Alumni Return to U-M Biological Station for Weekend of Nostalgia

“Returning to the Biological Station was a great experience — a chance to recapture those special feelings we had when we were students there many years ago,” said Rick Gwizdz, who took two courses at UMBS in 1979: Vertebrate Ecology with Owen Sexton and Ornithology with Norm Ford.

“It was great to share experiences with fellow alums and Station staff of all ages. I’ll definitely return many more times.”

Founded in 1909, the Biological Station serves as a gathering place to learn from the natural world, advance research and education, and inspire action.

From Aug. 8-10, 2025, gathered alumni reconnected with old friends, walked their favorite trails, and celebrated their shared, transformational experiences that bridge generations of students and researchers.

Activities included a welcome dinner, a guided hike of the Gorge, a research tour, evening mixers in the Chatterbox and relaxing boat rides to observe and photograph wildlife.

“It was a joy to meet so many enthusiastic alumni, hear their stories and watch them create new connections,” said Dr. Aimée Classen, director of UMBS. “We loved having everyone back on campus and learning how this special place inspired the course of their lives.”

‘Where I Fell in Love with Ecology and Conservation’

Seeta Goyal, an assistant attorney general in the environmental bureau of the Illinois Attorney General’s Office and a UMBS alumna from 2018, brought the long lens for her camera and was thrilled to shoot high-resolution photos of the springs at the Gorge and spot three loons during a lake cruise.

“Coming back to the Biostation felt like returning to a self that I hadn’t had the freedom to be in a really long time,” said Goyal, who is an environmental lawyer based out of Springfield, Illinois, working closely with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and taking on cases ranging from air pollution to drinking water quality.

“It was a really good reminder of where I fell in love with ecology and conservation in the first place. And I definitely missed being a little bit of a grimy person who doesn’t care about what I look like. I really missed being able to enjoy my surroundings without having to be concerned about my presentability.”

During Alumni Weekend 2025 at UMBS, Goyal returned to her “happy place” in Pellston to share a tin cabin with friend and fellow 2018 UMBS alumna Calla Beers, who now works at the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council in nearby Petoskey.

The duo was surprised to discover the signature of Goyal’s brother Kiran on the wall of the tin cabin they were staying in and realize it was the same one he used eight years ago.

“Listening to loon calls, swimming in Douglas Lake, and ending the night with s’mores and stargazing felt like stepping straight back into my student days at the Biostation,” Beers said. “I really enjoyed catching up with fellow alumni and experiencing how it continues to bring people together across generations.”

‘Returning Home’

For John Ameel from Duluth, Minnesota, making the trip to UMBS for Alumni Weekend with his wife Cathy was revisiting an important place in his family history.

Ameel spent his childhood summers at UMBS in the 1940s and early 1950s while his dad Dr. Donald Ameel did parasitology research, including work on swimmer’s itch, and his mom worked as the station librarian.

As a boy in the Northwoods, John remembers collecting snakes as pets.

During Alumni Weekend, John brought what he calls his “family origin letter” dated May 5, 1936, from Dr. George R. LaRue, who was the UMBS director at the time, to Henrietta Zezula, the newly hired Biological Station librarian.

In the letter, LaRue explained that Dr. Donald Ameel could pick her up from her home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on his drive from South Dakota and bring her to the campus in Pellston, Michigan.

“I must say that Dr. Ameel is a fine young man and that you are safe in his company,” LaRue wrote.

(In addition to lining up transportation for the new librarian to her new job, LaRue also suggested Henrietta pack her portable typewriter “since none is available for use in the library.”)

Henrietta and Donald Ameel were married Aug. 30, 1937.

“The rest is history for us,” John Ameel said of how his parents met and fell in love thanks to the Biological Station.

“I was young when I spent summers at UMBS in the 40's and early 50's with our family of five but returning to the station this summer for a couple of days felt like returning home.”

Walking the familiar steps of his childhood for a few days in August brought back a flood of memories.

John remembers collecting insects for entomology students and going on field trips with UMBS classes as a teenager.

He also volunteered on a variety of research projects.

Ameel said he climbed a ladder to collect young purple martins from their nests so a researcher could paint markings on the bird’s wings and band them to track their flight patterns.

He also recalled using a large net called a seine to catch log perch in Douglas Lake and help study the development of the embryo in the fertilized eggs.

“I learned to sex them, dissected the testes from the males and made a slurry in a petri dish, squeezed the eggs from gravid females into the slurry,” Ameel said.

“I don’t think this was the usual education for a 14- or 15-year-old. I am not sure how I lucked out.”

Like Father, Like Daughter

Matt Fairchild is a fisheries biologist and aquatic ecologist based in Colorado with the National Stream and Aquatic Ecology Center, part of U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.

He did undergraduate and graduate student research at the UMBS Stream Lab from 1998 to 2001.

Fairchild’s visit to UMBS on Alumni Weekend also had a second purpose: picking up his daughter Alesandra after the junior at Wesleyan University followed in his footsteps and completed an eight-week program along Douglas Lake as a Biological Station Undergraduate Research Fellow.

The Biological Station Undergraduate Research Fellowship program, which is funded by donors, includes research mentors for each student, a $5,500 stipend, on-campus housing and meals.

In collaboration with Dr. Mariano Rodriguez-Cabal, an assistant professor at the University of Vermont, Alesandra Fairchild spent her summer at UMBS investigating how herbivory, predation and precipitation interact to shape ecosystems using a carefully designed terrarium experiment with grasshoppers, spiders and grasses.

“It’s definitely nice to have a community to rely on and give feedback,” Alesandra Fairchild said.

For dad, he’s proud of his daughter’s work on climate change research and grateful for the opportunity to return to UMBS to remember his own past and look to the future.

“I thoroughly enjoyed spending a few days along Douglas Lake and walking old familiar forest paths,” Matt Fairchild said. “Connecting with alumni across many generations was a treat. What great history UMBS has!”

Living Legacy

Alumni Weekend served as a reunion for UMBS students who started a special initiative in 1977 known as Project CLEAR, which stands for Community and Lakes Environmental Awareness and Research. Over time, Project CLEAR evolved into the environmental nonprofit known today as the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council.

“It was such a joy to see first-hand the continuation of our work in Project CLEAR so many decades ago at the Station,” said Linda Greer, an alumna whose experience in the program inspired a career in advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council after earning her Ph.D. in environmental toxicology.

Ten years ago, alumni of the original UMBS CLEAR group started to fund a CLEAR fellowship to support students with a passion for water quality and community involvement, while keeping strong the relationship between the U-M Biological Station and the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council.

During Alumni Weekend, the alumni donors met the 2025 CLEAR Fellow Mira Hughes and learned about her experience taking a class at UMBS while simultaneously interning with the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council. The fellowship provides tuition support, room, board, research fees and supplies at UMBS to students doing applied aquatic research along with public outreach and education — directly involving students in the community.

Hughes is a double major at U-M in Program in the Environment (PitE) and the Stamps School of Art and Design. 

 “Seven of the 10 members of the original CLEAR team made it to the reunion,” Greer said. “And dinner with this year’s CLEAR Fellow was a weekend highlight for all of us — Mira is just the type of student we hoped would join the program, clearly benefitting from the experience in the same way that all of us did in the project’s inaugural effort.”

Scroll below to view an Alumni Weekend Photo Gallery.

The U-M Biological Station — the largest of U-M's campuses — is one of the nation's largest and longest continuously operating field research stations.

Founded in 1909, the Biological Station supports long-term research and education. It is where students and scientists from across the globe live and work as a community to learn from the place.

The University of Michigan Biological Station serves as a gathering place to learn from the natural world, advance research and education, and inspire action. We leverage over a century of research and transformative experiences to drive discoveries and solutions to benefit Michigan and beyond.

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