Voices of Acadia
“I’ve continued to work in Uganda and am currently in year one of a five-year collaborative study – funded by the National Science Foundation in the U.S. – to compare my sites, and the apes species we have found there, to apes found at sites of similar age in Kenya. The goal of this project is to try to reconstruct the environments that the earliest apes evolved in so that we can better understand the selective pressures that led to the evolution of key features that distinguish apes and humans, such as large body size, slow life history, upright posture, and so on. “At Acadia, I majored in biology and by the end of my second year I was carrying out research projects with Professor Dan Toews in his physiology lab. He basically ‘plucked’ me from his physiology class and suggested I apply for funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to work with him. I got the funding, and so after just two years of college, I had the opportunity to help design and carry out experiments at a level that I now realize usually only happens in graduate school. This type of hands-on experience, and the chance to work closely with my professors, also occurred in my science classes in general, although not quite to this extent. But whether it was a biology, geology, chemistry or physics class, lab sections were small and we all received personal attention. Acadia prepared me superbly for a career in science and I am very appreciative of the challenging, rigorous, but nurturing training I received there. “I grew up in Wolfville and I adore the picturesque campus and the bucolic but bustling town itself. I have a daughter who will be applying to college in another year, and I am already encouraging her to consider Acadia.”
Dr. Laura MacLatchy Dr. Laura MacLatchy (’88) is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She grew up in the shadow of Acadia’s University Hall, the daughter of Acadia science dean Dr. Cy MacLatchy and Ann (Robinson ’63) MacLatchy. According to her father, MacLatchy’s fascination with dinosaurs dated back to the age of four. When she finally arrived on campus as a student, she was hungry for more knowledge and through her father’s connections in the scientific community, she even had a brief meeting with esteemed Acadia alumnus Dr. Charles Huggins (’20) in Chicago. In 1997, Laura caught the attention of the larger scientific community when her research party discovered an ape fossil in Uganda. The 90-pound Morotopithecus came from a time some 20 million years ago, when earth really did qualify as a planet of the apes. The find represented another key piece in the evolutionary puzzle, and MacLatchy was subsequently featured in several scientific journals (Scientific American and Discover) as well as in interviews on BBC and CNN. Since then she has expanded her initial research in East Africa and acknowledges the significant role that Acadia played in fostering her love of science.
Carol ‘Cookie’ Rankin After completing her degree in theatre and fine arts at Acadia, Carol Jean ‘Cookie’ Rankin (’89) began to perform full-time with The Rankin Family. She honed her talents at ceilidhs with her 10 siblings in her native Mabou, Cape Breton. The Rankins won 15 East Coast Music Awards and six Junos 22