Volume 13, Numbers 4 • September-October 1995

Student of the Chesapeake

By Merrill Leffler

Jill Stevenson lifts the lid of a freezer at the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Lab, releasing the pungent smell of dead fish. "Isn't she beautiful?" she asks, smiling. From the freezer .she takes the severed head of a sturgeon, its mouth agape, breathing frost.

"A cow," Jill explains, "from the Hudson River."

One can't help but wonder, looking at Jill's bright and enthusiastic smile, what has brought her to this great enthusiasm for sturgeon, even dead ones.

The answer begins, no doubt, a long time ago, but one important waypoint between Jill's studies in geochemistry at Columbia University and the staring sturgeon in her hands was the summer of 1991. That summer Jill came to the Chesapeake Bay as part of a Maryland Sea Grant Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Student fellows are paired with researchers on Bay-related science projects, mostly at the University Center for Environmental Science and its two Bay laboratories, the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory (CBL) and the Horn Point Laboratory (HPL).

During that summer Jill worked with research scientist Jeff Cornwell at the Horn Point Lab, near Cambridge. She worked with others as well, who both challenged her and supported her, she says. The work -- on sediments and biogeochemistry -- was not easy.

"The exposure to the Bay and the research community was really important. I also got a very good sense of graduate school," she says. "After that, I decided to wait for a couple of years [before going back to school]."

She did not wait to go back to Nature. Right out of college, Jill worked with the Conservation Career Development Program, taking urban kids into the woods. "I lived in a tent," she says, "at the foot of Old Rag Mountain." In her care were eight young people from Newark, New Jersey. She set them to work on the Old Rag trail with picks and shovels -- for nearly six weeks. "We moved a lot of rock," she says. "There were many erosion problems, due to overuse."

For her efforts she won an "Excellence Award" from the Shenandoah National Park. Working with young people and living outdoors had great appeal, but, she says, "I missed the water."

Drawn back to the Bay, Jill worked for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the largest Bay education and advocacy group in the region. She ran a canoe program for middle and high school students and adults, working out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. One important focus was the Susquehanna as it passes through Lancaster County, site of heavy fertilizer inputs to the Bay downstream. "But I still wasn't .seeing enough of the Bay," she says. Her next move took her into Maryland, where she helped to manage a CBF education program for the northern Bay.

"I love to watch the changes in the Chesapeake," she says. "The ospreys leaving and coming back. And there are many inspiring people who work on the Bay."

In January 1995, Jill entered graduate school at the University of Maryland, where she now works with David Secor and others on the Atlantic sturgeon. "My whole day revolves around the Bay," she says, adding, "I don't want to leave."

Beyond being near the Chesapeake Bay, Jill wants to make a difference. "The ideal job," she says, "is one where I can solve a problem." Graduate school is an important step toward her goal. "Without graduate school," she says, "I couldn't do what I wanted to do."

One important benefit of the REU program, says Jill, was that it helped her decide what to do with her life. "I asked myself, 'Do I really want to do this?"' she says. "Yes," she answers, "I do."

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