As the TA Baker Professor of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Doug Tallamy isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. Recently, Professor Tallamy shared his thoughts on how better lawncare can save the planet, the need to bring students into the field and the ways philanthropy can move science forward.

Tell us a little bit about your current work.

I am an entomologist; I have been for a long time. It’s my 44th year here. My focus is on how insects interact with plants. That’s a huge area, believe it or not.

If you go into a typical suburban neighborhood, about eighty percent of the plants are from China, and in White Clay Creek State Park, thirty percent are from China. So even our natural areas aren’t natural anymore. What does that do to food webs? Plants are supposed to pass energy on to insects and birds and everything else. They make all the food on the planet. If they don’t pass it on, what happens? We’ve been measuring that for the last 20 years.

My focus is to gather the data and then convince the public that plant choice matters. People are excited because they’re just learning that there’s actually something they can do to help all these problems, and that includes climate change. Thirty percent of the carbon that’s in the atmosphere has come from us taking plants away. Well, put them back and you draw thirty percent out. It’s not going to solve it, but it’s a good start.

I know you see a lot of value in getting undergraduates involved in these projects. What kinds of work are your students doing now?

There’s a large oak tree outside Townsend Hall. It’s making a lot of caterpillars. We need a lot of caterpillars because it takes 9,000 caterpillars to feed a clutch of chickadees. Where are they going to come from? They’re going to come from a tree like that. But most of those caterpillars drop from the tree after they finish growing, and they hatch in the leaves or they tunnel into the ground. Gabriella Pedrick, an undergraduate researcher, is looking at how much pressure a pupa can take before it is squished from a riding mower or someone walking.

Digby Roberts, another undergraduate researcher, is helping with that, but he’s also looking at the impact of mosquito fogging. When you hire a mosquito fogger, it kills all the monarch butterflies, it kills all your pollinators and it does not control mosquitos. He did a project in Indiana this summer at a state park where they fog in campgrounds, but they don’t fog outside of the campground, so he could compare.

We do everything together. Everybody helps everybody else.

How long have you been creating these kinds of experiential learning opportunities for your students?

Since day one. When you’re working with animals, they don’t take weekends off. If you’re watering plants, even on Christmas day, you’ve got to water the plants. So it’s labor-intensive, and we’ve always used a lot of students, which give them valuable experience. Whether or not you’re good at research is not correlated with intelligence. It’s correlated with the type of personality you have, because some really smart people can’t stand repetitiveness. These opportunities give the student an idea—do I want to go to grad school? Many of them are actually spearheading these projects, so they can publish their research as an undergrad. It definitely puts them ahead.

There was one study at Harvard several years ago, looking at the single best predictor of a successful undergraduate experience, and that was getting a close relationship with one or more professors. That’s what experiential learning does—it connects students with someone who has had the experience, who has made the mistakes. That’s part of it, learning how you recover from that.

How do these experiences supplement what students are doing in the classroom?

Classroom learning gives you the facts. But experiential learning gives you practice in taking all those bits of information and making sense of it. Field research is so different from most lab research because everything goes wrong—the temperature is wrong, it rains at the wrong time, it’s windy, somebody mows your plot. How do you react to that?

I’ve always told my students, if you’re working with a living organism, you have to start thinking like that organism. There’s no way you can learn that without doing it.

How has philanthropy played a role in making these sorts of opportunities possible?

Most of my projects are donor-funded. Grants can take you a year and a half to receive funding, as opposed to me giving a talk someplace and somebody walks out after—and this happens—and says, ‘Hey, I like what you’re doing. I want to help.’

That person has been funding my research technician and my grad student for about 10 years now. It just makes it so much easier, especially at my stage of career. I can be a whole lot more productive. Getting competitive grants is, in itself, a valuable experience, but donor support really greases the skids. I’ve had three or four grad students funded completely by donors. That’s $30,000 a year. It’s not trivial.

You’re currently the TA Baker Professor of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Thomas A. Baker taught in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences from 1919 until 1958. His wife, Ruth, created this professorship in his honor. What does it mean to you to represent Dr. Baker’s legacy at UD?

That’s exactly what it is: A legacy of support. I’m proud to be a part of that.

The Baker professorship is a five-year rotation, and I’m finishing the end of my fourth year. It’s been great because it comes with $10,000 per year to hire undergraduate researchers. So, for Digby Roberts’s trip to Indiana—where does that money come from? It comes from things like this. It makes a lot of projects possible and saves a ton of time when you don’t have to go look for that money. If you have a lab going and your grant ends, the lab falls apart. A named professorship gives you continuity, which is extremely important.

To support faculty innovation in teaching and research, visit udel.edu/giving/professorships or contact Sara Cellini at scellini@udel.edu.