Suite 1111: What Auburn Students Did This Summer

My: From the Auburn Plainsman, this is Suite 1111, I’m My Ly, podcast editor for the Plainsman. This week we talked with students about what they did over the summer, from rediscovering a species once believed to be extinct to wrangling alpacas. Stay with us

M: (AD) Hey, This is My Ly, podcast editor for the auburn plainsman, If you like this podcast and would like to support this organization and our team, you can visit our website at theplainsman.com and click on the button in the upper right hand corner that says donate you'll be supporting over 127 years of local editorially independent journalism right here in Auburn. Thank you so much in advance. Now back to the show. 

CK: There aren’t many field biologists left out there, according to Noah Yawn. The cool sciences, that’s genetics, molecular biology, and bioinformatics. They get all the attention (and all the money), but field biology is just as important, he argues. And it’s always been his calling. Double majoring in organismal biology and geology with a focus on systematic botany and conservation, Noah is trying to remake his own “botany” major with what Auburn has to offer, as the botany program at Auburn was absorbed into biological sciences a few years ago. 

Noah: “There's a few botanists left at Auburn, which is nice. But yeah, so organismal biology was kind of the closest thing to that. And geology, there's a really strong connection between the two, that I don't think is emphasized enough. Yeah, so lots of biogeography type things, plant geology, plant-community geology relationships, that kind of stuff, so. Yeah, hoping to use that as a tool for future things. My, my big, you know, kind of core calling, calling, but whatever you want to call it, is field biology. That's, we don't have enough field biologists out there. There used to be a bunch, but it's kind of considered old science, even though it's needed. You got to have kind of your, your worker bees out there getting data on what grows, lives, whatever, your botanist, your zoologist, or whatever.”

CK: Noah’s interest in plants was seeded at a young age by his grandmother, who bought him a venus flytrap when he was 10. They fed the plant hamburger meat, and maybe unsurprisingly, it died a few months later. But they tried again, and made it a little longer, those little moments adding up to fuel his interest and love for plants. When it came time to decide his next step after high school, Auburn’s faculty and Arboretum gave him a look inside and kick-started his undergraduate studies.

Noah: “But yeah, so those little moments kind of added up. And I ended up senior year of high school talking with Patrick Thompson at the Davis Arboretum on campus. And Dr. Bob Boyd, who's now the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs I think? But he was a professor when I met him. But both of those are plant people and kind of got a little inside scoop into Auburn, and that's kind of what made me come here, so. Got a job at the Arboretum when I got here in August, August of freshman year, and kickstarted that. And the Arboretum is home to the Alabama Plant Conservation Alliance. It's kind of the main seat for that organization, and that, that was able to get me exposed to a couple other things. You know, hey, I really like doing this conservation stuff. Let's, let's go a little bit further.”

CK: Being interested in conservation, Noah worked alongside the Southern Grasslands Initiative, a nonprofit based out of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, at Austin Peay State University, where their core mission is grassland conservation. According to Noah, the eastern US didn’t used to be solid forest; it used to be a long expansive grassland, which you can see examples of along the side of roads and highways. These species of grass are the only remnants of the ecological makeup of 200-300 years ago. Before we came along, the state of Alabama would burn every 2-5 years, according to Noah, and this burning would keep the biodiversity of the area high by allowing for new species to grow. During the past 200 years, though, fire suppression has kept the native biodiversity low. And it turns out that this fire suppression played a part in Noah’s summer discovery of a plant species that was once thought to be extinct.

Noah: “Yeah, so it's not as great as it sounds. But yeah, so you know, anytime I go out into the woods out of the field, I always learn something new and just keeping eyes on the ground. That's, that's important. And so, you know, I wouldn't call myself a botanist yet, but maybe grasshopper level fledgling, fledgling? Yeah. Padawan. But yeah, so me and my mentor with USGS, his name’s Alan, and we were stomping around Bibb County, Alabama, which is way out in the boonies, if you ever been near, near Maplesville, what other county, or what other cities? Anyways, so we were stomping around this, this place this near the Bibb county glades and so that's that's a whole ‘nother story in and of itself. If you look up the Bibb county glades, it’s a really neat story. But the Alabama Uhaul truck, if you ever pass that, they have a big flower picture on the side of it. That's the uh, that's an ode to the Bibb county glaze. It's a super high endemism area and this small, small areas, outcroppings of dolomite, that come up to the surface. And it turns out, that's another prairie system. You have longleaf pine around these things that used to be burned. But yeah, so we were looking around there and ended up finding a plant that hadn't been seen in Alabama since the 1940s. Which is pretty cool. So it’s the American Barberry, Berberis Canadensis, if you’re interested.”

CK: Endemic, which is a general term for a species that occupies a certain geographical area, is a metric that’s often used to judge biodiversity. If plant conservation wasn’t important enough, with the changes to our local and global ecological systems through climate change, coastal Alabama, as well as the panhandle and some parts of North Carolina, sports the highest number of species per square meter anywhere on the entire planet. 

Noah: “You have southeastern endemics, where they only grow in the southeast. You have single site endemics where they only grow at this one spot in the world, and that's it. So kind of a broad term, but it's an important term that, that’s kind of the currency that NatureServe, and some of these big conservation organizations use to gauge different communities whether it was used to figure out okay, well, the Southeastern US, kind of a biodiversity hotspot hiding under and when you think about diversity, you think of Amazon rain f orest, that kind of thing, New Caledonia, whatever. But it turns out, if you were to lay a one meter by one meter square on the ground, you know, off the coast of, well, not off the coast, down on the coast and the Florida Panhandle, Apalachicola region or coastal North Carolina, that kind of thing. The amount of species in that one meter squared, would be the highest number of species, you can tally up anywhere on the earth, which is insane. It’s the highest species richness on the planet, right there in North Carolina, Florida Panhandle, which is insane.”

TB: The first time Charlie Bailey, junior in mechanical engineering, saw a alpaca, he wasn’t trying to pet it. He was trying to wrangle it, get it on the ground, and tie it up so someone else could shear off its fibers. Alpaca fiber is apparently very valuable, Charlie called it some of the nicest fiber in the world, and the best of what is sheared is used for socks and yarn. But it’s not an easy process, shearing. Alpacas are very antisocial, so when you grab them, they freak out. They’ll scream, spit, pee, anything. It’s a dirty job, one that Charlie spent two months this summer doing, on farms all around the US, through Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Colorado, sometimes shearing over 100 alpacas in a day. 

Charlie: “It was weird the first time but like, you're just so immersed in it for two months, then by the end of it, like this is the only thing you've ever known, you know, like, like, this is who I am, I can handle this animal like really well. So like, I don't even remember what I thought when I first started.”

TB: As an alpaca wrangler, Charlie first was the head man. Since alpaca necks are so long, someone has to hold the animal in place so it doesn’t thrash around. He would also prepare the next alpaca to be sheared while the shearer was busy on one. Each alpaca took around 5 to 7 minutes. Meanwhile Charlie sets the next animal down, pulls the rope tight and even files down its nails and its teeth, which can get too long and need to be filed down.

Most of the people they met kept the alpacas as pets, but other, large scale places they sheared at kept alpacas as show animals.

Charlie: “I would get really nervous when we're doing the nice ones didn't want to mess anything up. But we shared an alpaca that was the most expensive bag to ever be sold. And it's old now. So it's not really worth much anymore. But it's named as a matrix. And I believe I've looked it up, I believe it's sold for $375,000.”

TB: The value in the animals comes from the quality of their fiber. Not all alpaca fiber is made the same. 

Charlie:  “you kind of grade alpacas   off three things, I can't remember exactly what they are. But one of it's like the crinkle. So like, imagine like a crinkle fry. There's kind of like some bend to it. So you grade off that you also grade it off, like the length that it grows in one year's time. And then I think the third one is like, it almost creates like a web in between everything. So when you share the blanket, the nicest part, it all sticks together. And so it's like a web almost, if you feel it, it's like really squishy. But it's really soft. And it's just really nice. So the best ones will have like a lot of crinkle a lot of depth. And will I be pretty like together you know? Yeah.

And the not nice ones will just everything will fall apart.”

M: That was Collins Keith podcast writer and trice brown our multimedia editor. We’ll be right back 

News for the week: This is My Ly, podcast editor for The Plainsman. This is your news for the week.

During the first week of fall classes, 424 Auburn students and employees reported testing positive for COVID-19. Over 21% of those who received a COVID-19 test from the Auburn University Medical Clinic tested positive during that week. Dr. Fred Kam, director of the Medical Clinic, said the return to campus, increased testing capacity and spread of the delta variant are all reasons for the spike in reported cases. The overwhelming majority of those who tested positive were unvaccinated.

After a win against Jackson State on Saturday, Auburn volleyball has improved its record this season to 2-0. Auburn won the first set 25-9 and the second and third 25-13 and 25-11, respectively. On Friday, the Tigers will play their first game of the 2021 Southeastern Showdown tournament in Hammond, Louisiana. Their opponents that weekend include Southern University, Southeastern Louisiana and Cal State Fullerton.

This has been your news for the week. Now, back to the show.

ML: Ellis Spieler, a junior in mechanical engineering, spent his summer as a water rafting guide in a small town in Montana called Gardiner for the flying pig adventure company. 

Ellis: “Um, yeah, so it's actually a pretty cool story. So apparently, I mean, legend has it that the first owner wanted to take his kayak from the confluence of where the gardener river meets the Yellowstone River, which is like the very north entrance of Yellowstone National Park. And he wanted to take it all the way through Yellowstone River, to where it meets the Mississippi. Sorry, it goes through the Missouri before that, and then the Mississippi, and then down to the Gulf of Mexico. So he wanted to, yeah, he wanted to take it, I think it took him like three months or something to actually do it. So he wanted to do this journey. And he asked his grandfather for like some startup money. And his grandfather kind of laughed it off and was like, oh, you'll do that when pigs fly. So he ended up doing it. And his grandfather was so proud of him after the fact that he gave him the startup money for the company. And then it's been passed down through. I don't know, that was probably late 90s. “

ML: This summer Ellis was considering taking classes at Auburn but when he found out they were online he decided against it. With a free summer ahead, Eliis’s brother asked him if he would want to come to gardiner. Ellises brother attended Auburn University and was also a raft guide at the same location and according to Ellis taught him everything he knows about rafting. 

Ellis: “I was so ready to get out of Auburn last semester, because I was just so like, I mean, it was a mix between social anxiety and depression because I was separated from like, all of my social interactions. So I was like, I can't wait to get a gardener. I can't wait to get a gardener. Because a gardener doesn't matter. like everybody's your friend. Basically. You can just talk to anybody.”

ML:When Ellis arrived in Montana in May, the training to become a raft guide began. Ellis said the summer was extremely busy and with only 10 raft guides on staff over the summer, there was very little opportunity for time off during the week. 

Ellis: “yeah, so that training process, we our company took it pretty seriously. Actually, we had a two week training process where we it was, it was very, it was pretty intense. So we would go through some of the most technical parts of the river, just kind of getting to know the river. Within those two weeks, we will learn how to read water guide about using just a paddle, and then eventually guide about using the Warframes that we would take customers on. And then we would have to do a two mile swim with just the buddy down river down what we call the town stretch, which was basically just, I don't know, there were some class two slash two pluses that you had to swim through, just to kind of get to know the river a little bit. And then there's a lot of running planking tying knots. Yeah.”

ML: In Montana, Ellis lived in a room in the shop that provided him and other staff members beds for the summer. The rooms were made up of bunk beds, a kitchen, bathroom and a living area. But nothing was better than the view Ellis had from his room. 

Ellis: “So we were one of the only companies in town to launch right from our shop. So we were right on the river. And so we would walk down to the river and just get in our boats. And we would go eight miles, or 18 miles depending on what trip we were taking. And then we would shuttle the customers and the boats back along with us. And so across the river, was all Yellowstone National Park, right outside of our shop. So we had the river, the Yellowstone River. And then right on the other side was Yellowstone National Park. And then we had a mountain range called the Gallatin mountain range, like, right on the other side of the river. And the mountain range included a mountain called sub ochre mountain called sleeping mammoth and electric peak. And you can see all those and electric peak was like, I don't know, had an elevation of like, 10,996 feet tall, something like that. I knew it was just shy of 11,000. So”

TB: Maggie Nelson, a junior in aerospace engineering, like so many others, grew up wanting to be an astronaut. As soon as she could even think about doing a job, she wanted to go to space. When it came time to graduate high school, she had to decide her next steps, keeping her childhood wishes in mind.

Maggie: “I wanted to keep that innate curiosity from when you’re a kid. And I was like, well, I liked space. I had a ton of Legos and K’NEX and stuff. So I was like, maybe aerospace engineering could be cool, because the long term goal is not necessarily going to space. If the opportunity came around, I would not say no. But yeah, now I want to do sustainable rockets for space travel. But you know, if they send me to space, I wouldn’t be mad.”

TB: Her interest in sustainability led to her working with Auburn professor Russel Mailen, who is performing research on shape memory polymers. Think of it like self-folding origami. When the material is exposed to infrared light, it folds however you want it to. So when a material like this goes into space, it’s exposed to this environment and folds by itself. Over the summer, Maggie’s work began, where she tested the recyclability of the shape memory polymers.

Maggie: “So I am coming in and recycling this type of material. And then, you know, testing, like, I have this whole breakdown, I essentially smash plastic with a hammer, melt it, and then form it into whatever I want, like a flat plate of material. And then I’ll test that, to see the degradation that occurs, to see how long it’s viable. And this is like, the big long term idea is for like, if we’re going on a mission to Mars, and we’re up in space for a really long time, it’s using the resources that we have available to us within our environment, rather than depending on shipments from Earth or something like that.”

TB: Every weekday over the summer, Maggie was in the office, hammering and melting and reforming this material, which takes a lot more time than it sounds. She was able to recycle the material six times over the summer, and says it’s still viable, so she’ll keep hammering, melting and reforming for the rest of the semester as well. For her work, Maggie won an award from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. At a conference in Orlando, she got to meet the other scholars, including the other women.

Maggie:  “That was one thing that I was looking forward to was getting to meet the other girls in STEM and the other girls in aerospace or engineering, so there was definitely a good amount, considering you know, what we have to deal with sometimes. I have a big mouth when it comes to this. I’ve talked to about everybody in it. Um, it has been interesting, like, Auburn is great. I love it. It has done so much, or the people here have done so much for me, they are constantly showing me that they support me. And, you know, that makes me want to support them. But it is a male-dominated field, and so the atmosphere even in a college is going to be male-dominated. And I was prepared to a certain extent going into engineering, I knew that I was going to be one of the few girls, but I didn’t realize actually experiencing that, it was a little different. It’s interesting.”

TB: Maggie said the expectations for women in STEM are different than for that of men — and they can be treated differently too. Sometimes, classmates will assume she doesn’t know what’s going on or say that someone is only asking her for help because she’s a woman. Being able to network with other women through the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation has completely re-motivated her, she said, and helped her see the long-term picture, which can be difficult to see sometimes. Maggie does not like free time, so she’s even taken up a second research project that she’ll work on this semester, in addition to her other and 17 hours of classes.

Maggie:  “There are certain disciplines in engineering where you see women, the retention rates for women are significantly lower than the others and aerospace is one of them. And so, if you look at it like that, then that, you know, they do a lot of outreach, and they do a lot of like, we want you, you know, and you get here, and then there also needs to be something established to make sure that they stay here. And, like, support them while they’re in, you know, the major. Yeah, so it’s more of like a cultural shift that has to happen. And it’s like, it’s slowly happening it is, it’s something you can’t do one at overnight. So, um, it’s slow. But you know, we’re doing little steps here and there. That’s what you know, I’ve talked with people, I made sure they’re actually doing things. So I’m one of those. I don’t know, I feel like I come in and they’re like, they start getting scared because I keep bringing up issues or things like that.”

My: This has been suite 1111. Im My Ly, signing off, see you next week.