Notre Dame High Grad Kenna Rewcastle’s Latest Honor: A Fulbright Scholarship

  • Thursday, June 23, 2016
  • John Shearer
Kenna Rewcastle
Kenna Rewcastle
photo by John Shearer
Although only in her early 20s, former Chattanoogan Kenna Rewcastle has already been to some of the faraway and isolated places of the world to do detailed scientific research and answer complex questions.
 
Apparently, a much easier and less time-consuming observation of her by others has been required to deduce she is quite accomplished and able as a student and lab researcher.
 
After going to the University of Tennessee in 2011 from Notre Dame High School as a prestigious Haslam Scholar and receiving the equally noteworthy Torchbearer award for academic achievement and service at her graduation in 2015, she has added one more impressive honor.
 
She was recently notified that she has received a highly prized Fulbright Scholarship to complete research regarding the impact of climate change on the available food sources for reindeer herds managed by the Sami indigenous people in Sweden.
 
“My project embodies everything that I hope my career as an ecologist will involve,” she excitedly said via email from Colorado, where she has been once again doing remote field research.
 
“Mainly, it allows me to collaborate with a group of people that need my help in investigating an ecological question and who will directly benefit from the results of my study.”
 
Established by legislation introduced by former U.S.
Sen. William Fulbright of Arkansas in 1946 and headed by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, the Fulbright program allows for international exchange in various endeavors. That can include scientific research.
 
In her Fulbright Scholarship program, Ms. Rewcastle – the daughter of John and Amy Rewcastle Jr. -- will live in Lund, Sweden, and will be working in an ecosystem ecology lab run by host Dr. Dan Metcalfe at Lund University.
 
“I’ll specifically be studying how climate change affects the growth of lichen, a type of fungi that teams up with photosynthetic algae to survive in rather harsh conditions,” said Ms. Rewcastle, one of only four UTK Fulbright honorees this year.
 
“The reindeer that the Sami herd in Northern Sweden as livestock primarily eat lichen during the winter. So if climate change were to negatively affect the viability of lichen in the Arctic, it could potentially have drastic effects on the reindeer population and the Sami people that rely on these reindeer as a source of food and income.”
 
She added that she will be collecting lichen from Abisko, a town in Northern Sweden, and will bring it back to the lab in Lund and grow it under drier and warmer conditions to simulate climate change. 
 
While the project is relatively small in scope, she is excited realizing how big its impact might be.
 
“I get to complete a project that really matters, that has an audience of people excited to hear about my results so that they can plan for how their tradition of herding reindeer will change if climate change means that the main reindeer food source, lichen, becomes more scarce,” she said.
 
Besides studying science, Ms. Rewcastle – who was featured in a 2015 profile in chattanoogan.com after being named a Torchbearer at UT – has almost unintentionally become a geography scholar, too. Since entering UT as a freshman, she has already spent time in such countries as China, Costa Rica, Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden.
 
During the last year after completing her undergraduate work at UT, she has been researching climate change as a laboratory and field technician with UT’s Classen Ecosystem Ecology Lab. In that work, she has been trying to investigate ecological questions like how roots and fungi growing inside plant roots affect carbon cycling in the tropical areas of Costa Rica, or how warming and the removal of common plant species from a mountain meadow affect carbon and nutrient cycling.
 
As mentioned, she most recently has been at a remote field station in Colorado.
 
After her Fulbright research scholarship is completed in Sweden in 2017, she plans to return to the United States and work on a doctoral degree in the area of ecology.
 
The world is literally and – so far -- figuratively at her fingertips, and she is ready to get going with these next chapters of her life.
 
“I want to answer these same kinds of big, ecosystem-scale questions in a way that directly benefits the general public,” she said.
 
Jcshearer2@comcast.net
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