STAFF – Biodiversity Lab Manager
“When I was doing my PhD, I kind of joked with my advisor that I was never going to leave. And then I defended my PhD in summer of 2020, which was a tough time to find a job…everyone had a hiring freeze. And this was not the job that I had ever envisioned for myself, but I applied for it [because] I saw some room for creativity in the description. And [then I] got in just under the hiring freeze. I am now in this position of lab manager [at] this really cool shared lab, the Biodiversity Lab. The model [really supports] sustainability. We do a lot of shared equipment, just shared resources overall. That [also] makes it really great for cooperation between scientists [and there are] 15 or more PI’s using this, like 80+ researchers [which] also requires someone to manage this space. So that opened up [the role] for someone like me, who wants to stay in academia, but not in a PI role–in a very service-centered role, [which still has] a research focus. And I love it. I love it so much and it’s been amazing.
I [first] came to U of M by way of community college as an undergrad–I took a couple years off to figure out what I was going to do and ended up meeting someone who suggested a professor here that I work with [now]. Tim James…a fungal evolutionary biologist. I emailed them and hit it off, and came here, [the department of] Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I studied viruses that infect fungi. At some point, very early when I got here, I was talking to my advisor, and we were talking about fungal diseases and bacteria as a way of mitigating these fungal diseases…[we ended up at the question]…do you think fungi get viruses?
And I didn’t know, so I started looking into literature [but] there’s very little literature so I started to think more about that project and one of the ways that I found [allowed me] to research that was by using what data already existed, or… data dumpster diving as I call it. Which really suits my overall philosophy, especially towards [what] I think about sustainability. [For me], I think the branch of sustainability that calls to me most is in waste reduction. I’ve always been very [focused on] waste reduction and so, when I think about how I like the idea of using data that already exists? Beautiful. [I think that] maybe part of that stems from my community college, [which was] this one room barn right next to the dump. And [before that, just] growing up in rural Virginia, you know, you don’t get trash pickup. All of your garbage you accumulate in your house and then once a week, you load it up in your car and drive it to a dump and then there you throw [it] out. You self-sort your recycling: your paper from your plastics from your aluminum, and then you throw your garbage in with everyone else’s garbage and you just constantly [face it]–It’s very apparent how much trash you personally make.”
“It’s funny, especially being in a Department of Ecology and Evolutionary biologists. Everyone’s got this story of like, ‘well, I grew up running around the woods. And that’s why. I saw these creatures, and I collected them. And that’s how I got my start.’ And I did that too, to some extent. But I don’t feel like that’s the thing that drives me. I think [what is] more impactful is seeing the things we throw away and just being like what? This is a terrible idea!
Now in this particular field, the kinds of people who are drawn to environmental sciences in graduate school and research, I think, are the kind of people who want to go get their boots on the ground. Which is super awesome. But one of the things that I really have an internal struggle about [are] the resources that we use by doing so much traveling. In the lab, I think…or I hope, you can’t be a molecular biologist without noticing the huge amount of plastic waste that we create. [Outside of the lab], traveling to conferences, or traveling to our field sites, or ordering supplies and bringing supplies all over, it’s a lot. I guess thinking about this [and] being the lab manager, it’s like: what would you like everyone in the lab to do? So, something I’m thinking about is how to max it, like how to collect data in such a way that when you’re using the resources to travel to a place, to stay there and extract resources, [let’s think about how] we could look at [it] in many different ways. [When] you’re bringing them back to the lab, you’re flying across the country or across the world or something, [and] you know, bringing these things back, using a bunch of chemicals to learn more…[Maybe we can] design experiments in such a way that you can extract as much information as possible and make that available for others to use. So that people can data dumpster dive. And [we can] also think about ways that you can get answers to the questions you want to ask with existing data.
[All in all], I don’t really think of myself at all, actually, as a sustainability warrior person. When I think about the kind of activism I am engaged with, it’s definitely more social activism. I’m really concerned and interested and involved in ending mass incarceration, which are like people that we throw away, right. So I think that’s the kind of stuff that I think [about most]–l think the whole idea of throwing away valuable things, people, creatures, life is really what draws me [and] fires me up, you know? And I think of sustainability as an extension of that rather than the thing that first drives me? It’s like I really care about things not getting discarded. Like all of this stuff [that] we put our energy into…This has value. So all of this data that people have put so much energy into–it has value and we’re using so many other resources to maintain it. Let’s get everything we can from it.“
As part of the LSA Year of Sustainability, LSA Dean’s Fellow Cherish Dean sat down with a range of students, staff, and faculty across the University to illustrate the various relationships people across campus already have to this work, to showcase ways people can get involved, and to highlight the reasons that this work should matter.
To view an abbreviated transcript of Cherish’s full conversation with Jill, click here.
Cherish can be reached at cherishd@umich.edu. To contact the LSA Year of Sustainability Team as a whole, please contact sustainable-lsa@umich.edu .