts of recent Discussion sections. That’s where you’ll find clues about what your supervisor is excited to work on. If one or more of those ideas excites you, too, dig a bit deeper, and start to form some of your own ideas about what you could do in that space.

It's crucial that the larger landscape you depict in your proposal integrates ideas beyond your prospective supervisor's research. Don't just cite their work! Their research exists in a broader context, and by depicting that, you'll demonstrate your capacity to contribute new insights.

Either way, what you’re aiming for is like the third image above, on the right. If writing a proposal is like drawing a mountain, what you really need to do is to draw a mountain in its landscape (of the literature), where your mountain is squarely in the range of your supervisor’s previous climbs.

That’s how you can explore your own uncharted territory, and have fun and good company doing it. Bon voyage!

The Intro to this series (with links to the full set): How to Write a Winning Proposal—in 10 Hard Steps

CHANS Lab Views by Kai Chan's lab is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://chanslabviews.blogspot.com.

Trump and Mega-Fires

by Kai Chan

With yesterday's election result, authoritarianism is at our doorstep. Western nations were so certain that state-run media plus state propaganda was the route to authoritarian regimes. Now it is obvious: an equally possible route is through unbridled capitalism with corporate control of the media, unconstrained social media, and money in politics.

The warnings were all there, eight years ago, and with the narrow miss four years ago. Trump didn't pull this off because he's Mr. Invincible in the sense of being a superhero among mortals. He triumphed because the echo chambers of American social and political systems are deeply vulnerable to bullying blow-hards and unfairly favour the wealthy.

Eight years ago, it became clear that the truth was not enough. At CHANS Lab, we were already employing tools of science communication that were more sophisticated than a simple bullhorn or press release.

Four years ago, I wrote about the need to seize the opportunity while we had it, to reign in out-of-control media, social media, and political systems (this would mean tightly controlling money in politics, including Super PACs and dark money). We missed our chance, perhaps imagining that Trump's first presidency was an isolated phenomenon. It wasn't: it was a symptom of a failing system.

A second Trump presidency will be a wildfire of massive proportions, a mega-fire. In my undergraduate class, ENVR 430, students learn how different climate-fuelled mega-fires are from regular fires (fires that would have been common historically). Whereas 'regular' forest fires would generally burn small areas, leaving some or many adult trees and the soils intact, mainly clearing the understory, mega-fires burn huge expanses including the biggest trees and organic soils including the seed bank. They so completely remove the structures of the old system that they enable entirely new systems, generally much less productive ones.

How ecosystems respond to 'regular' wildfire, with a cycle of adaptive renewal. Adapted from C.S. Holling 1986, 2001.

How ecosystems respond to mega-fires, which burn hotter and at greater spatial scales, eliminating pathways of ecosystem memory. From Chan, ENVR 430 lecture for Week 6, Air & Fire.

Get ready a mega-fire and prepare for its aftermath, when there is at least an opportunity to reshape the system for the better.

CHANS Lab Views by Kai Chan's lab is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://chanslabviews.blogspot.com.

System Change is Needed but Elusive: What Next?

Dr. Kai Chan is a professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, a TEDx speaker, and founder of CoSphere, a Community of Small-Planet Heroes.

[Reposted from the National Observer; Meta doesn't allow links to media organizations in Canada, so link here instead, and then go there.]

It has been five years since 132 nations declared that only a complete overhaul of how our world works could save it. Yet we are still sleepwalking deeper into the climate and ecological crisis. A million species are still at risk of extinction, and we are among those that will lose from our inaction. We have been lulled into complacency by urgent distractions and the comforts of modern life. For a healthy, sustainable future, we must change the very systems we rely on: economic, political, social, and more.

While the COVID pandemic interrupted the groundswell of climate concern, the nations were never really poised to initiate the “transformative change” they touted. The declaration was not mere posturing, though. As a leading author of the UN report that inspired the declaration—the Global Assessment of the UN’s Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services—I could see genuine concern in the diplomats who negotiated the summary. But there’s a huge gap between calling for system change and making it happen. In hindsight, it was naïve to think that governments could undertake such a transformation without an adamant social movement demanding it.

Galvanizing that unified social movement is our task. It falls upon us to demand systems change towards sustainability. Fortunately, this doesn’t require giving up a day job to stop traffic on busy bridges. Instead, it starts from five feasible but essential foundations:

Go Deep: we move beyond what’s quick and easy—both in our actions, and in policy. Picking low-hanging fruit is not a recipe for system change. It’s a favored approach of policymakers to achieve short-term wins when the system works well. New technologies like electric vehicles might help somewhat, but they are popular because they don’t require changes in our economic, political, or social systems. This easy approach is insufficient.

So we challenge doing what’s easy in law and policy. We also need to prioritize what’s effective in the long term, reminding skeptics that we are beyond easy solutions. So, not only subsidies to encourage low-carbon technology, but reforming the much larger subsidies that support the status quo in agriculture, fishing, and other resource extraction.

Update Tradition: we transcend “this is how we do things”. How often have you heard people justify an action this way? History provides context, but we cannot fix what’s broken by following precedent.

We can challenge decision-making by questioning the process. Policymaking in many nations is rooted in economic analyses that assume little will change. This is self-defeating when seeking system change. Economic analysis must be complemented by systems science—the integrated study of social and natural systems that acknowledges deep uncertainty, nonlinear change, and multiple ways of knowing. This way we don’t get trapped in decisions that only make sense economically in the short term.

Embrace Uncertainty: we resist oversimplifying problems. As American writer H.L. Mencken wrote, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” Populist political parties spout simple-sounding solutions to all that’s broken, glossing over the uncertainty and unintended consequences inherent in big changes. We must keep questioning.

We also can’t be certain about our own favored policies for big changes. Is a strong carbon tax the way to go? Maybe. Should governments subsidize businesses facing rising fuel costs? Probably not, but maybe. When systems evolve, everything is subject to change, and the way forward is to proceed adaptively. Not meekly, but boldly, experimenting for the sake of learning, with a plan to use that learning to improve our decision making and institutions.

Seek Widespread Solidarity: we embrace multiple perspectives. It is easy to find comfort in echo chambers. However, polarization not only breeds hate and fear, it poisons harmonious futures. To change laws, the economy, and society in democratic nations, we must push together.

We can guard against division by actively supporting rigorous and balanced journalism, so we draw from a common body of facts across the political spectrum. Some of my students turned away from mainstream media because coverage of fighting in Gaza felt biased—because it legitimized perspectives other than their own. But juxtaposing contrasting perspectives in context is what’s needed—that’s how journalism favors discussion over disconnection.

Engage Science: we enhance public access to system science (as with CoSphere). With everything connected, how else can we orient efforts to change systems, or anticipate the resulting impacts? How else can we contest policies? When politicians of all stripes promise to make housing affordable, voters struggle to interpret what each intends, or what evidence supports each approach. By enlisting academics—whose job it is to assess evidence while divulging and overcoming biases—we can all interpret claims and better understand pressing problems.

We can initiate and grow partnerships involving academics and communities. Scientists like me have long felt that merely studying problems is deeply unsatisfying. While I remain curious, my bigger purpose is to help anyone find community in their unique contribution to a better future. I’m not alone.

Globally, we’re not on track to rosy futures. But by leveraging systems together, boldly and adaptively, we can meet this challenge that’s bigger than any of us alone.

CHANS Lab Views by Kai Chan's lab is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://chanslabviews.blogspot.com.

Steller's Sea Cows: did they decline before human beings arrived?

by Kai Chan

Were Steller Sea Cows very rare as of 400,000 years ago?

(If so, human beings were likely not the main cause of their decline.)

Or were the Commander Islands just isolated from the rest of the range?

We suspect the latter.

Campos, A.A., C.D. Bullen, E.J. Gregr, I. McKechnie and K.M.A. Chan (2022). "Steller’s sea cow uncertain history illustrates importance of ecological context when interpreting demographic histories from genomes." Nature Communications 13(1): 3674. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31381-6 (Open-access)

Figure. (a) Interglacial range. (b) Range during glacial maxima. The Commander Islands have always been physically isolated by deep channels - even during lowest sea levels - that likely constituted ecological barriers, or biogeographic breaks, for sea cows. Different lines of evidence (e.g., absence of echolocation or other navigational apparatus13; limited ability to submerge9; exclusive seaweed diet10) converge to a strictly coastal, ‘linear elongated’ distribution along kelp-dominated shorelines, a range that coincided with that of the sea otter, Enhydra lutris13. Sea cow range reconstructions were based on: (1) review of existing sea cow records (see Dataset); (2) bioindicators of sea cow habitat (i.e., kelp forests, sea otter historical ranges14); (3) southern extent of winter drift ice and year-round kelp habitat;15,16 and (4) the estimated shoreline of Beringia and Bering Sea islands during the Last Glacial Maximum12. ‘Sea cow records’ (red stars) refer to undisputed records only. Question marks refer to uncertainties related to sea ice extent along the shoreline of Beringia during glacial times. Map background image source and license: Maps were created using ArcGIS Online basemap ‘World Ocean Base’ (Esri, GEBCO, DeLorne, NaturalVue) and using ArcGIS® software by Esri. ArcGIS® and ArcMap™ are the intellectual property of Esri and are used herein under license. Copyright © Esri. All rights reserved. For more information about Esri® software, please visit www.esri.com.

Our paper responds to an article by Sharko et al. who argued (based on DNA from one sea cow from the Commander Islands) that sea cows’ population had greatly contracted some 400,000 years ago. The implication was that humans were not the primary cause of sea cows’ decline (because humans arrived much later).

Our paper argues that the Commander Islands were likely isolated from the rest of the sea cow range, using a range of different forms of evidence. Accordingly, the 400,000 year figure likely represents the time of isolation of the Commander Islands population rather than a range-wide population decline. 

More generally we argue that genetic techniques for inferring ecological histories need to better account for the ecology of the relevant species and the geography of the range.

CHANS Lab Views by Kai Chan's lab is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://chanslabviews.blogspot.com.

Can genetic data motivate people to conserve widespread but declining species?

This content was reblogged from Relational Thinking, the People and Nature Blog.

By Harold Eyster

Varied Thrushes have declined by more than 60% over the last five decades. Artwork: © Harold Eyster.

 

In short, yes. Coupled with a framing that highlights the interdependent relationships between people and a species, evidence of population differentiation can be a powerful motivator for individual efforts to conserve or restore nature.

Just last week, a Mexican fish that went extinct in the wild in 2003 was reintroduced back into its ancestral habitat. Other endangered species are also doing well—one of the rarest birds in North America, the Kirtland’s Warbler, has seen its population increase by over 1000% since 1970.

But whilst many endangered species have been making a comeback thanks to conservation efforts, widespread and common species have been rapidly dwindling.

Continue to read the rest on Relational Thinking...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


CHANS Lab Views by Kai Chan's lab is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://chanslabviews.blogspot.com.

Launching CoSphere, a Community of Small-Planet Heroes

On Monday, we launched CoSphere. Here's my invitation to friends, family, and colleagues:

Dear friends, (apologies for cross-posting)

 

Many of you know that I’ve been at the forefront of science-policy efforts to bring attention to the need for transformative system change. It’s now clear that despite acknowledging this necessity, governments and businesses will not take the needed actions unless there’s an unprecedented coordination to pressure them to do so. Working only in science and science-policy circles left me feeling like a pawn in political theatre of the absurd (see the story here).

 

So today a powerful little team and I are launching CoSphere, a coalition for system change toward sustainability. Our aim is to bring science to build a community of those passionate about a better future.

 

The relevant science is the global systems science of where we have leverage and where that’s needed (what to act on), and the science of social transformation to strategize our efforts (how we can act). Millions of people demonstrated their concern for a better future through recent climate protests. Equipped with this knowledge, together we can bring about that future even despite opposition from those seeking to preserve business-as-usual.

 

My ask: If this resonates, join us, and share this with others. You and they may also be interested in this essay (published in The Globe and Mail), this coverage in the Vancouver Sun, or this Twitter thread. Our partners include David Suzuki Foundation, CPAWS, Canopy, Plastic Oceans, Birds Canada, Raincoast, Y2Y, and more. (If you can bring another organization, please do!)

 

Bring your passion, your creativity, and your expertise. On the Forum, we seek to create a space where people’s efforts are celebrated, and where we all bring our expertise towards our common objectives. Whereas so many scientists are used to speaking primarily to policymakers and journalists, we hope to create a pathway for science to empower activists and advocates of all ages (including the powerful youth movement).

 

So we’d love help reaching out to youth leaders. We want to help equip and orient climate groups and environment clubs at universities, high schools, and elsewhere.

 

In solidarity,

Kai

 

PS, Since we’re brand new, you’ll see that some places feel incipient (e.g., the Forum). We welcome your contributions to make it an inviting, vibrant space. KC

-- 

Kai M. A. Chan, Professor and Canada Research Chair—Rewilding and Social-Ecological Transformation (he/him)

CHANS Lab (Connected Human-and-Natural Systems)              CoSphere (now launching)

Coordinating Lead Author, IPBES Global Assessment

Lead Editor, People and Nature—a BES journal of relational thinking 

Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars—member

Leopold Leadership Fellow; Global Young Academy alum; Canada’s Clean16 for 2020

Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability

The University of British Columbia | Vancouver Campus | Musqueam Traditional Territory

AERL Rm 438, 2202 Main Mall | Vancouver, BC | V6T 1Z4 Canada

 

Ph: 604.822.0400               Fax: 604.822.9250

 

kaichan@ires.ubc.ca           kc@kchan.org

www.ires.ubc.ca                 Blog: CHANS Lab Views 

@KaiChanUBC                   My group: chanslab.ires.ubc.ca

Google Scholar                   Confidential: for intended recipients only

 

Recent papers: Kreitzman et al., Ecosphere, Woody perennial polycultures enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functions

Bullen et al., Global Ecol. Biogeogr., Ghost of a giant (Steller’s sea cows) (Hakai Magazine)

Naito et al., Sust. Sci., An integrative framework for transformative social change

CHANS Lab Views by Kai Chan's lab is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://chanslabviews.blogspot.com.

From the Seas to the Spotlight: Healing the Planet Will Take All of Us

This content was reblogged from CoSphere.

A Story by Alanna Mitchell

Image by: Chloë Ellingson

I remember the moment I let myself glimpse that I was deeply, intimately involved in the work of healing the planet. It was nearly two decades ago, as I sat down to write the first words of my first book, Dancing at the Dead Sea.

I had spent a year travelling the world as a journalist with Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, as a self-styled earth sciences reporter. The stories from those adventures had garnered me a couple of international awards and a fellowship at Oxford University where I studied with the late Norman Myers. He was, I always reckoned, a Cassandra. He was one of the first scientists to flag our current extinction spasm, the looming tragedy of environmental refugees and the fact that so much of the planet’s biodiversity rests in a few small and precious hotspots. Hardly anyone believed him. Yet he kept going, a cranky soothsayer of the Anthropocene.

And as I sat down to begin crafting that first book, so much of which had been shaped by him, I panicked. I had written the newspaper stories in the conventional way: as a journalistic observer of the information. At a remove. As if I were not also a citizen of this planet and affected by all this information I was unearthing.

Should I write this book in the uninvolved third person, or the passionately involved first? Did I even have the right to write it in the first person, as one implicated in the story? A crisis of faith. I sat at my keyboard – tucked away in a corner of my bedroom in Toronto – and pressed capital I. The book was first-person. I was in.

Myers had already taught me that the real story was about the systems our species had set up – energy, food production, finance, governance. And that what was at stake was the life support systems of our planet: the marvellous dance of creatures, the hydrological cycle, the climate, the ocean. All the small stories added up to something far bigger than the sum of their parts. We need to be on the planet as if we mean to stay, he always used to tell me.

It was a small leap from that first book to a one-woman play. Well, philosophically, if not practically. I had already quit my newspaper job – “What part of ‘NO’ don’t you understand,” one of my editors barked at me shortly before I quit, when I asked once again to write stories about the changing sea – and spent three years on 13 journeys around the world with scientists to interrogate the state of the ocean. It turned into my second book, Sea Sick: The Global Ocean in Crisis.

Continue to read the rest of the story in CoSphere...

CHANS Lab Views by Kai Chan's lab is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://chanslabviews.blogspot.com.