Elizabeth Schultheis, a Ph.D. candidate at Kellogg Biological Station and MSU’s Department of Plant Biology, was awarded the Tracy Hammer Graduate Student Award at MSU’s College of Natural Science Alumni Association annual award program.
Schultheis’ dissertation takes an integrative approach to test one of the leading hypotheses explaining the success of invasive species. She’s conducted field experiments on more than 50 plant species, and completed a literature review to test her ideas across a wider range of environments and species.
Schultheis was a leader in MSU’s Kellogg Biological Station outreach to K-12 classrooms and has overseen the expansion of datasets that provide students experience working with and graphing datasets.
The award includes a stipend that will help pay to install exclosures that will allow her to test the robustness of her findings at the community level.