KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 30, 2019 \u2013 Gyasi Alexander was born in Trinidad and grew up on military bases all over the eastern United States. But when it came time to enroll in college, he chose the University of Rhode Island \u2013 in one of the few regions of the country he had never visited \u2013 to study marine biology.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing from Trinidad, I\u2019ve always attached the ocean to my identity,\u201d said Alexander, who graduated high school in Maryland. \u201cWhen I think of the ocean, I think of islands, in part because whenever I visited my grandparents in Trinidad, the first place they took me was the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n
As he prepares to graduate from URI on May 19, Alexander is looking forward to graduate school and putting his marine biology degree to work while helping other under-represented students see that they, too, can make their mark in a scientific field.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have a lot of marine biology role models growing up because they didn\u2019t look like me. At first, I couldn\u2019t see myself in those fields,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I feel like science communication is my personal vehicle to help extend opportunities to students from underrepresented backgrounds. It allows me to show that I\u2019m a person of color and an immigrant in STEM, and that representation matters in creating a sense of belonging. I want people to see someone that looks like them doing something that, historically, they may not have seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alexander has already had success in sharing this message. He was the assistant producer of a documentary made with URI professors Bryan Dewsbury and Kendall Moore called \u201cCan We Talk,\u201d which features students of color discussing their sense of belonging in the STEM disciplines. The film is now being shown around the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cI liked that we put language to a feeling that so many people have but can\u2019t share,\u201d he said. \u201cI felt like I was out of place when I first got here, but I couldn\u2019t get help with it because I couldn\u2019t put words to what I was feeling. I couldn\u2019t explain what I was going through.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe film gives us a way to identify people who feel the same way and shows them that they\u2019re not the only ones experiencing that feeling,\u201d Alexander added. \u201cIt also shows different things they can do to address it. A sense of belonging is something that can be created anywhere by anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is following up the documentary with a podcast called \u201cThe Hidden Curriculum\u201d that aims to help first-generation students navigate their college experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe podcast is going to try to get at things that first-generation college students might not know coming onto campus for the first time,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ll cover topics like adulting \u2013 what it means to be an adult at college \u2013 and the social capital that students are missing if their parents haven\u2019t gone to college.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alexander, who served as president of a multicultural affinity group on campus called Seeds of Success, has also had success in marine science laboratories. He spent a summer studying the impact of coral bleaching on coral larvae in Puerto Rico through a program at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And he studied the relationship between bacteria and diatoms at URI\u2019s Graduate School of Oceanography.<\/p>\n
\u201cDiatoms and bacteria coexist in similar habitats. Their interactions play an important role in the ocean\u2019s biogeochemical cycling,\u201d he explained. \u201cMy role was to do the imaging and look at the length of the diatom chains. They\u2019re basically silica capsules containing chlorophyll \u2013 like little plants surrounded by glass \u2013 and I would relate the chain length to their growth in different temperature conditions to understand how subpopulations differ in various parts of the ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n
With commencement on the horizon, Alexander is making plans for graduate school. As a prestigious Gates Millennium Scholar, which funds 10 years of college education, he is planning a route that will eventually lead to a doctorate. He will likely spend the summer in an internship while preparing for graduate school. But he doesn\u2019t have his future completely planned yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy interests are broad, and I want to continue communicating science, but I\u2019m not sure in what area yet,\u201d he concluded. \u201cI\u2019m interested in tropical reef communities, an extension of my childhood and my identity, but I\u2019m also interested in the neuroscience behind fish social behavior. I\u2019m keeping my options open.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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