Dear Loyola community,
Just before Christmas, WWL-TV and NPR shined a spotlight on a Loyola biology professor and his students helping to save a tiny fish from extinction. In the world of conservation, the tiniest organisms sometimes matter the most because so much else depends on them.
Meet Biological Sciences Professor Dr. Frank Jordan, who has devoted more than half his life toward this research. He and his students have spent nearly 30 years snorkeling in streams outside Destin and working in Loyola laboratories, all in an effort to study and save the Okaloosa Darter, the tiny fish that made national headlines. This story and his work are a perfect illustration of the importance of field research that involves collaboration between faculty and students, and the role that universities play in conservation.
This spring, Loyola students and Dr. Jordan (who can be found most days in Monroe Hall wearing a cool lab jacket adorned in fish) are working with local residents to study and eradicate the Asian swamp eel, an invasive species in Bayou St. John. These students — and their discoveries — have already been published in a top-flight science journal.
It’s just one more example of the exciting work that’s happening all over Loyola, one of the very few universities where undergraduate students work alongside faculty researchers on grant-funded projects, resulting in joint publications.
This collaboration between faculty and students is, of course, not new to Loyola. Several years ago, Michael Pashkevich, ’17, a biology major and native of Mandeville, La., won the elite Goldwater, Fulbright, Marshall and Gates-Cambridge scholarships, among others. He got his Ph.D. doing field work in Indonesia. Now, he’s a zoology professor at the University of Cambridge studying insect ecology. It all started here at Loyola, in Dr. Aimee K. Thomas’s Spider Lab.
Michael is among the one-third of Loyola students who choose to double major. When not studying spiders, he pursued his interests in Medieval Studies, and spent a summer in Ireland, working with Dr. Naomi Yavneh-Klos as an archivist at Castle Traquair. After all, how many universities offer a major in neuroscience with a minor in business administration or a major in theater arts with a minor in business?
And, research is happening throughout the state-of-the-art STEM laboratories we have here at Loyola - the fish lab, the chick lab, the rat lab, the spider lab, the lab filled to the ceiling with Dr. Dorn’s kissing bugs, to name a few. It’s also happening in law, in social sciences, in theology and ministry, and the arts.
We know that many of these student researchers will use this experience to pursue graduate-level research opportunities in the pure sciences, healthcare, law, business, music, medicine, and more. They will apply successfully to graduate, law or medical schools. They will get excellent job offers and internships. They will solve problems dealing with environmental issues, hunt viruses, start businesses, maybe even write a book. Their curiosity, which Loyola helped foster, will drive them to careers that don’t yet exist.
Students at Loyola have traveled to places they never imagined — changed their majors, changed their mindsets, changed their careers, changed their lives — all because they took a brave step and took a class that captivated them. As you work with your academic advisors to plan your futures, I hope you too will be inspired to learn more, research more, and remain curious. I can’t wait to hear about your accomplishments in this world full of possibilities and dreams.
All my best,
Tanuja Singh
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
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