PELLSTON, Mich. — For Ohio State University ecological engineering student Sarah Bungard, a summer at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS) sparked a love for research that turned her career path upside down.
“I walked into this with no practical research experience,” said the 20-year-old who hails from Salem, Ohio. “It was an amazing deep dive into the world of ecology. Most of my classes up to that point had been engineering.”
The college junior spent eight weeks at Michigan’s sprawling campus in the Northwoods along Douglas Lake in 2025.
Bungard took a class titled “Observation and Modeling of Climate Change Biology.” She also studied tree hydrology in the forests and in the lab as an Undergraduate Research Fellow.
The UMBS course instructor and her research mentor were one and the same: Dr. Gil Bohrer, a long-time UMBS researcher and a professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering at OSU. He also is her advisor back in Columbus who encouraged her to apply to UMBS.
The Michigan opportunity proved transformational thanks to Bungard’s hard work and Bohrer’s network.
“UMBS is where serendipity happens,” Bohrer said. “The unique nature of UMBS station life is the part of the magic sauce that makes it happen.”
Bungard is now exploring the possibility of graduate school and conducting independent research in academia — paths she hadn’t previously envisioned.
She’s also heading to Tennessee very soon.
Bungard was awarded a prestigious fellowship at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), run by the U.S. Department of Energy, as part of its SULI program, which stands for Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships.
She credits her newfound research skills, Bohrer’s mentorship, and the interdisciplinary environment at UMBS for making this opportunity possible.
“UMBS gave me a chance to explore independent research, figure out I really enjoy it, and make connections that have allowed me to continue pursuing it — all of which I am very grateful for,” Bungard said. “The unique sense of community and encouragement to explore and be curious at the Bio Station helped me make the most of my first research experience and left me with skills to bring to any future research experiences.”
Bungard will spend 10 weeks at ORNL this summer comparing ecosystem model outputs with measurements from arctic and coastal wetlands, supervised by another UMBS alumnus, Ben Sulman.
Gil Bohrer met Sulman nearly 20 years ago during Bohrer’s first summer research visit to UMBS. They’re now codeveloping an advanced wetland model.
Connecting Sarah Bungard with Ben Sulman at ORNL to work on the project closes a “serendipitous loop” that started in 2009 during a summer research encounter at UMBS.
“In 2009 Ben Sulman was a graduate fellow of the UMBS summer research program,” Bohrer said. “Ben was not my student. My first graduate student was also a summer research fellow. That group of graduate students from all over the United States was engaged in many research projects in broad topics and was very collegial and many of them are still friends. Most of them are currently professors. But ever since the deep research conversations we had by the beach around the anti-mosquito candles (substituting a campfire), I've been chatting with Ben about science and, as both our careers progressed, we started to collaborate.”
Recognizing new talent and drive, Bohrer is now helping advance Bungard’s career as an environmental changemaker.
Finding Her Way
Although she knew little about the University of Michigan Biological Station before arriving in May 2025, Sarah Bungard quickly fell in love with both its beauty and its unique, welcoming community — even as an “outsider” from Ohio State.
“It has a charm that I couldn’t anticipate coming in,” Bungard said. “It’s more beautiful than I imagined. Everyone is very nice too. I enjoyed getting to know the place and the people. My favorite part was being so immersed in nature all the time.”
While at UMBS, Bungard started the spring term by working with her class to build a portable flux tower along the lake to measure climate change biology.
The students erected a tall metal structure that holds different sensors and computers to measure atmospheric data and environmental conditions.
They also used one of the most iconic research pieces in the UMBS catalog that’s much higher in the sky: the 150-foot AmeriFlux tower.
AmeriFlux is a network of instrumented eddy covariance sites in North, South and Central America that measure ecosystem carbon dioxide, water and energy fluxes as well as other exchanges between the land surface and atmosphere.
UMBS is one of AmeriFlux’s Core Sites where ongoing observations are updated regularly for more than 25 years. The tower at UMBS provides one of the highest quality long-term datasets on forest carbon dynamics in the world.
“The course was really cool because I had been working in Gil’s lab at OSU, but just by processing data and debugging the scripts when they weren't working,” Bungard said. “I didn't conceptually understand everything that the code was doing with the flux towers, so getting to take his class at UMBS and learning more about the physics and math behind it was really cool.”
Hands-on Research Breakthroughs
The class lasted four weeks, but Bungard’s research fellowship at UMBS spanned eight weeks.
The Biological Station Undergraduate Research Fellowship program includes mentors, a $5,500 stipend, and on-campus housing and meals.
Last year, UMBS welcomed 10 Undergraduate Research Fellows from across the U.S. to the more than 10,000-acre campus where cabins, classrooms and laboratories are nestled along Douglas Lake in Pellston — about 20 miles south of the Mackinac Bridge.
As a fellow, Bungard conducted her own independent field research into tree hydrology, with Gil’s guidance.
Using long-term tree measurements and data from the UMBS AmeriFlux tower, they looked at how different hydraulic strategies — such as different methods of water uptake — affect tree growth around UMBS over time.
“It's started out pretty open-ended,” Bungard said. “We had a really big data set, and I was looking for something interesting to pull out of it."
After finding her focus, Bungard found that some trees, like oak and beech, actually grew better in drier conditions, while others, like maple, birch, and white pine, suffered during drought.
Her discovery of surprising resilience in certain species and unique reactions to drought haven’t been described in prior literature, so she hopes to publish her findings in a scientific journal.
“It's a whole new level of niche partitioning to think about, that some trees are actually improving under traditionally bad conditions,” Bungard said. “These kinds of studies are important because overall forest productivity is changing with different environmental conditions. We know climate change is going to lead to increased drought in many places, in both frequency and severity.”
“Hey, What Do You Do?”
The scientific rigor and personal camaraderie of field station life opened many more doors for Bungard.
“A lot of the things I've done in my summer at UMBS I feel are just because I've reached out to someone and been like, ‘Hey, what do you do?’” Bungard said. “Everyone's so willing to let you tag along for the day to see their research.”
A conversation that started just like that with Dr. John Lenters, the senior research specialist at the University of Michigan Biological Station, led to even more research opportunities for the undergraduate student.
Lenters enlisted Bungard to measure canopy cover after a major ice storm hit the area.
Navigating fallen trees, she had to head out into the woods right before the sun set or rose.
“He sent me out to take leaf area index measurements with an instrument that's basically two different wands. One needs to sit with no obstruction so it can see the light level, and then the second I carry around and walk through the forest with,” Bungard said. “The instrument compares the light levels between the two wands to come up with a measurement of how many leaves and stems are blocking out the light. The canopy cover ended up being pretty low in the plot we targeted.”
She also helped Lenters build and install equipment at a remote Lake Superior lighthouse station called Stannard Rock Lighthouse, including innovative climate monitoring tools to connect the Great Lakes to the AmeriFlux network.
“These additional devices expand our footprint beyond the forests of Pellston and the shore of Douglas Lake to include the Great Lakes, which is critical for monitoring things like weather data, carbon dioxide levels, and lake evaporation,” Lenters said. “A lot of what we’re learning about Great Lakes evaporation impacts ice cover, water temperature, and lake levels.”
“I had no idea what to expect, but that was an awesome, crazy experience,” Bungard said. “We drove up to Marquette and took a boat out to the lighthouse with some people from Michigan DNR, and we climbed up to the lighthouse. It was cool.”
Advice for Prospective Students
For Bungard, the immense diversity of experience in just eight weeks at UMBS changed her life.
She emphasizes flexible academic and research opportunities, supportive faculty, and a welcoming community of people who care deeply about the natural world.
Bungard also reassures “non-biologists” that engineering skills and other disciplines are welcome and valuable at the U-M Biological Station.
“Definitely go for it. You can make the best of it. I did, and it ended up being super rewarding,” Bungard said. “It definitely opened my mind to research as a career path in a way I hadn’t previously considered as an engineering major.”
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.
Our vast campus engages all of the senses. Its remote, natural setting nurtures deep thought and scientific discovery.
Founded in 1909, UMBS supports long-term research and education through immersive, field-based courses and features state-of-the-art equipment and facilities for data collection and analysis to help any field researcher be productive. It is where students and scientists from across the globe live and work as a community to learn from the place.
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