Natalie Hofmeister
I care deeply about serving the scientific community, and I've highlighted some of my engagement here.
President, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Graduate Student Association
EEB at Cornell is deeply committed to inclusive community, and I help to promote inclusion as an organizer in our graduate community. As president, I reviewed graduate student service in our department and advocated for more equitable workloads among graduate students. We revised our governance structure at the end of my term to engage and assist all grads with programming that serves our needs as well as the department's needs.
President, Graduate Women in Science
I served as the President of Cornell's chapter of Graduate Women in Science from 2017-18, after a few years of service in other roles. In my first year with GWiS in 2016, we received a $5000 Campus Action Project grant from the American Association of University Women to promote inclusion among woman scientists. I work with other inclusion-oriented organizations to tackle thorny issues in small group discussions with the goal of implementing policy changes at Cornell and beyond.
Facilitator, Intergroup Dialogue
I facilitate dialogue on issues of equity and inclusion as part of the Intergroup Dialogue Project (IDP) at Cornell. I work with peer groups to resolve conflict and open conversation around identity-based differences. Long-term, I focus on enhancing dialogue in STEM communities, where we receive little to no training on how to address interpersonal conflict.
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See this story for details about my work with STEM communities.
Other Institutional Service
In addition to my primary service above, I also serve as the Student Advisor to the New York State chapter of the American Association of University Women. I also lead an annual workshop on women in ornithology for young girls as part of the Expanding Your Horizons program. In my first two years at Cornell, I served as the departmental representative to the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly and as the Secretary of Cornell's committee for campus welfare (a subcommittee of the University Assembly), where I built connections with university administration that I use in my current work in IDP, GWiS, and EEB's GSA.