Two College of Science Faculty Named AAAS Fellows
Two LSU College of Science researchers have been selected as 2021 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its Science family of journals. They are among 564 newly elected fellows.
Zakiya Wilson-Kennedy, College of Science’s assistant dean for diversity & inclusion and associate professor of chemistry, is being recognized for her contributions to leadership, evaluation, and development of programs to diversify STEM education in undergraduate and graduate programs.
Samuel J. Bentley, LSU vice president of research and economic development and the Billy and Ann Harrison Chair in the Department of Geology & Geophysics, is being recognized for his contributions to the field of sedimentary geology, particularly for the study of event sedimentation, bioturbation, and mud dispersal in estuarine and inner-shelf environments.
Dr. Zakiya Wilson-Kennedy
CoS: What has it meant to you being not only nominated but selected as a fellow of the largest general scientific society?
I was truly honored to be asked to be nominated. I am still pretty early in my career, and it has been amazing to receive this recognition for doing the work that I love. When I was a young girl, my mom would tell me that I had been incredibly blessed and asked me how would I use those blessings to impact others. My career has been focused on supporting others. I often have worked in the background on a number of efforts with direct and indirect supports for students, faculty, and staff. Reducing barriers, creating more awareness of systemic challenges facing diverse demographic groups in STEM disciplines, providing platforms for research scholarship to be shared. This is what drives me. And I am both humbled and honored when I receive recognition for doing what I love and am driven to do.
CoS: You began your scientific and academic career as a chemist, but your focuses have evolved to include developing programs and initiating conversations to diversify STEM education in undergraduate and graduate programs. What made you decide to evolve beyond strictly research?
I actually do quite a bit of research. But that research and leadership in science changed from focusing on technical research within the chemistry discipline to designing, implementing, and investigating educational initiatives intended to broaden the participation of groups underrepresented in STEM. So how did I get here? As a graduate student, I was very involved in the LSU Student Chapter of NOBCChE and served as the National Student Representation on the National Board of NOBCChE for a period of time. I had a fairly liberal research advisor who allowed me to take classes in law and education during my time as a graduate student. Additionally, during this time, I developed a tutoring program in a local church in Baton Rouge. All of these experiences are representative of my interest in not only working as a scientist but also supporting those individuals within the scientific community and my larger community. The decision to pursue an alternative career in higher education, focusing on program development and initiating conversations to diversify STEM education and careers, was a natural outcome of the exploration of my own career interests and the development of my skillsets. What I have attempted to do with my career is to pursue my passion in higher education and that has culminated in a road less traveled but an amazing path for me.
CoS: Why did you choose to pursue science to begin with? What originally drew you to your field?
When I was a junior in high school, I thought that I wanted to become a high school history teacher. I loved history. This was interrupted when I spent the summer between my junior and senior years in high school on the campus of Tougaloo College, a small private HBCU near Jackson, Miss. During that summer, we had an instructor in chemistry who had a beach ball that he used to foster classroom engagement. Using an active learning approach, he had students come to the board to solve problems, participate in discussions around rationales for chemical principles, and was just plain fun. Something clicked for me that summer. I returned to my high school excited to take an advanced chemistry class that was newly being taught my senior year. I participated in a high school science fair competition where I had my first independent foray into research, designing an experiment that got me an honorable mention in the state science fair. And I really caught the science bug and had the confidence that I could do science. Formative experiences like these are what have inspired my work in STEM education.
CoS: What has been the most rewarding aspect of your career?
Paying it forward. I have benefited from fantastic mentors. There is no way that I can pay them back, but I can pay it forward. This honors the legacy of their impacts on me and hopefully inspired those after me to pay it forward to those who are coming after them.
CoS: What has been the most challenging?
Finding my voice. I am an introvert at heart, and for a long time, I was often one of the quietest persons in the room. Finding my voice. Developing confidence in myself. That has been a challenge. This is important because in many spaces having a voice is the first and most important part of impacting and transforming the environment to move towards inclusion. I don’t think that I have yet “arrived,” but I am moving along in my personal journey and seeking to exercise my voice to advance change.
CoS: What has been your drive to push for a more inclusive scientific community?
This is very personal to me. I am a black woman working in STEM higher education. I benefited from being planted in rich and inclusive environments throughout my academic journey: As an undergraduate at Jackson State University an HBCU that had at the time very close-knit chemistry community, and as a graduate student in the LSU Department of Chemistry, which was and is a top producer of Black Doctorates in Chemistry. I recognize that though I had talent if I had been planted in different environments, it is highly possible that I would not be here today. Environments matter. These are the places wherein students gain supports for navigating critical transition, develop confidence in their abilities, receive recognition for their potential, and develop the competencies and expertise to excel in their disciplines and careers.
I am passionate about helping others find their pathways and removing barriers to their success. This is all about inclusion. I believe that we have a fundamental duty to our discipline to cultivate environments that support the success of all individuals. It is an absolute tragedy when brilliance is hampered by exclusionary practices and toxic environments. Our science suffers under these conditions. Inclusion opens the doors to innovation, and it is important to push for a more inclusive scientific community because it is the right thing to do.
CoS: What changes do you hope to see in, say, the next decade?
I’d like to see the demographics of the STEM workforce more closely represent the demographics of our nation.
Dr. Samuel J. Bentley
CoS: What has it meant to you being not only nominated but selected as a fellow of the largest general scientific society?
AAAS is a wonderful organization that has worked for over a century to use science for the good of society. I am deeply honored to be selected as a Fellow of AAAS. That said, I have to spread credit to the many undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, and faculty collaborators with whom I have worked to write grants (successful and unsuccessful), conduct field work, and write papers over the last 30 years. To me, the honor of becoming a Fellow also comes with a charge to do more. The honor comes with that responsibility.
CoS: Why did you choose to pursue science to begin with? What originally drew you to your field?
Wow, what a fun question. I am the first scientist in my family. My parents grew up in rural Georgia through the Depression and WWII and were well educated, but not exposed to science as a profession. Had my father known that he could be a geologist professionally, he might have gone that way because he loved understanding the world around him. My earliest science interests related to archeology, then shell collecting (when I was maybe six to 10 years old), then keeping tropical fish. From early years, I found myself drawn to salt water and coastlines. When we were on vacation and my friends went to the pool, I would walk out into the salt marshes and study crabs, fish, plants, and mud. Jacques Cousteau was my hero. I learned Linnaean binomial nomenclature by the time I was 10. My parents were really supportive of all of these interests, and I still have shell field guides was given when I was seven, and a Wonder Book of Oceanography that I probably got when I was three or so.
My trajectory to scientific research was “highly nonlinear.” In high school I drifted away from science; then I took a physical geology class as a college freshman, and marine science as a sophomore, and I was hooked. I encountered a major life challenge as a college sophomore and was drawn to acting and theatre while still taking geology classes. While completing my theatre degree at UGA, I decided to carry on in geology for graduate school. Since starting my MS in 1985, sedimentary geology has been my love and work, especially coastal and marine sedimentology.
CoS: Much of your work has focused on the Mississippi Delta, specifically in conservation and restoration. Since 1932, Louisiana has lost more than 2,000 square miles of land—nearly the state of Delaware. What kind of larger implications can this have for Louisiana communities if no action is taken?
That is a tough question. If no action is taken on factors driving sea level rise and coastal degradation, AND if some of the most pessimistic scenarios on climate change play out, most of Louisiana south of Interstate 10 will erode and/or go under water in the next century or so. I am more optimistic than that, but it is my professional opinion that all low-lying coastal regions worldwide (especially populated river deltas like the Mississippi) need to adapt to a future landscape that will be VERY different from what we have experienced for the last several centuries. Low lying areas will erode and flood, and impacted communities will have to make hard choices about how to respond. Many of these areas cannot be “restored,” only conserved at best. Proactive decisions and adaptations will be helpful, but change will happen.
Our Louisiana Coastal Master Plan is a science-based plan that undergoes rigorous scientific review, and the plan is adapted as our understanding evolves. It is our best option for a good future for the Louisiana coastal region.
CoS: River systems naturally evolve through bank erosion and changes in migration. How is this erosion different from the natural forces that typically take place?
From the simplest perspective, much of the landscape change in a river-delta system like the Mississippi can be described as:
Land area change = volume of sediment deposited – volume of sediment eroded.
The lower Mississippi River and the coastal Mississippi River Delta were probably in a dynamic equilibrium in which deposition equaled erosion before humans started altering the flow, reducing sediment supply, and built levees and armored river banks in the 19th to 20th century.
Humans have reduced the sediment load in the river by capturing it in dams upstream, and we have walled off the river from delivering sediment to the floodplains and delta wetlands. As a result, the rate of sediment deposition within the delta especially has decreased, resulting in loss of land area. Other factors play roles as well, but these are important factors to consider.
CoS: What has been the most rewarding aspect of your career?
Helping our students and early-career faculty develop into professional scientists, then seeing the results as their careers blossom. Commencement is one of my favorite events.
CoS: What has been the most challenging?
Earning a doctorate and then progressing through the tenure-track system from assistant to associate professor is grueling, and positive outcomes are not guaranteed. I would do it again, but it has not been easy. Also, for the first 15 or more years of my career, I was at sea conducting research sometimes 2-3 months out of each year, which was hard on our family.
CoS: In 2019, you were announced as the new vice president of LSU’s Office of Research and Economic Development. How has this influenced and/or changed your vision of research not just at LSU but in the general scientific community?
I began working in research-leadership positions in 2012 or so. My 2019 appointment as VP ORED completed my shift from focusing on success for myself and the teams I worked in to focus on success of LSU research locally, regionally, and internationally. I see myself as a type of matchmaker, connecting people to people and people to projects and resources to support LSU research.
I take very seriously our land-grant mission: “to promote the liberal and practical education of the [people] in the several pursuits and professions in life,” quoted from the Morrill Act of 1862, signed by Abraham Lincoln. This extends into our mission as a space-grant and sea-grant university. My own interpretation of this is that the research of faculty and training of students at our land grant universities serve this mission to improve the quality of the human condition.
After almost three years as VP, I see LSU as a wonderful research university with even greater potential for growth, if we can better connect our people, ideas, and resources. Our faculty and students do not get enough credit for the wonderful work they do. We need to secure the resources to let our people reach the greatness they can surely achieve, and we need to do a better job of telling the compelling stories of LSU research.
CoS: What changes do you hope to see in, say, the next decade?
Maybe this repeats my last answer and sounds a bit cheesy, but I am serious here. I want our researchers and scholars to gain the resources and respect that they so richly deserve, so that our LSU community can do even more to improve the condition of our people and communities. Many of us obsess over rankings of universities, and rankings do matter. But, if members of the LSU community are given the resources needed to do the best that we can and if LSU tells that story well, then we will excel, and public recognition of that excellence will follow.
About AAAS: The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science, as well as Science Translational Medicine; Science Signaling; a digital, open-access journal, Science Advances; Science Immunology; and Science Robotics. AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes more than 250 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. The nonprofit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to “advance science and serve society” through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement, and more. For additional information about AAAS, see www.aaas.org.