Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

Support

The salary, staffing, equipment, and travel expenses required to maintain a serious research program are significant. I am thankful for the support that my work has received, and acknowledge my sources of support below. My most recent sources of support are listed first, with earlier sources listed further down.

Some might not consider a faculty position to be a form of “support”, but I think that it is important to acknowledge that my tenured appointment as an Associate Professor at Pratt Institute is my most indispensable form of support. As a member of the Department of Mathematics and Science I have been given a course release each semester that lightens my teaching load and allows me to complete some research while classes are in session. At a time when so many very qualified researchers are stuck in perpetual postdoctoral fellowships or in contingent faculty positions, I want to acknowledge that having a full-time appointment empowers me to also be a researcher.

Support provided by Pratt Institute’s School of Liberal Arts and Sciences for Graduate Assistantships has been critical to my scientific and pedagogical scholarship. Most recently, Graduate Communications Design student Greg Riestenberg completed a series of images used to teach the basics of evolutionary game theory (the Evolutionary Games Infographic Project). In 2011, Graduate Digital Arts student Jean Ho Chu completed a flash-based activity that teaches students about Robert Axelrod’s iterated prisoner’s dilemma tournaments (Easy-IPD). During 2010, Graduate Architecture student Anshu Choudhri completed a large-scale literature review on the evolution of cooperation that will eventually be submitted for publication. Programming of the fieldTest simulator, our chief tool for understanding group territorial behavior, was completed by Graduate Digital Arts students Gregory Denton (2007), Dylan Moore (2008-2009), and Aaron Cohen (2009).

Pratt Institute has also provided invaluable support to my work as researcher through its various faculty funds. Most recently, I received support from the Mellon Fund for Faculty Research and Travel to attend the Evolution 2014 meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina. I presented a talk on the Evolutionary Games Infographic Project and blogged on the entire meeting. I also have funding from Pratt Institute’s Faculty Development Fund to work on a public outreach media series (currently in development) called The WmD Project. In 2012, I received support from the Mellon Fund for Faculty Research and Travel to attend the Ecological Society of America meeting in Portland, Oregon. I presented a talk on the Sustainable Use of Fisheries teaching tool and blogged on the entire meeting. In 2011, the Department of Mathematics and Science empowered me to go attend the In the Light of Evolution V: Cooperation meeting in Irvine, California; what I learned at this meeting inspired several blog posts [1, 2, 3, 4] and has substantially broadened my research horizons. In 2010, funding from Pratt Institute’s Faculty Development Fund and Mellon Fund for Faculty Research and Travel supported my travel to two annual meetings. I presented a talk on several courses that I teach at the Evolution meeting in Portland, Oregon and blogged on the entire meeting [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. I also attended the Ecological Society of America meeting, where I presented a talk on our most recent work modeling group territorial behavior; I have blogged on the entirety of this meeting [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. My travel to the 2009 Ecological Society of America meeting was supported by Pratt’s Mellon Fund for Faculty Research and Travel; I presented our first project using the fieldTest simulator at this meeting and also blogged on talks and seminars that I attended [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. I have also received special funding from Pratt’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education grant administered through the Center for Sustainable Design Studies that supported me and and graduate student Aaron Cohen in our creation of the Evolution of Sustainable Use flash-based activity.

While I was a graduate student, I received support from Stony Brook University in the form of tuition remission, part-time employment as a teaching assistant, and a Presidential Scholarship that paid a small stipend. The main award that enabled me to complete my graduate school education was a Graduate Research Fellowship that I received from the National Science Foundation. This fellowship provided me with a livable wage in the form of an annual stipend and also allowed me to purchase critical computer and laboratory equipment as well as travel to many conferences [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. I also received valuable funding from the Lawrence B. Slobodkin Fund for Graduate Research.

My parents Robert and Susan Jensen provided me with the undergraduate education that I received at Pomona College; perhaps parental support is taken for granted, but I do not believe that it should be. The foundation provided by my family, paired with their support of my education through college, was invaluable in allowing me to pursue an academic career.