 Jessica Kurth graduated in May (Major in Marine Science) with a perfect 4.0 GPA, the highest grade point average of any marine science student since the start of the IMCS undergraduate program. She also graduated as the top-ranked student at SEBS. Jessica transferred to Rutgers IMCS after her freshman year at the University of Miami, where she had a 4.0 GPA, was a member of the National Academic Honor Society, and was on the President’s Honor Roll.
Jessica was one of the hardest working students I have ever known at IMCS, and I was honored to be her academic adviser. In 2008, she conducted an outstanding summer research project with me in the coastal bays of New Jersey as part of the Research Internship in Ocean Sciences (RIOS) program, focusing on the ecology of mussels (Mytilus edulis) in seagrass beds. In 2009, she successfully conducted a summer internship project at the National Museum of Natural History in Chicago as part of the Cook Honors Program under the supervision of Dr. Janet Voight, an international expert in cephalopod research. Her internship involved innovative morphological investigations of Graneledone octopods. This research culminated in the completion of a first-rate manuscript that will soon be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Jessica will enter graduate school this fall in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in biomechanics. She clearly has the academic skills, discipline, determination, and motivation to be highly successful at all levels of marine science at UNC and beyond. I expect her to achieve great things in her field of endeavor and in the process to serve as an outstanding representative of Rutgers IMCS.
Mike Kennish
 Jessica Kurth wrote:
I was transferred to Rutgers my sophmore year of college from the University of Miami.
The summer after my sohmore year I was involved at the RIOS summer internship program with Dr. Kennish as my advisor. My project was looking at the effects of temperature on blue mussels (Mytilus edulis) in the field.
The summer after my junior year I worked at the Chicago Field Museum with Dr. Janet Voight. There, I assessed biodiversity at hydrothermal vent sites along the Juan de Fuca Ridge. I also used skin characteristics to differentiate cryptic deep-sea octopods in the genus Graneledone.
In my senior year I was in the GH Cook Honors program, where I wrote a thesis on my summer work with the Graneledone octopods. Lastly, in the winter of my senior year, I started working in Dr. Kerkhof's lab looking at microbial diversity in terrestrial soil samples from Rifle, Colorado.
|
