Lane-deGraaf, Kelly

GriffinShare @ Fontbonne University

Hello, I'm Corinne Mason, chair of the department of humanities here at Fontbonne. Tonight I'm excited to introduce my colleague, Kelly Lane-deGraaf, associate professor and chair of the department of biological and behavioral sciences. Kelly completed her PhD in biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame, where she studied the population genetics and disease ecology of Balinese long-tailed macaques—which, in case you're not up on your Indonesian mammalia, are monkeys, not birds. Later, she completed a post-doctoral research fellowship with a joint appointment at the University of Georgia's Odum School of Ecology and College of Veterinary Medicine. There, Kelly studied the population genetics of African buffalo and the disease dynamics of bovine tuberculosis in African national parks.Since joining Fontbonne in 2014, Kelly has been widely recognized on and off campus for her innovative and inclusive teaching, which includes her creation of Girls in Science, an annual summer camp that allows brings middle school aged girls to find their place in science, for free. My own daughter attended this camp, and she still fondly remembers investigating "crimes" on campus, blowing up a watermelon, dropping eggs off the roof of AB, and even examining dog droppings under the microscope. This camp, like the rest of her teaching, reflects Kelly's constant creativity in the classroom as well as her deep commitments to inclusion, justice, and mentorship. Working with Fontbonne students, she has helped them study everything from population genetics, disease ecology, to snail fertility! Kelly also built the One Health curriculum, which explores the interconnectedness of animal, human, and planetary health. The St. Louis Academy of Sciences named her outstanding science educator in its 26th annual awards ceremony.Kelly has also kept an active research agenda. She is currently a fellow of the Living Earth Collaborative through Washington University and has published in American Journal of Primatology, Conservation Genetics, BMC Ecology, Parasitology, Nature, Landscape Ecology, Journal of Virology and elsewhere. She co-write An Introduction to One Health, a textbook used in One Health programs around the nation. Yet despite her obvious expertise in her fields—I truly know no one else I could consult on bovine tuberculosis—Kelly also prioritizes interdisciplinary collaboration, to the benefit of more than just science students, and she brings her work to life in ways that make science feel accessible to the rest of us. She has presented her work at a conference my colleagues and I hosted several years ago to study collective memory, for instance, and she was by far the audience favorite in a room of historians and psychologists. She has come to speak to my culture studies classes about topics like environmental racism, which she will address tonight. I feel very confident in telling you that you are going to find what she has to say tonight absolutely fascinating. By helping us raise awareness of the interconnectedness of the human follies of racism with the natural world, she helps us see ourselves and our planet more clearly, helping push us toward the kinds of justice Kelly consistently champions in and outside the classroom.She is a fabulous guide, a scientist, an educator, a mentor, and an activist, and she is training her students to be the same. I am proud to call her my colleague. Please join me in welcoming Kelly Lane- deGraaf to the podium.

Fontbonne Centennial: Population Genetics, Disease Dynamics, and Environmental Racism: A Look at Urban Raccoons

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