HOW TO
Save an endangered animal species
Jeanine Renne ’80 worked to rescue a threatened species of Loggerhead sea turtle off the coast of South Carolina while in high school and continued the effort during her time at Mudd and the summer after graduation. “We would move the turtle eggs from the beaches to safe hatcheries, and guide the baby turtles to the sea when they were confused by lights from nearby developed islands,” she said. Jeanine continues to volunteer through her sons’ school and reviews and analyzes medical malpractice cases for local attorneys.
There is probably a threatened animal living near you. With the Internet at hand, you can find out what it needs, why it can’t get that, and what you can do about it. Then join the effort—with your money or your time (both are needed). It really is that simple. No local effort? Then start one. Ask around at local colleges (biology department), animal rescue shelters, and groups like the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, etc. If one of them won’t sponsor the effort, it’s easy to start your own nonprofit. Make a plan. Again, the Web will help. See what others
have done and figure out what actually works. Mudd gave you the tools for critical evaluation—use them! Then comes the fundraising. Think car washes, bake sales… Chances are it won’t take a lot of money to make a difference, and no one expects a “granola” effort like saving endangered animals to be glamorous. All you may need to start is a plywood shack where volunteers can collect data. Finally: Do SHOW up, and Don’t GIVE up. Real change in the natural world takes time and effort. Enjoy the good feeling, the opportunity to get some fresh air
HOW TO
and exercise “in the field,” and know that you’re a part of something greater than yourself. No matter what happens, it’s worth it.
Expose those embedded ideas
Philip Szuromi ’80 is a supervisory senior editor at Science, the prestigious weekly international journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. A recipient of this year’s Outstanding Alumni Award, he spoke May 1 at Alumni Weekend about “My Career at Science Magazine–A Mudd-Like Learning Curve.”
Prof. Jerry Van Hecke ’61 said once in a lecture, “All introductory courses are language courses.” Indeed, every field has its own language; to those outside the field, it is jargon. When we are faced with translating jargon to the uninitiated (like the dean, or a company vice president), it’s helpful to remember that languages aren’t just names of things or actions. They represent a way of thinking about the world, and what’s important or not (so English borrows “bon appetit” from French). Jargon confuses the reader most when it squeezes out the “why.” For example, plant biologists use Arabidopsis as a model organism, but rarely will a journal article tell you that it’s a mustard weed. Less likely are you
to find out what one of my co-workers told me: “We use Arabidopsis because even graduate students can’t kill it.” This is the sort of idea you learn in class, but not one written down in scholarly works. Even the idea of a common model system—which creates a large body of results that can be compared—is not obvious. Given plant diversity, can one plant do it all? (The poplar is now the “woody model” for the biomass crowd.) Your field likely has tricky ways of doing things created by limits on time, money or the kind of experiments and calculations that can be attempted. Once, those ideas were new to you. For a general audience, dig them up, expose them and let the outsiders listen in.
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