What was your first job and what did you learn from it?

Although this seems like a simple question, there are several ways to define one's first job. My very first job was as a salad maker in a small family restaurant. The owners were family friends who had started this restaurant on a whim. They worked there essentially all the time and employed their own children as well as a bunch of high school kids to help them keep things going. From this job, I learned the importance of team work and interdependence in accomplishing even small tasks. I also learned ho important it was to have a good sense of humor in order to make repetitive, otherwise boring, tasks enjoyable.

My first job related to my chosen profession was as a Resident Naturalist in a natural area in the tropical rain forest of SE Peru. In this job I and another women were employed to take tourists on nature hikes, and to help the Peruvians workers learn some of the biology of the area as well as some English. (Neither one of us had ever been in a South American rain forest before and neither one of us knew any Spanish) The reserve was three hours by boat from the nearest town and had no electricity or hot water. As such it was much more primitive than most of the tourists expected it to be (and than they were lead to believe by the brochures that lured them there). During my tenure as a naturalist tourists over 30 countries from all over the world visited. As a biologist, I learned a huge amount about the tropical rain forest and the organisms living there. I conducted pilot studies which evolved into a major research project once I became a faculty member at Miami University. More important than the biology I learned, however, was the personal growth I experienced in this job. Before I went I hadn't thought much about the challenges associated with the isolated and rather austere life style. In a sense our world became very small as we interacted with only a dozen people on a regular basis but then had these clumps of tourists who invaded our realm for short periods of time. Almost unwittingly, I became much more appreciative of the small amenities. You can't imagine emotional depth we felt when a tourist gave us a piece of chocolate or when we happened to bite into a cracker that was not soggy, or when there were enough sunny days to have dry clothes. Finally, in this job, I learned a great deal about people from other cultures and how they view life. Most of the tourists were not expecting the primitive life style they encountered and, of course, there were times when things did not function so circumstances were actually quite bad. It was very enlightening to observe the interplay between culture, group dynamics and personality in attitude and approach to coping with difficult situations. Even in the worst of circumstances, our success with a particular tourist group was always contingent on how much enthusiasm we could generate about the spectacular biological diversity of the forest they were visiting. it seems that my success as a zoology professor hinges on a similar parameter.

My heroes are Barbara McClintock and Rachel Carson. Both intelligent women who made major contributions to their respective disciplines in a time when it was much more difficult for women to have the opportunity to have research careers than it is now. In addition, both were committed biologists who understood the organisms that they worked with and appreciated their research contributions in the broader context.

My students. I teach on an open admission campus of Miami University located in Hamilton Ohio, about 20 miles from the main campus located in Oxford, Ohio (which is very selective in admission policies). My students tend to be older (mean age 27) and less prepared for college than typical college students. The amount of intellectual and personal growth these students experience in a short time period can be tremendous. I am most proud when I can participate in that process. It is really exciting to observe an individual with little concept of what college is about and no confidence in their ability to succeed in college transform themselves into serious students and researchers and move on to graduate school or professional school or a challenging career upon graduating from Miami University.

My focus is on the individual and so it is hard for me to give blanket advice in this way. Assuming this advice is aimed at a young woman who is contemplating going on to graduate school in ecology or biology, I have two pieces of advice based on the fact that I have seen two types of students move into the discipline and encounter two types of frustrations.

One group of students enters the field because of a love for learning and for biology and sees graduate school the development of a research program as a way to develop and foster that love. I advise these students to be sure to aquaint themselves with the available professional options and alternative careers along the way. Sometimes specific decisions can be made during graduate school that can have an impact on how prepared one is for a particular profession. In addition, the world is constantly changing with new kinds of unimaginable options appearing all the time. By the time a woman reaches the end of a graduate program, she should be well apprised of all the possibilities and which of those best suit her skills and interests.

A second group of students enters graduate school because of a particular career goal. I advise these students to foster a full and complete understanding of the biology of the system in which they plan to work. To be a good ecologist or professor of biology, particularly in teaching but in developing critical research questions as well, one must have a true and genuine love for the intricacies of the manner in which organisms work and interact with their environment. I would advise anyone interested in this discipline to constantly remind themselves of the larger picture and how their work fits into that picture.

I am not sure I have a favorite book. My favorite authors are Alice Walker and Sinclair Lewis.

I don't think I could identify a favorite web site. The one I visit the most is that of the Miami University Libraries site.

My job is a jumble of teaching, research and administrative activities. My research program moves on in fits and starts with a lot of small projects moving along slowly asking and attempting to answer a variety of different questions. The most interesting times are when several of the threads come together, either from different projects within my research group or something from our research with the work from another group, and a larger concept is clarified or an emergent property is identified. It can be very exciting to be in a conversation with a colleague or student and suddenly ideas mesh and we come to a new understanding of a question with which we had been grappling for some time.

This is a difficult question for me to answer, primarily because of the number of factors one would have to connect in order to understand why my moment was dark for me. What I learned from it was a reappreciation for the small things in life (which I had learned from my resident naturalist job described above). I came out of the dark moment with a better appreciation for my own strengths and what I am capable of contributing to the discipline. I also accepted own limitation coupled my particular job requirements how that has set a limit on what I can accomplish in my lifetime or in any particular phase in my career. It also helped me to set more reasonable goals for myself both personally and professionally.

I have a sailboat on a lake about five miles from town which is very relaxing in the summer. I travel quite a bit. I do jigsaw puzzles in the winter. I try to exercise for an hour each day.