This is an automated transcript; we apologize for any errors. If you notice any problems, please email the show at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes@gmail.com. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 0:00
Thank you all for coming to live our first live recording of teach me about the Great Lakes, we're really excited about it, what a great opportunity to do it. Before we get started, I wanted to acknowledge something and I'm speaking for me here, not for Carolyn or sea grant or our guests or anything like that, that you know, there is a academic strike going on to a park trying to affect change related to what is frankly, you know, a horrible situation right now, people protesting the systematic racism in our country. And it's really awkward for me to do this podcast during this time. And the reason that it's really awkward for me to do this podcast is because this podcast I've come to realize is an unbelievable reflection of my privilege. And the reason for that is, is that I get to act like an idiot, I get to reveal that I'm an idiot, for an hour or so every time we do it in a way that, you know, I'm fortunate to do, because of the way that I look. And because of the way that I was raised, and because of things that I have no control over. And that's just absolutely the case that, you know, I get to be intentionally ignorant about all the topics and I get to learn these wonderful things from amazing guests. But I get to do it in a way that I think is really enjoyable. But but that is a reflection of, frankly, the way I might privilege or the way I look, because I'm a white person, white middle class person in America. And so I recognize the awkwardness. And, you know, we at Sea Grant, I mean, in my personal life, we're doing many things, to try to help with this issue with equality, diversity, inclusion, systematic racism, some of which I'd be happy to talk about. But in all honesty, I would encourage you instead to, you know, look at the session that was held earlier today, look online, there's a lot of resources out there. And frankly, for me, speaking only for me as a person who grew up as a middle class white dude in America, so approximately one of the luckiest people in the history of the world. You know, it's incumbent on me to do that. And I would suggest to you that it might be incumbent on you to do that work as well. But so with that, we are going to go straight into our show, and I recognize the awkwardness, the slight awkwardness to it, because this is while it's really educational, fun, there is a fundamental goofiness to it. And I like the fundamental goofiness and I hope you do too. But that's a awkwardness acknowledged. So with that, we will kick in with the file that I've called tm atgl intro vocal theme, and you get to see her another aspect of my privilege, which is that I can't sing. But I get to anyway, teach me about the Great Lakes, teach me about the Great Lakes. Welcome, everybody to teach me about the Great Lakes and exactly monthly podcast in which I get people who are smarter, more accomplished and often better looking than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton, I am Assistant Director at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. And I don't know a lot about the Great Lakes, which is the point of this show. I'm joined today I'm so lucky to be joined today by my good friend, Carolyn Foley Carolyn, how are you doing?

Carolyn Foley 2:51
I am doing well. Thank you, Stuart. And I feel like today is the the ultimate people who are smarter and better, harder working than us telling because we are talking to the International Association of Great Lakes research Lifetime Achievement Award winner. Yeah. So that means that is a for those who are not who are listening to this afterward. It's an association of researchers, they usually have an annual conference that has like 700 people at it, and they're all talking about all the work they're doing all over the world on Great Lakes.

Stuart Carlton 3:26
You know, you say that, I mean, it's true. It's very exciting. But I was actually perusing my CV in preparation for this. And I found out two things. One, what I lack in accomplishment I make up for in verbosity. And two, I am also an award winner. I got the third prize at the Georgia Chapter of the American Fisheries Society Conference in 2003. So gratulations Yeah, I mean, it's one of the one of the top things out there. So I mean, I agree that we were very lucky, but it's not like, you know, many people win awards, Carolyn. Yes. But no, this is the Lifetime Achievement Award and what a fantastic opportunity that is. And so we are going to interview Dr. Jan Ciborowski, who is at the University of Windsor, where he is an emeritus prof and he's also at the University of Calgary, where they're lucky to have him here and he's an entomologist. And I've learned two things. One, I'm not supposed to mention the only thing I know about entomology, which is that we have an event at Purdue called cricket spinning. And I'm not supposed to mention that so I won't and I will also not mention that every time I hear entomology, I think bugs because apparently they're not supposed to be called bugs.

Carolyn Foley 4:29
Well, it's that not all bugs, all bugs or insects, but not all insects or bugs. Gotcha. And there is more to aquatic invertebrates than books hashtag

Stuart Carlton 4:41
not all bugs. Fantastic. Well, let's go ahead and stop this nonsense then Carolyn and we will bring on Dr. Jan Ciborowski. I'm excited though because he's a researcher. We get to use the wildly popular researcher feature themes. So here we go.

"theme song" 4:59
A researcher feature

Stuart Carlton 5:07
a feature rich researcher, teach us about the Great Lakes. Jan Ciborowski. How are you today?

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 5:19
Just fine. Thanks. Thanks for that wonderful musical entertainment that's really great as real features of the Great Lakes is the number of musicians around it. So that is

Stuart Carlton 5:27
absolutely true. And of those, I am one of them. Wonderful. So aquatic invertebrates is what you study. Is that right? What attracted you to studying invertebrates?

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 5:40
I've always been really interested in water sort of wetlands and streams. And I always wanted to be a microbiologist. That's what I was in public school because I thought those were little, little tiny cool things to look at and actually wasn't until I was in third year at Arundale at the University of Toronto and I took a course in freshwater biology and I look through the microscope and saw these aquatic insects caddisflies with big cases and mayflies or gills, and those are the things to study and so that's why I went from being a microbiologist, which is tiny stuff to being an aquatic entomologist or aquatic ecologist or stream ecologist, because that's where I see it's where I got my start.

Stuart Carlton 6:19
So for you, the insects are big, not small coming from you're coming from the bottom up there and have the top down I guess,

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 6:25
when when you look close enough, they're pretty big. Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Carlton 6:29
I will leave out the joke I almost just made. So um, that so what? So So what is it about like mayflies, why do you so I've seen mayflies, like I saw a mayfly hatch on the Green River and Utah, I've got a different story, I will tell about that. And I was like, oh, that's something. So what is it about those that like really are caddisflies that really got you going?

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 6:47
Well, there's an incredible amount of adversity, if you look, if you go to the Green River or any rocky stream and start turning over the rocks, you just find so much diversity sitting there. And they've all got these weird things that help them survive and streams like signal gills and tusks and little mess that they can use to catch the food and really, really interesting diversity and behavior. You think these critters would be hanging onto a rock for dear life, and they do that in the daytime, but at night, they party, they get up on top of the rocks, they get carried downstream. And actually that's where I got my start. My lab mate now my wife of many many years and, and chief assistant and I did our grad work going out to the credit river doing drift, we'd be out there for 24 hours emptying nets every half an hour to see what happens the nighttime in the daytime and seeing these huge numbers of critters ending up in the nets downstream that night. So that was that was our start in aquatic ecology.

Stuart Carlton 7:43
There's a bigger story there though. You met your wife that's amazing. So to wonder you like insects so much? Oh, she

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 7:49
was she was also a faculty member. So we did a lot of our a lot of our careers together.

Carolyn Foley 7:54
That's actually really nice. What that Windsor and at the University of Calgary now to

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 7:58
know she's now retired, she has more common sense than I do.

Stuart Carlton 8:03
But she's not the Lifetime Achievement Award winner. So it's trade off.

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 8:06
She is She is Niagra reward vendor, Dr. Linda Carr computers, past president of the Society and really, really contributed in her own way.

Stuart Carlton 8:14
Okay, let me remove my foot from my mouth before asking the next question. Next question was okay. So, so microbiology was this go back to like, as a kid, because I think about this a lot. My kids are always out in the dirt, looking at bugs and are looking at invertebrates some of which are bugs, some of which maybe aren't but in California, and so is this like, go back to like childhood for you? Or, or what?

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 8:37
Oh, yeah, well, lots, lots of water, lots of camping and playing in wetlands and swimming in the lake and whatever was there, that was what was interesting to me. So going right back to younger days when our folks would take us out camping.

Carolyn Foley 8:49
So at what point did you think, Okay, this is what I want to do for my career. Like I know you said in about third year, you started thinking

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 8:58
I was always going to be a scientist. So that's always been really, really interesting. Deciding on the aquatic systems when at university, that's when we started. So I went on and did my grad work at University of Toronto, studying stream ecology. And then we went out to the University of Alberta, and did more stream ecology there. And then the opportunity came to go to the University of Windsor as a prof so we took our stream sampling equipment and landed in Windsor, which is fossil pancake, and there's not many pristine streams at all. But there was a really big great lake just outside our door in the Detroit River there and so having to drive several 100 kilometers to find the stream. We eventually settled on pollution problems in the Great Lakes. i When we got there in the 80s. mayflies had been gone for 40 years. We were told, there are no mayflies left. And my colleague, Doug Hafner, who is an eco toxicologist there took us out on the lake to middle sister Island, which Carolyn will know about as well. We were standing there by the boat looking up. And there were there were mayflies flying around. And we just happen to be starting at the very start when the first mayflies were returning back to Lake Erie. And so both Linda and I were really interested in that. And we spent our next few years studying all we could both about the toxicology of burrowing mayflies in the lake. And also where these where these insects are at night when they emerge. And they carry their body burdens of contaminant and nutrients back ashore and how far inland they go and how they feed the birds and things like that. So we went from being aquatic ecology entomologist to being foodweb ecologist, because he's made flies and later on zebra mussels, and all these other aquatic invertebrates are such an important part at the base of the foodweb.

Carolyn Foley 10:52
So I want to say, I tell people that the most terrifying sampling I've ever done was sampling adult butterflies because you have to walk into a small room. And it's basically like the movie The birds, they're just flying all around you. And like, yeah, it's nighttime. There are things in your eyes and all sorts of stuff. And you're trying to grab females in throwing them into a bag. It's it's the most crazy sampling I've ever done. And it did not involve the boat at all. So as you I've mentored a lot of students over the years, Dan, and we asked some of them questions about like, what it was to, to work with you and what types of things they appreciate it. So I wanted to share a couple of clips about what people thought about your research. And the way that you think about research, I have to look at my notes. I wish I had a musical interlude.

This is from Jesse garden, Acosta. And he's talking a little bit about what it was like to work with Jan.

Jesse Garden-Acosta 12:06
It was always just kind of looking at the wire the house and how we could take what we've learned and translate it into something useful applied. And I think that stuck with me, because I find myself now with the federal government doing the exact same thing. And it's been pretty useful. And it makes it feel like you're not just out there collecting bugs, like you're doing this work, and you're trying to make the lakes better place. And I think Jan has always done that. He's been great at that. So.

Mi Sun Kang 12:39
So that's one. So I want to I want you guys to pay attention here. We're all researchers, let's try to identify a theme. Okay. So that was Jesse, this is me son King, who was a student of yours as well. Hopefully, you can all hear this. Okay. You know, what, one of the aspects that you always shared with me as your student was kind of looking at things in a different way that I was always kind of taken aback by, you know, just the way you kind of looked at, at a problem. And that has helped me try and explore and kind of evaluate different hypotheses.

Carolyn Foley 13:25
Okay. So I have two more 1/3. And

Lisa Tulen 13:32
I want to spend send you a special hello. And this is Lisa to limit you that I think the collaboration that you worked on in the Great Lakes, particularly Lake Erie was one of the key elements to educating people, but also getting people from different domains working together, and improving overall improving the quality and greatly improving the knowledge and research on Lake Erie.

Carolyn Foley 13:57
Right. And then, so that Lisa Toulon, and then Michelle Doberman said over the course of my 20 Plus on and off years with the lab, I've learned the importance of monitoring the lakes diligently and consistently. I've also come to appreciate the importance of collaboration. The lab has been involved in major collaborations among disciplines, institutions, even nations for the majority of time, I've been around Janu always worked so hard to make connections and your interest in keen sense of diplomacy has fostered these collaborations. This is especially important when studying an area as large and diverse as the Great Lakes. So Stuart, did you see the theme?

Stuart Carlton 14:33
Yes, Carolyn, I did see the theme. I saw several themes, actually. What theme of the ones that I saw would you like me to discuss?

Carolyn Foley 14:40
Well, I was gonna ask. Jan actually, if he wanted to talk about, like something that we heard is You were always a big picture person. And you're trying to bring collaborate collaborators together and do so what? How did that sense of, you know, how does it develop? up, that being that type of researcher, how did that develop?

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 15:05
It's a really good question. Well, the Great Lakes are a really big place. And they're huge, huge problems. And there's so many really good people around and to think that any one person can address those questions and have the answers when there are so many good people around who are more experts than you are, the best way to try and answer those questions is to get all the experts together, get them to play nicely together, and give them a chance to look at what they really want to and not have to worry about all that other stuff, that somebody else's expertise. And, and really, you know, the most amazing thing about the Great Lakes, about AI Agler is it is one, one big family, I mean, we've got huge ecosystem, huge problems, but a huge wealth of talent, and a real willingness for people to work together and see the bigger picture together. All you need is a big enough room and the right sorts of beverages. And, you know, people really are willing to work together. You know, when I, when we first started out, and we saw all these challenges, and all the experts, that was the idea of Stone Soup, I'm sure you've all heard that before, you know, individually, nobody has the resources. But and we started, you know, during one of the real valleys, when all the funding was being cut everywhere, there were no options to work on your own. And so the only way to do it was to bring together your boat, or your D net, or your porn or grab or your expertise, put them all in the room recognize the common problems. And then well, with different people in different places, you can get an awful lot of sampling done and really address those big questions. And you can ask the overall questions, and people can still answer their own their own special question. Like, why are mayflies more important than everything else?

Carolyn Foley 16:49
Because they are?

Stuart Carlton 16:52
In fact, my exact question. So a lot of our audience, especially tonight in the live live, webinar room, or whatever it is, but also we listen, our graduate students or early career researchers, how do you balance those two things? Because there's a pressure republish right? And I get this impression with like these really big picture things you're gonna get, you know, not as many publications out of that, is there a way to balance those? Or do you have any advice on that kind of generally?

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 17:16
So the big picture things are all the little pieces put together? So everybody has their own? Their own little question, the first question. I mean, one of the reasons I think our lab has been so successful as it's both both the lab and things like the Millennium network is that they are open doors. Anybody who wants to take part is welcome. You know, I don't think anybody ever walked in our lab door, we couldn't find something for them to do. And they meet the rest of the community. And they find where their strengths are, where their complement areas are, and where they can go next. And so, yes, they're part of the big picture. But they're interested in mayflies, or mites or detritus or dirt. Well, we can find a project for you that results on that, and you're going to be the expert in dirt, three months. And that's not an exaggeration, because so few people care about it, you're going to become an expert. When he put those pieces together that you can see it and you just need a few people to be able to put those parts together and assemble the jigsaw puzzle and you get the you get the big answers. And to be fair, the agency people, the managers, we had some really visionary people who saw the benefit of this. And they really supported these groups coming together. And they made possible things like the network, they put out, the EPA would make space on the Guardian Environment Canada would make space on the Limnos. And Good grief, we could just go out on the biggest boat and the Great Lakes and third year students were suddenly finding themselves out there as well meeting the scientists and, and really setting the goal of their future. So there really is opportunity.

Carolyn Foley 18:53
So you mentioned the Millennium network. Can you just briefly talk about what that is? So it's the Lake Erie Millennium network. And can you talk briefly about what it is?

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 19:01
So this was started in the mid 1990s. And there were four of us who started them. I was at the University of Windsor. But there were other people who also really believed in this collaborative idea. Jeff Reuter was the director of the Ohio Sea Grant. Murray Charlson was a scientist at CCI w. And Russ, Christ was the director of the large lakes lab at Koziol. And he's one of these people, they would see the problems. Were being overrun by zebra mussels, you know, there's no phosphorus left in the lakes. What are we going to do? And each of these people would say, well, let's have a workshop and they would bring in the local people to sit in a room and discuss what the problems are the very same model, you know, bring everybody in and wants to come at it out, come up with some ideas and different hypotheses, and go out and test it. And so, Jeff really was the impetus to start this but Murray also brought these people together. and will to university people and to government people to in Canada to in the US. We said, well, let's put this together. Let's make this a network and invite anybody who wants to come to sit and have these meetings will ask what are the problems? What do you see the problems, we'll ask what are the solutions going to be? Then we'll write these white papers, these ideas about how things might work. And if everybody's part of it, when EPA or Environment Canada has funding, well, we're probably the best people to answer that question. So we generated our own momentum, we provided the research needs. And those those managers, they found the funding to support these large scale projects. And then that really helped things go on. And we were on Lake Erie. But there were similar things going on like that on Lake Michigan and Lake Ontario. Again, key features, really collaborative involve people who can bring people together and find the big problems and then go out and execute them. So Great Lakes are unique in that community.

Stuart Carlton 21:00
So what's interesting, so one theme I'm noticing is that you you know, you're a big time bug nerd, I think, is that fair to say? Inverted, sorry? Nope, invertebrate everything good. Yeah, invert nerd. And invert. And, and but but you're also really interested in these in this big picture, which I think is fascinating. Because you use your your invert in your, your nerdiness, about invertebrates, your deep interest and skills in working with invertebrates is another couple later were to say it, but to answer some of these big questions, too. So like, what are some big things that we understand about the Great Lakes kind of as a result of the work that you've done, or you've done with collaborators, if you want to be modest, I recommend not being modest. But but, you know, obviously, it works well for you. So whatever

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 21:47
the big questions we've answered,

Stuart Carlton 21:50
work for scientists, I recognize that I've taken off my scientists hat and put on my podcast hosts. But what are some issues you've been able to address? What do we know about the Great Great Lakes as a result of your invert work?

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 22:00
Okay, so one of the things I've noticed over the years is that we seem to go from crisis to crisis, you know, we talk about having long term programs and so on. But every year there's a different crisis, water levels, too high water levels, too low, too many dried seeds, lakes, turning green, we've got a dead zone, each one of those becomes a question that occupies everybody's mind. But it's an expression of what's going on in the Great Lakes. And all those different things go together as boxes and arrows boxes are, you know, the numbers of different types of carbon or bugs or whatever the arrows are the rates in which they flow. That's, that's engineering or modeling if you'd like it. And you can make a model as mathematical and complicated as you want. Or as abstract. And this is another one of my my themes is models go all the way from the beer soaked napkin at the bar at the end of the day at I Agler. To the the dials, that the engineers turn on the water treatment plant at the other end. And you can make it as abstract or as detailed as you want. But somewhere along that continuum, you're going to find the model that fits the question, that's the current crisis. And if you can engage people about talking that you can come up with a model that everybody agrees on and is willing to take a piece of, when we start to fill on some of those boxes, then we can come up with some answers that match the crisis at the time.

Stuart Carlton 23:32
But part of it so I am, I'm not a professor. But But I do notice that thing of like crisis to crisis or project to project and that ability to maintain things beyond that, that was like a real problem. I see. You know, like with decision support tools, I've worked on developing some of those, I do the social science side of it. And like, you know, people work really hard to develop a decision support tool and in the funding runs out. And then they move on to the next thing and you know, who knows what happens to the support to alert the people who are supposed to be helping? And so have you found success in like, like bridging those gaps between, you know, like projects or trying to make some sort of coherent theme or making some coherent difference.

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 24:08
That's probably the most creative part is reinventing the same group of people, the same set of questions to match the latest crisis coming up there? Yeah, I think I think both the members of the Great Lakes Water Quality agreement, have recognized the need for long term monitoring. And by coming up with both the GLRI and the water quality agreement, there has been a real commitment to longer term funding. Yes, there are year to year projects that only last a year or two, but behind that as a real backbone of seeing the Great Lakes as an ongoing problem. And in addition to having professors at universities whose funding start and stop. We have some tremendous institutions. We have no we have Environment Canada CCW, we have Fisheries and Oceans we've got Great Lakes Science Center. All of these people are committed to career length monitoring. And really, you know, I just argue that research is only monitoring when you got a hypothesis, it's the same thing. And they provide the backbone that lets us keep going as these different things come along. And again, being able to have a forum like the network, where everybody can come together and fertilize ideas across one another is what really keeps things going. Sure.

Stuart Carlton 25:26
And I'll put links to some of these I, I'm so incompetent as a host. But I'm the host, we got I will put links to these in our show notes, which you can see at WWW dot teach me about the great lakes.com/twelve Because this is episode 12.

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 25:41
I'll make one more point about continuity and the real continuity in the Great Lakes diagonal, which crosses all of those boundaries. And at their annual meeting, they give us a chance to talk about these things as well. Excellent. And it's

Carolyn Foley 25:53
really great that in the interim, like the COVID-19 times and stuff like that there was such an effort to do the virtual environment. That was really cool. Okay, let's get real Jen. What's the craziest field story you have?

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 26:06
So I was talking to Linda about this to see which ones would be appropriate and not embarrassing. I have to both of them involve mayflies waterfalls when we were starting to look at their you know, how quickly mayflies are coming back. We thought we have to find out how far can mayflies fly inland. So we came up with Black Lake craps. And this is a you know what a blog ladies you know, so. Okay, so we've we got battery powered black lights, we set them on top of galvanized pails with carbon dioxide in the bottom so that a bug would sort of hit the trap and drop into the pan. And to see how far they were going. We had to put them at increasing distances away from the lake. So we would find dark country roads and we put one to 50 meters away. And then 102 100 400 805 kilometers away from light which is out in the middle of nowhere. So think about a Friday night at two in the morning because mayflies only fly at night. And somebody is driving with their date back into town. And suddenly out of those Coronavirus. There's this blue thing with some strange people standing around it huddled over a pail. What was that? Two and a half kilometers later, there's another one, and it's gone. And then at one and a quarter kilometers later. And as they get closer, close to the lake, they get more and more abundant. And by this time, they have to stop and ask a guest who they ask, what are you guys doing a two in the morning. And we have to explain all about mayflies and recovery of Lake Erie. So that's that's one story we have to tell. The other one involves going out at night sampling aquatic invertebrate grift for 24 hours, you have to walk out into the stream Rockies stream three in the morning, there's not a cloud, not a star on the sky. Things are clouded over, you can't use a flashlight because you might scare the bugs don't want to stir things. And so, you know, by the time you've been up for 18 hours, you know, you know that Preti is not really out there to get you but you're never quite sure when you go out there and these mats are about this size, and they get all this decliners on the side. So what you have to do is you have to sort of massage it down. So all the bits go into the mat, then you have to reach inside, so three morning either by myself waiting onto the credit river, a light mist is falling, you can hear strange things back out. I went to go and get the net and it goes recall. And because it's pitch dark, a brown trout about this size was headfirst in the mouth. And when I went to shake it, it shook my hands back. And it was one of the scariest nightmares I've ever had. Okay, let the club go. That was the end of that. So

Carolyn Foley 28:50
you have a spine get out here.

Stuart Carlton 28:52
I don't want you on your spine. That's good. Yeah, the field life is an interesting life. I don't do field biology anymore. I was for a while. I mean, social scientists. Now I did fisheries biology for a bit. And I do miss. You know, there's a camaraderie with the field that there isn't anywhere else. Right. And sometimes that's not always the healthiest or best camaraderie, but it is. It is there. And it's it is something that I genuinely miss. Yeah, we

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 29:21
certainly remember the good times. We remember the bad times too. But they become good times as well. Yeah, in retrospect,

Stuart Carlton 29:26
that they do that they do. So if you are a graduate student Yeah. And you can do more fieldwork. Now's the time because eventually you'll get families or you'll get responsibilities. And you know, the time for that decreases.

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 29:38
Being part of that field team can be the best time of your life. Really. The friends you make there and the acquaintances they last forever. So you never lose track of your old friends. Yeah,

Carolyn Foley 29:48
that's true. Because yeah, you have a lot of crazy, crazy crazy adventures. But earlier today, I Agler hosted a Jedi just equity distribution. In sorry, diversity and inclusion session. It'll be available online afterwards. But given all the discussion that's happening right now, I was reminded a couple of months ago, I was able to hear Catalina Martinez, who is a physical scientist at NOAA. And she was talking about how to help graduate students and get more, more students interested in science, and how to pull them in. And one of the things she said was, basically, like, take a chance on people that if you see someone, so if anybody I don't know if anyone on this list is a Gilmore Girls fan. But if anybody imagines Paris from the Gilmore Girls, who was like angry that she couldn't volunteer on Thanksgiving, because she wasn't going to get into Harvard, if she didn't have those extracurriculars. You had her perfect GPA, she had straight A's. So, Janet, in your lab? Did you bring in students who maybe didn't have the perfect, perfect record? And what? What did that mean for your lab?

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 31:08
We just, again, I was talking with Linda about this today. And we've always had a really open night, we had a big lap, because in the summertime, there's so many things to do if you've got a billion a place to start. And so we always had an open door. We always advertised for work study students. And if somebody came in the door and wanted to volunteer, we always found something for them to do, we wouldn't just let them volunteer we just figured Work is work. And we'll find a way to support what you're doing. And so we recruited an awful lot of people. People were just interested in critters and bugs and meeting other people. And because we had such a diversity, another philosophy we had is that everybody in our lab learns to do everything, whether it's dirt or bugs or so on. And that really built bridges across ideas that convinced people that they can do absolutely everything. And some of our most successful people came in as work study students only because they needed, they needed support to get through school. But we had such enthusiasm of the lab that they got interested. And some of them change directions. And some of them are now our top grade leak scientist as well. So giving people the opportunity really is an important sort of thing. And I guess the biggest problem is how do you advertise that you can make that opportunity available for anyone? Because even knowing about that is really different. We had a discussion about this in Calgary today with the grad students. How do you let people know that the doors are open? They're welcome to come in. And we can invite people. But if you're not there to hear the invitation, you're not going to take it.

Carolyn Foley 32:46
Right? Did you come up with any key steps that you were going to follow with the University of Calgary?

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 32:53
I had to leave the discussion before we got to the end of that choice. I don't have.

Carolyn Foley 32:57
Okay. Well, I have a couple more recordings from some of your students related to the environment in your lab and sort of what they thought so this is Shiva is Chico.

Shiva 33:11
Also my memories of Jin are just like little snippets of things here and there like being out, you know, since the jinn and its hard hat was always on askew. And Jen always had like an interesting factor. Like just he knew so much about everything he was always able to talk about wherever we were wherever we were doing our references, study and jam was just awesome to be around. And you can always tell the view there researchers really respected him and loved him. And one of my favorite things I have, oh,

Carolyn Foley 33:45
I forgot that I was gonna she's got a really great story, and I'm gonna send this to you. But I'm not going to play that story right now. It's really good, though.

Stuart Carlton 33:51
Oh, what a long story. I'm excited. But so this is something impresses me is that like Carolyn reached out to it. So you have this really amazing lab group is my understanding and care. I don't know if we cleared this in advance. I forgot to say Carolyn used to work for Jan. So we are conflicted as can be. But this is internalism. So we don't care. And and when Carolyn heard that it was going to be Jan, she was so excited that she we have other co hosts, she shoved them aside and said, No, this is going to be me. And that was fine. Other than since it's COVID, like the one that was hospitalized is very grumpy with us. But anyway, but what what has been consistently everything I've heard is just this love that people have for how welcoming you were. And you know, so Carolyn reached out and she was like, I need some stuff and like she's got this stack of videos. I mean, digital things don't have the thickness but if they did, we'll be like that thick and audio and people reaching out and people saying they're gonna reach out and you know how that is. And so it's just been really impressive and I think kind of inspirational, I think to that idea like you're saying, of having an open door and caring about people and you know, finding something for people who are interested to do a regardless of, you know, their GPA, or if like me, they took genetics twice, including once with their future wives notes. Yeah. So I think that that is something that I've been really impressed with.

Carolyn Foley 35:12
Right. And so I have all these and I'll send them to you, Jan. But one more I wanted to say is from my you could have caught. And she mentioned specifically that despite your perpetually heavy workload, you have always made time for your students in mentoring them and helping them learn and grow as scientists. And then she also said that, when people learn about the 10 year in her lab, they instantly respond with a smile and look that can that can best be interpreted to mean, well, she's one of Dan's students, so she must know what she's talking about. So, thank you, and I guess, anybody who wants to learn to be a good mentor, I told people if I made it through today without crying, I would do well. But if anyone wants to learn how to be a good mentor, reach out to Chauncey Borowski because he really did always have an open door. So thank you, on behalf of all the students and the there's a lot of good people doing great work because of the help you gave.

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 36:11
Thanks a lot Karolina, it means a lot.

Stuart Carlton 36:14
Maybe there's no greater testimony than that. But I'll be honest, Jan, is wonderful it is that's actually not why we invited you on. Teach me about the Great Lakes. Making Carolyn cry is always a benefit. But it is not the primary reason the premiere here at reason is we have two questions that we'd like to ask all of our guests, or all of our guests starting, I don't know about three episodes ago, because we're an evolving organism here at teach me about the Great Lakes. And the first of these is, to me the most critical, which is if you could choose a great donut for breakfast, or a great sandwich for lunch, but not both. You got to pick one or the other. Which would you choose,

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 36:47
as data would be the great sandwich grits. At breakfast, I love donuts, but I gotta wait to lunch to eat. And so it's got to be the great thing. Well, that

Stuart Carlton 36:55
kind of I mean, you can understand what you're gonna have doughnuts for lunch. I don't know if they do that in Canada, but in America, we very often have doughnuts for lunch.

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 37:01
Do you know someone named Fred Penner?

Stuart Carlton 37:02
No. Should I?

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 37:04
Oh, he's a musician. And his theme song is I love sandwiches. I eat them all the time. That that and add that to your theme song for the for your closing.

Stuart Carlton 37:13
You know what? It'll be linked in the show notes. I can promise you that so great. All right. So you're so do you live in Calgary now? Did you move to Calgary? Are you? Yeah, we live in Calgary. Winters where? wherever they want. Okay, so when I'm in Calgary, next time, I will put on my coat. My warm coat and a tuk. Right. And I will walk in Calgary in July. And where where should I go to get? Where should I go to get a great sandwich in Calgary? Our kitchen. Like literally Jan's kitchen. That's right, Dawn and Dawn. Sorry, everybody. This is only offer only eligible or only available to eligible hosts. Next time I'm in Calgary, I'm going to your kitchen jam. That's wonderful. So what's a good sandwich? What do you like to put in your?

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 37:56
Oh, Jason salami and cheese and salami and just good, fresh, delicious stuff. And arugula and arugula hot sauce.

Stuart Carlton 38:03
Yeah, I love a good piece of arugula. There's a history with arugula that we won't go into. You don't need to know about although you may anyway. Alright. So the second second question that I think is really important is what is one piece of life advice you might have heard listeners? It can be big or little silly or serious? It can be something that you thought of something you got from Ron Paul. You know, whatever you think what is a P, we'd like to leave people with a little nice life message.

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 38:28
Okay. This is this is a Carolyn, what this question is? The question I challenge everybody with it can be a piece of life advice. Whatever you're working on, whatever you've written up. What is the title? Because if you haven't summarized it down to title, first, you can say, Oh, that's really hard. But you need to be able to summarize what you're working on, in a title. Don't have a title, you haven't really thought through yet. So you need to think a little bit harder. So what is your title? There we go.

Stuart Carlton 39:02
That's actually really, really good. And really, really nice. And like immediately start thinking my work, of course, but then I start reflecting on my greater life. I'm like, right now my title involves a lot of ellipses. So maybe it's time to work on. Well, Janssen broski, I Agler Lifetime Achievement Award winner, first of all, congratulations. And it seems to me based on the little research I've done that it's extraordinarily well deserved, and based on just a lifetime of fantastic work. And second of all, I encourage people to visit your website or something you'd like to send people to.

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 39:37
I do I have one that's a very old another date you enter.ca/

Stuart Carlton 39:47
It's okay, I know ours, it's fine. You're good. Nobody knows the website,

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 39:50
a University of Calgary ucalgary.ca/contacts.

Stuart Carlton 39:54
There we go. Tell you what we will put it on in the show notes. anybody is interested, you could go there and Check it out. And thank you so much for agreeing to appear on TV about the Great Lakes.

Dr. Jan Ciborowski 40:05
Well, thank you for having me. It's been a great opportunity. It's wonderful to see. See you and see you again, Carolyn and hear all this stuff. And really thank you too. I Agler and thank you for the great lakes committee. I miss you guys so much, everybody. So once again.

Stuart Carlton 40:45
That was really amazing. And what an opportunity to talk to an award winner. We'd like to thank our hosts that I Agler for inviting us, Carolyn, what is something that you learned about the Great Lakes today?

Carolyn Foley 40:54
Well, mayflies are the best I didn't learn that today. But one thing that I learned that is I'm sorry, unrelated to the Great Lakes, but how have I not taught you about Fred Penner, there's always some anytime I'm a co host, there's Canadian content we always make you always make some kind of joke about it. And I cannot believe that I haven't taught you about Fred Penner. So I learned that I am remiss in my my duty as a Canadian, I would also

Stuart Carlton 41:18
just have to be the spin off podcast teach me about Fred Penner two episodes. episodes.

Carolyn Foley 41:24
I would also really, really, really like to thank everyone who submitted movies and, and documents that were able to share with Jan and talk because I really think it really shows what it was really like to be in his lab. So and thank you to Jess Ives for her help. Bringing all those up, Jess sides is also working hard at Agler. I believe she's hosting a session to tomorrow. I apologize if I have that wrong. Just okay, Stuart, what did you learn about There we

Stuart Carlton 41:51
go. That's usually the follow up there. Right. Actually, what I want to talk about to something about this, I think was a bigger picture thing is not about the Great Lakes. Although I did learn something about mayflies that many people think they're awesome. I feel like that's up for debate as to like the relative status among the animal kingdom. I mean, even in the plant kingdom, frankly, and all of life but but I mean, mayflies are certainly a thing that exist. But what I really learned is this is that, you know, if you weren't thoughtful enough, and if you were careful enough, it's possible to blend a bunch of different things. It's possible to blend like the small picture stuff, whether that's mayflies, or whether that's, you know, whatever it is that you're nerdy about, right, find the thing you're nerdy about. But it's possible to blend that with these bigger picture things. And if you get enough these people together, who are nerdy about something, but willing to look at this bigger picture, and you get and I wrote this down a big enough room and the right kind of beverages, you can get all sorts of people to work together. And I think that that's actually a really important message whether you're, you know, an academic or a quasi academic like I am, or I think anywhere, right? And so that sort of big picture thing is what I've been thinking about the most. So Carolyn, where can people find our stuff? I never remember the things do you remember some things?

Carolyn Foley 43:05
So you can visit so we are both with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, you can visit i Sea grant.org. We are also on Facebook and Twitter, Twitter, and Instagram, and maybe YouTube, i l i n c grant and all those. And

Stuart Carlton 43:23
if you if you didn't hear our last episode,

Carolyn Foley 43:25
no first I have to say c s EA, not the letter C. But yeah, then we also have a lot of our specialists around Twitter, including to real time buoys that tweet, but then there's also a whole bunch of other people. So we encourage you to learn more about what we're doing to help. You can visit the AIA Agler website@iaglr.org. And when you're there, you can learn about the society, the conferences, they have a journal, they have awards and scholarships that are available for graduate students. I encourage you to reach out there too. And thanks again to Ed for Haney and possibly, but mostly Ebrahimi for helping set this up.

Stuart Carlton 44:03
Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Dad. Thank you to Carolyn, thank you to Jan, and everybody encourage you to go to teach me about the great lakes.com Subscribe rate review well of those things. Tell your friends about us if you have friends. If you don't have friends, go make some friends expressly to tell them about the show. And in between now in them, keep liking those grades and keep creating those links below the date. Awesome