Rachel Becknell

Graduate Student and Principal Investigator

Given the events of the summer of 2020, COVID-19 and rising racial tensions, do you believe science is dependent on cultural stability?

“Science is definitely dependent on cultural and political stability. Culturally, we know that there's been a lot of racism as far as science goes. There are many biases in science that people haven't had to think about if they aren’t people of color. We are missing those perspectives from people who are different than white males, who have typically been the ones to dominate science. To a certain degree, this has limited our ability to do science as well as we could have.

Politically, I think we're seeing our current national administration is doing their very best efforts to make science seem like something that you believe. Science is not a religion. It's not something you decide to believe or misbelieve. The whole point of science is that we do our best to leave biases at the door. Even though that's not a hundred percent possible all the time.”

How have the events of this summer affected your team’s work?

“I think everyone’s handling it pretty well. It’s been difficult getting everyone used to everything being online. One of my fellows has been part of my team in the past, when she was a high school student. So she knows full well how awesome it is to be at Tyson as a student. And now she’s not able to do that. So I think she feels it more than the other two fellows.

But we’ve tried to make everything positive. We listen to a lot of podcasts and videos. I’ve had them do readings beyond just academic stuff, like popular science writing. We discuss those things to try and keep things a little more interesting. In the past, we wouldn’t have been able to do that because people would have been so busy working on projects at Tyson. It’s nice to be able to incorporate that kind of thing in there.”

Rachel leads the Ecological Restoration team and is a PhD candidate in the Evolution, Ecology and Population Biology graduate program at Washington University. Learn more about her process-based ecological restoration research here.