HONORABLE FIELDWORK: Joshua Willms, Tailor Brown, and Dylan Schwilk presenting at the TTU Undergraduate Research Conference (above). Tailor Brown and Joshua Willms collecting data in the Chisos Mountains (below).COURTESY OF JOSHUA WILLMS
In 2012, Christopher Rodriguez, a student at Texas Tech University (TTU) and a newly minted TTU/Howard Hughes Medical Institute Undergraduate Research Scholar, called his father Chris to tell him how excited he was about his fieldwork studying trees in the arid Davis Mountains near Fort Davis. “Well, that sounds boring,” the senior Rodriguez, a computer engineer, remembers thinking. Yet his son’s enthusiasm and gift for explaining scientific concepts soon ignited a spark of interest in the father. “He had a way about himself to get people really excited about science, particularly about the stuff he was working on,” Rodriguez’s father says.
COURTESY OF JOSHUA WILLMSLike many of the students in what is now the Center for the Integration of STEM Education and Research (CISER) Undergraduate Research Scholar program, Rodriguez planned to attend medical school, even though he was also enrolled in the college of education. Fascinated by the physics of water transport in plants, Rodriguez joined forces with his mentor, plant ecologist Dylan Schwilk, to investigate how the drought tolerance of oak resprouts, the young plants that grow back after adult trees have been consumed by fire, might compare with that of mature trees. Rodriguez spent the summer before his junior year making long trips with Schwilk to mountainous field sites. During their long drives they discussed education and research, and Rodriguez peppered his mentor with questions while quickly learning how to work in the field.
