“I get by with a little help from my friends.” – The Beatles
Previously I asked for help finding people with doctoral degrees and academic research experience who might be willing to serve as external reviewers on my committee. I'm pleased to announce that I've found two people who are more ideal than I could have hoped, and they're agreed to serve in this capacity.
The first is Liane Summerfield. Dr. Summerfield is Associate Vice President of Academics at Marymount University, where I work. She's perfect because she currently directs the DISCOVER project at Marymount, which is our new initiative to increase undergraduate students' involvement in scholarly research. Not only does she have a doctorate in the subject, and a strong research profile, but she literally even wrote the book on nutrition. I'm very pleased to have her in my corner. She's also a vegetarian, so she can understand my motivation for this kind of research.
The second is Amy Joy Lanou. Dr. Lanou is an Assistant Professor of health and wellness at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. She also serves as a senior nutrition scientist for the Physicians
Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a Washington, D.C.-based
nonprofit group that promotes preventive medicine,
especially better nutrition, and higher standards in research. Not to be outdone, she too has written an excellent nutrition textbook, one that focuses on a plant-based diet as a way to raise healthy kids. She's a fellow vegan, and I know her help will be invaluable.
Weirdly, the only thing I'm missing now is an actual chair for my committee. The way that A.T. Still does things in this program is that one will be assigned to me. Evidently, however, all the people who typically do this are already overseeing as many students as they can handle, so I'm waiting to see who I'll get, or whether I'll have any sort of selection.
In the meantime, there are only two weeks to go in the term, so it won't be long before I'm giving a post-mortem on this first of eight semesters. Whew!
Next up, when problems are good.