Dr. Austin Menzmer

  During my undergraduate career, my best friends lovingly nicknamed me "FDM". The initials stood for Future Dr. Menzmer, because while not all of them wanted to pursue a doctoral degree themselves, they were quite supportive of my dreams! I'm thrilled to announce a change to my status, though not nickname initials: Finally Dr. Menzmer! :) My presentation and defense was in late February. I've spent the past month or so making changes requested by my committee and graduate school and finally submitted the document tonight.

  It's been a little while since I've posted here, hasn't it! I think a little recap is more than appropriate, so here goes! I was so excited to join Dr. Peterson's lab in late fall 2019 as referenced in my previous post, then...life happened. First of all, COVID. Rather than starting fieldwork as planned, I spent 2020 immersing myself in the literature and expanding my focus from just looking at wind disturbance to that of wind disturbance and salvage logging on herbaceous species.  In 2021 I started fieldwork in earnest: a short-term (<5 years since disturbance) experimental (human-created) wind disturbance in Piedmont Georgia, a short-term hurricane and logging disturbance in coastal plain Georgia, and a long-term (>20 years since disturbance) thunderstorm and logging disturbance in coastal plain Tennessee. Due to logistical constraints, I was only able to visit the Georgia coastal plain site in 2021, but the other two sites I have been able to return to multip...

Well, this past week has brought some exciting news, folks - I'm officially a PBIO student! It was an enjoyable exercise taking the form around and garnering signatures, from Dr. Peterson (yay!), as well as my outgoing and incoming grad coordinators. I'm so excited to officially be able to share this news. Now it's confirmed that much of my next five years or so will involve getting paid to traipse out in the woods...I'm not complaining. The best is yet to come! Austin

 About two weeks ago I had the chance to attend the Plant Center Retreat, an internal UGA conference that is put on by a number of plant-related departments here at Georgia. It was a really great experience! The venue was top notch: Unicoi State Park and Lodge, in the north Georgia mountains about two hours north of Athens. It was a great opportunity to network and spend time with professors and students, both those that I had known previously and those I was meeting for the first time. I enjoyed being able to attend lectures of plant biologists both local and far away (many of the speakers were new faculty at UGA, but others came as far away as New Jersey or California!). One of my favorite speakers was Mary Williams, who works for the American Society of Plant Biologists and gave a great talk all about how to be a great teacher. A highlight of the Retreat for me was participating in the poster session. Dr. Donovan, chair of the Plant Biology department, had kindly offered t...

I am a plant ecologist with a passion to make curiosity contagious! If people begin to understand the natural world around them, they can then go on to appreciate and care about our Earth. I love helping people begin their journey of discovery and understanding with the amazing nature around them! Want to chat plants? Don't hesitate to reach out to me! menzmera@husson.edu