Greetings!
The dining hall is open, serving researchers and staff. The outdoor lakeside pen is set up and ready for piping plovers. And the woods are bursting with spring things.
In one week, the University of Michigan Biological Station will welcome college students taking courses in our spring term to the historic field station along Douglas Lake. The energy and excitement of move-in makes for one of the best days of my year, and I can’t wait. (To give you a sense of the wanderlust and curiosity at first sight, watch the video of last year’s move-in day.)
Aquatic ecology research is the focus of our feature story this month. Specifically, the versatile Stream Lab affectionately referred to as a “giant Legoland for scientists.” Read the UMBS story and watch the video to learn about the diversity and creativity of experiments conducted along the Maple River.
Our 2024 Summer Lecture Series kicks off Wednesday, May 29, at 7 p.m., with the Bennett Lecture in Mycology and Plant Biology: “Alternative Community States in Floral Microbes.” Dr. Tadashi Fukami, a professor of biology and Earth system science at Stanford University, is an ecologist known for exploring complex plant and animal communities with small-scale experiments. At Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve in California, he studies the interactions between sticky monkey flowers, the hummingbirds and insects that pollinate them, and the colonies of microbes that live in the nectar of these flowers.
The next week you have two options. You can come to UMBS in Pellston on Wednesday, June 5, at 7 p.m. for the lecture, “Michigan Botanists Brave the Grand Canyon,” by Melissa Sevigny, author of the award-winning book “Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon.” Or you can attend the lecture with Sevigny we’re co-hosting in Charlevoix, about an hour away from our campus, on Tuesday, June 4, at 6 p.m. at Charlevoix Public Library. Either one you choose, you’ll hear all about the grand adventures of the late U-M botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter, who are part of our historic field station’s story.
And the week after that, we’re excited to welcome the dad of one of our own talented researchers at UMBS (Karin Rand, who works in my lab). Dr. Matthew Rand is an ecotoxicologist who studies mercury toxicity. The associate professor of environmental medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry has done innovative work regarding environmental mercury toxicity and the developmental effects of mercury exposure on animals. On Wednesday, June 12, at 7 p.m., he will give a talk at UMBS titled “Environmental Mercury Toxicity: Lessons from History, Hair, Microbes and Flies."
Every Wednesday evening in June and July features amazing speakers and topics. Read the full UMBS story to meet the people and check the schedule.
Two of the speakers on the list are artists who have been selected to serve residencies this summer at our research and teaching campus. Read the UMBS news story to learn about illustrator and fine artist Vera Ting and poet Dr. Madeleine Wattenberg, and get a sense of their creative goals as they immerse themselves in our scientific community.
This year we’re charting our course for the future. If you’re interested in weighing in on our strategic planning process and the development of priorities and goals for our next five years, please join us for one of two strategic planning sessions coming up in June. The one on Monday, June 3, at 6:30 p.m., is in person in Pellston. The one on Monday, June 17, at 6:30 p.m. is virtual via Zoom. We’ll also have three more opportunities in July. Details are on the UMBS Strategic Planning website.
And I end with my final push to you for student enrollment during the 2024 field season. Though the plane is taking off for spring term, it’s not too late to sign up for the summer term, which runs from July 2 to Aug. 1. Let your networks and loved ones know the deadline to apply for courses and scholarships is May 30. We accept students from all universities. Summer term courses include Field Mammalogy, Forest Ecosystems, Microbiology, Field Studies of Freshwater Fishes, Agroecology, General Ecology Lecture and Lab, the Art of Observation, Learning from the Landscape, and Insights from Trees: Science, Art and Observation in a Noisy World.
Let the field season begin.
Read our full May 2024 Newsletter.
Sincerely,
Dr. Aimée Classen
UMBS Director
