Manda Jost, a biology professor at Western New Mexico University, shows off some of the specimens she keeps in her office on campus.
By LINDA JOYCE BROWN
Daily Press Correspondent
Manda Jost's office on the campus of Western New Mexico University seems to reflect the spirit of the biology professor who occupies it. There are specimens floating in glass jars on the desk, 19th-century natural history texts on the shelves, and curious, colorful works of art that reflect diverse and varied journeys.
In this eclectic space, where the lines between art and science blur, Jost's multifaceted background shapes her approach to biology as she encourages a new generation of students to explore the natural world.
“I’m a first-generation American on my mother’s side,” Jost said, reflecting on her diverse heritage that spans multiple continents and cultures, including her mother’s home country of Chile. Family background shaped his worldview and fueled his passion for exploration.
Jost's upbringing in Houston, Texas, was a blend of cultural diversity and avant-garde, with roots stretching from Ukrainian and Belarusian Jews to Chilean and Mennonite heritage.
“There was a lot of art, culture and music growing up,” she recalls, attributing her eclectic interests to her family's influence. “I grew up with avant-garde and marginal parents. I think a lot of things were very formative for me.
At the same time, Jost said, his family was not particularly religious, which was unusual among his peers.
“I think it's unusual for people of my generation to have no religious structure around them,” she explained, “and at the same time have two languages around them – with Spanish and English – and really having a lot of art and experimental and outside influences.
Besides his parents, his Chilean grandparents were also influential.
“My Chilean grandparents were both very educated people, both worldly, and they owned books and things. That aesthetic,” Jost said, referring to the eclectic decor of his office, “with books and specimens and artifacts from travels — that was my grandparents’ house. »
This upbringing inspired Jost's interest in language and the arts.
“I was much more inclined toward art than science,” she said. “I loved nature, but I also loved design.”
Despite his early affinity for the arts, Jost's fascination with nature was ignited during his frequent childhood visits to Costa Rica, which introduced him to the wonders of tropical biodiversity.
“Costa Rica has more lizards, insects and plants than you can imagine,” she said.
His family also frequently traveled to New Mexico, leading them to move to Cloudcroft when Jost was a teenager. Moving from a very diverse urban school in Houston to rural Cloudcroft was a bit of a shock for Jost, and by the end of high school she felt a strong desire to see more of the world, so she became a major in exchange in Germany. .
“That's something I try to tell my students: Whenever you have the opportunity to travel abroad, do it,” she said, noting that international travel allows you to experience a world “where everything is different, from art to art. from architecture to language to food. Birds sound different; the smells are different. Being an exchange student for a year was transformative for me.
When she started college, she wasn't sure what to major in and took a wide variety of courses, from ancient English literature to sociology and from astronomy to philosophy. Although she appreciated the diversity of her classes, she wanted to try new experiences. So after a year at New Mexico State University, Jost found herself at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she decided to study zoology and anthropology.
Jost said she was looking for a topic “where you're looking for objective truth, that doesn't require imposing your culture, thoughts or feelings.” »
In addition to her classes, Jost became an NCAA collegiate fencer and joined with friends to form a rock band.
“During that period of American history – the 1990s – everyone was part of a group,” she explained. “So I got into a group.”
For five years, Jost was the lead guitarist and vocalist in what she described as a “pretty rowdy rock 'n' roll band.” Among the many places his band played during this period was CBGB, the legendary New York punk rock club, where they performed several times.
She graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a BS in Zoology, a BA in Anthropology, and a minor in Linguistics. She was also a graduate of the university's interdisciplinary film studies program.
For her graduate studies, Jost wanted to stay in Massachusetts, so she completed her doctorate. at Harvard University, where she rubbed shoulders with scientific luminaries like Ernst Mayr and Stephen Jay Gould.
Jost said it was pretty overwhelming to be a graduate student at Harvard at that time, but she also really appreciated the resources the university offered students, especially the Museum of Comparative Zoology. The museum, she said, “has a very long history of exploration and it has so many collections, specimens and zoological research. … It was nice to be surrounded by this rich history.
She also took advantage of available research grants and traveled to Madagascar, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and the Colombian and Ecuadorian Amazon to collect research specimens. Her research project involved collecting specimens to understand the evolution of acoustic communication in crickets and katydids.
“I used a combination of anatomy, fossils, DNA sequences and evolutionary trees to understand how the evolution of acoustic communication took place in these particular insects,” she said .
After completing his Ph.D. program, Jost spent some time at the University of Texas at Austin as a postdoctoral researcher, then soon after accepted the position at WNMU, where she became the university's first female biology professor.
One of his goals as a professor has been to encourage students to actively engage in observing the world around them, taking advantage of the laboratory that is the Gila, but also venturing further afield. abroad. She led several research trips to Mexico, where students were able to study tide pools and marine life.
Although these trips were put on hold when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she looks forward to resuming them once the university resolves some risk management issues. It's important to her, she says, not only to help students understand the organisms they're studying, but also “to get students to appreciate this very human process of putting on your boots and your backpack.” back “.
Jost's students recently had the opportunity to do just that when she led a field trip to California, where they explored the rocky intertidal coast, looking for various invertebrates during low tide. Jost described the trip as an “incredible experience that is also strongly motivated by an appreciation of the aesthetic beauty of biological diversity.” Jost added that time spent on the coast was also “a classic field activity that I think all life sciences students should experience: being overwhelmed by the tremendous and beautiful diversity of intertidal creatures hiding among the rocks at low tide.
This process of experiment and observation is key to his career as a biologist.
“For me, the appeal of biology lies in a strong visual aesthetic: the shape of a plant, an insect, a skeleton, a tooth; the color of the feathers, hair or exoskeleton,” Jost said. “Biological diversity really appealed to my very visual aesthetic sense, and I think that’s what keeps me there. »
