Daily Bruin Podcast contributor Megan Vahdat sat down with UCLA professor Tonya Kane to discuss her journey to UCLA, travels abroad and advice for undergraduates.
Megan Vahdat: I’m Megan Vahdat, and this is “Bruin to Bruin,” a Daily Bruin podcast that interviews influential members of the UCLA community. Today, I am joined by Dr. Tonya Kane. Dr. Kane earned her Ph.D. from the UCLA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, where she studied microbial nitrogen cycling in Southern California estuaries. She has served as a lecturer for 10 years at UCLA, teaching courses ranging from marine botany to LS (Life Sciences) 7B. Many know her as a leader in the field quarter program. She has taken students to study science around the world in places such as Bodega Bay and Tahiti. Dr. Kane, thank you so much for joining me today.
Tonya Kane: Thanks, Megan.
MV: You have had such a fascinating journey growing up in a small town in Michigan, being the first in your family to go to college and now engaging thousands of students in your UCLA lectures. Let’s start from the beginning. UCLA is one of the largest college campuses. We have a huge student body. And not many people know that you grew up in a town very different from a large metropolitan city like LA (Los Angeles). In fact, you just had 32 people in your public school class. Can you share what that experience was like and how it shaped your path today?
TK: Yeah, it was a very small town. I grew up on a dirt road. My backyard – all you could see was trees, and so it was really nice. We spent a lot of time playing outside and having adventures with my friends. It was like typical Gen X, where you go outside and your parents don’t know where you are for a few hours, and then eventually you come back with a scrape on your arm because you’ve been playing in the woods. And I knew those 32 people. I knew a lot of them since we were in kindergarten together.
MV: It sounds like you had a very close-knit group.
TK: We had a very close-knit community. But of course, that means those are all the people you know, right? So you have to learn to get along with people. You have to really learn to accept each other’s differences and adjust and just figure it out. So I have some really great friends still from that experience, and we still get together every time I’m back in Michigan, which is usually like twice a year – where all my family is still there.
MV: It sounds like a lot of your childhood was shaped by a collaborative environment. You’ve mentioned that you had a very close-knit community, so you were surrounded by people you had to be very close with and learn how to kind of coexist with. And at the same time, you were outside a lot, playing in nature. And I wonder how that specifically has shaped your career as a marine biologist and an educator. You know, the nature of your job is to be working with the environment, and it is so collaboration-based. I’m curious – when did your interest in marine biology and in the ocean specifically really take hold when you were growing up in that small town? Was that something you were always interested in? Were there courses in undergrad that inspired you? How did you really end up in this field, and what role did your growing up play in that?
TK: My friends and I would go play in the stream and catch little crustaceans and things. And so I think I was always kind of interested in exploring biology. I had said at some point during middle school or high school that I wanted to be a marine biologist, and I had people in my school, like teachers, who said, “You can’t do that. You’re going to have to go to school for a really long time, and you’re going to have to move really far away, and you’ll never find a job.” Not a lot of people at that point in time really left that small town. Everybody stayed pretty close, and I didn’t really want to, and so I started to explore other things. It also changed my mind a little bit. So I thought, “Well, maybe I need to be an engineer.” And so I’m thinking, well, maybe I’m supposed to be an engineer, because I really like math and science, and I live in Michigan, where there’s the big auto industry, lots of engineers. But I really didn’t want to do that. My sister became an engineer and is amazing, but it just wasn’t for me. So I went to college not quite knowing what my major was going to be, but knowing it was going to be biology-related, and not knowing what my career goals were going to be. And then I got involved in research, and I applied for summer programs, and I ended up doing a summer program. Between my sophomore and junior year – so between years two and three – that brought me to UCLA. I got to work with a graduate student doing sea anemone research in the intertidal, collecting sea anemones and bringing them back to the lab and setting up their little tanks and measuring them. And I was like, “Oh, this is awesome. This is cool. This is what I want to do.”
MV: I guess that middle school you, who was told by teachers that you could never become a marine biologist, couldn’t have imagined the life that you would live – traveling the whole world pretty much, which we’ll talk about later, exploring marine biology. And I think advisors like that, or teachers like that, or people who discourage students from pursuing these niche careers in STEM cause a lot of self-doubt about people in STEM fields. I guess I’m curious: What advice would you give to students who, because of that pushback – especially, I think, female students who are very discouraged sometimes from pursuing those careers – who are overwhelmed or uncertain about pursuing a career in science?
TK: It can be very overwhelming. And the other difficulty is that you don’t know what you don’t know yet, right? So this is new to everybody. I didn’t know all of these careers existed. I didn’t know what grad school or a Ph.D. was when I started college. And so you definitely have to put yourself out there. You have to take advantage of opportunities as they come your way and have an open mind to those opportunities. That might come in the form of getting an email from somebody in the undergrad counseling office and going to some workshop and learning more about study abroad, or it could come from something on your professor’s course website listing an extra resource that’s maybe not required but optional. Maybe that could open your mind to something. And then just applying for things, trying to get experience in a wide range of things. Because until you actually try it, you don’t know. There are plenty of things where I think UCLA students are all very smart, and they are all very curious and interested in a lot of things and will do very well in many different areas. And so sometimes that actually makes it harder to pick something that you’re passionate about, because you are good at lots of other things, you know? If you try things and find out, “Oh, that’s exactly what I thought it was, and I’m still really interested,” or, “Oh, that’s not quite what I thought that was going to be like, and I didn’t enjoy that at all” – maybe you can check that off your list, and you don’t have to pursue that path any longer, and you can put your attention toward other things.
MV: I think the nature of our college system is really tough because you come in choosing a major. So I think a lot of us students feel like, oh, we have to pursue that, or we have to focus so deeply on that kind of niche subject that as a high school student when we were like 17 and 18. We signed up for it when we came to UCLA. And I think your personal journey shows that career paths aren’t always linear. You mentioned to me that you took a year off during your Ph.D. to do a fellowship at NOAA in Washington, D.C., but you later realized that it wasn’t the right fit. What did that experience teach you about finding the right career path for you and kind of the impact of those hands-on work experiences that you were mentioning earlier?
TK: I actually had never had a marine biology class before I came into my graduate school program to do marine ecology, so the first year or so was just figuring out what I needed to know and doing the research that I needed to be able to develop my question and my hypotheses and develop experiments and make those network, make those connections with people to help me get further in that process. And then I spent several years just working really hard on collecting data, lots of fieldwork, lots and lots of lab work – again, making those connections and asking people for advice and getting their expertise. And then at some point along the way, I had an opportunity presented to apply for this fellowship. So it’s called the Knauss Fellowship, and it was in Washington, D.C., and I applied thinking, “I probably won’t get this” – but I did it anyway, and I got it. And so I moved to Washington, D.C., for a year towards the end of my Ph.D., and I worked in the (National) Ocean Service at NOAA. And I worked on things like a climate change website and helping to facilitate large meetings across the agency and bring in other groups to talk about things like ocean mapping.
And so I learned so much, and the people I worked with were great – but I also realized I really did not enjoy a 9-to-5 job where I came in, sat at my desk in a cubicle, and had a boss that told me exactly what to do and how to do it, and to do things that you know weren’t my own, that I didn’t have any kind of autonomy on. And I also really missed interacting with my colleagues, and I missed interacting with students. And so I decided to come back to UCLA, finished up my Ph.D., and then I started pursuing teaching positions. And so I taught at UCLA, I taught a class at Pierce College, I taught a few classes at Chapman University, and then eventually UCLA hired me on full time as a teaching lecturer. So teaching faculty, and I’ve been doing that for – I think, collectively, something at like 10 years since. And I love it most days. You know, there’s always the stress parts of any job, right? But I really enjoy students, and I enjoy their energy, and I enjoy teaching them and getting them excited about new topics and seeing their curiosity. And so most days, it’s quite fun. Of course, any job has its difficult days. So I think that’s other advice I like to give to students – to be prepared for that as you’re trying to figure out what it is you’re going to do in your career, and you’re being exposed to all these new ideas and new options that you didn’t even know existed.
It can be really easy to get caught up and be like, “Ooh, that sounds really fun and cool.” People who see marine biology think, “Ooh, marine biology.” But when you actually talk to marine biologists, you find out you spend a lot of time at a computer, a lot of time writing. You spend time being cold and wet and muddy and uncomfortable and maybe seasick. And so knowing the full picture – not just what’s good and what’s bad, but what’s a day-to-day experience like for those people. I always tell students: If you’re going to talk to people about their careers, there are a few important questions. One is, “How did you get here?” Because you’re going to find that almost nobody that you really admire has gotten to where they are in a linear way. There’s always side branches and routes and failures. And the other is, “What does your typical day look like? What’s a typical Tuesday?” Not, “What’s the best part of your job,” or, “What’s the worst part of your job,” but, “What’s the majority of your time spent doing?” Because that’s really going to just help you decide – is that something you want to do or not?
MV: You’re a huge proponent – even in our courses, anyone who takes your class knows – of getting that hands-on experience and going somewhere rather than just sitting and reading a book to fully grasp a subject. And that’s how you find out what the setbacks of a career are, what the difficulties are, what the realities of something that you’re envisioning in your mind as this perfect life is. And I think a lot of your class is, you know, hardcore. – what we’d imagine to be crystal-clear, good-and-bad, black-and-white scientific concepts that don’t always have a lot of room for analysis because they’re facts. But you also are a big proponent of the importance of hands-on research and getting your feet wet and really getting on the ground to learn a scientific concept.
I mean, you’ve spoken about your incredible experiences doing fieldwork in Puerto Rico, and now as a professor, you’ve taken students to similar trips that you had when you were a student in college doing research. You’ve taken students to Tahiti, Australia, Catalina Island and Bodega Bay. What are some of your most memorable moments from these trips? And how, from a professor’s perspective, do you feel that they impact the students?
TK: Well, I think literally getting your feet wet in the sciences is so important. We are really training the future ecologists and environmental problem solvers, and we need you to really experience that in order to understand it. So our department has a few courses that are pretty field-focused. One is that I teach a marine botany course, which is, of course, all about algae – or seaweed to most people. And we go on some field trips. We just went on one last weekend where we go camping at a UC ecological reserve, and the students get to experience both the reserve but also get out into the intertidal and inspect the different species of algae that are there and do a lot of hands-on work in the lab to identify specimens and look under the microscope. So it’s super hands-on, super collaborative small course, and we all really get to know each other well. It’s a really fun class for both me and for the students. It’s hard work. Many of them will tell you that it’s one of the hardest classes that they’ve done because of the amount of motivation and responsibility it takes. But they love it, and so do I.
And then the other courses that I get the privilege to teach are these field biology quarters. So the UCLA Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, which is my department, has a marine biology major and the EBE (ecology, behavior and evolution) major, and both of those require a capstone field research experience. So the students apply for those usually a year ahead of time, and then they get accepted into the program, and they go different places. Different faculty lead different ones. There’s one next quarter that I’m teaching with Peggy Fong.
MV: Whose lab you were a part of?
TK: Yes, Peggy was my Ph.D. advisor, and now we teach this course together. I used to TA it for her as a grad student, and now we teach it together, which is totally full circle – and we are both very aware of that and love that.
And so we are taking 15 students to Tahiti – to Moorea, the island of Moorea – where there’s a field station there, and we’ll do marine biology research for five weeks, and they will be fully hands-on. Some of them have done scientific scuba diving training and will be scuba diving. Some will be doing some snorkeling, and they’ll work in small teams. They come up with their own research project. They develop their idea. They develop the proposal. We guide them to develop these experiments and observations, and then they’ll collect data for those five weeks that we’re there. They work really hard while we’re there. They’re in the water every day or in the lab every day. They’re sometimes multiple times a day in the water. We’re like, they’re getting a little soggy and they need a break. And then they’ll analyze their data. They’ll use the current statistical methods and software to do that. And so they’re learning tons and tons of skills. And then they’ll write up and present their research to the community. And some of them may even go on to publish their work from when we’re there. And it’s really a great experience.
Students come into it not entirely sure or thinking they might be sure of what they want their career to be. They’re going to med school, or they’re going to go to grad school. For some of them, it really confirms their choice. They really are wanting to go to grad school now. And for some of them, they’re like, “Oh, this isn’t quite what I thought.” Or, “I really wanted to go to med school, but now that I’m doing this, I’m really in love with what I’m doing, and maybe I want to change my mind.” So I think it’s a really transformative experience. Plus, they get to know each other so well. They become friends. And we’ve had some friendships from these marine biology quarters that have lasted decades.
MV: You mentioned that these trips help really inspire the next generation of marine biologists and also environmental problem solvers – and now that has become an ever-pressing issue, especially as we think about the effects of climate change and ocean acidification and the wildfires, how runoff has affected our marine populations. Can you speak a little bit from a marine biologist perspective of how that has impacted your course? Like I know you take trips to Malibu, for instance – and also, what students should be considering when we’re reading about how these wildfires have affected marine ecosystems?
TK: Well, the wildfires, of course, are so devastating to so many people around the Los Angeles area. And so, you know, especially from a marine science perspective – right now, you have a lot of new runoff from those wildfire areas that are going to bring a lot of sediment into the coastal ocean along Malibu and other materials that could be in that sediment. And so it’s definitely something we need to be aware of. And there are groups that are currently monitoring that. They’re out there almost instantly and are taking water samples and things. And so we’re keeping a good eye on what’s going on there, but definitely it’s going to affect not only the humans, but it’s also going to affect that marine community for a long time. It has changed a bit of the things that I’m doing this quarter as well. So students – normally for this class, this marine botany class that I’m teaching, we would be going to different locations in Malibu and looking at some of the algae that we would find there and comparing that to some of the algae we look at when we go on the field trip up to Cambria. And we can’t obviously do that right now, because some of the sites are just unsafe, and also just getting to some of the other sites that might still be okay – that’s just traffic and things that we don’t want to add to the already difficult situation that’s in that area. So we’ve just taken that off the table for this quarter. We’re still going to a couple sites down in San Pedro and Palos Verdes, but it definitely has changed a little bit, and it’s also made students a lot more aware of how one problem in one location has all these interconnected threads to other problems. You know, so things that are happening on land are affecting the ocean. Things that happen in the ocean are affecting people on land. And that’s something, like a bigger theme of ecology that I hope my students are taking away, even if they never study ecology again – understanding how important the ocean is to their day-to-day life, and how they have the potential to both positively and negatively impact the ocean, and how everything is really interconnected.
MV: And I think those hands-on experiences, especially in local communities, are especially impactful now that this is at the forefront of the news. And you are someone who speaks very often about how locally in LA, there are a lot of places that students can visit to understand more about our environment, about marine ecology and about environmental history. Locally, I remember in class, you showed us a picture of Wilshire Boulevard covered with animals in the past, and I was just shocked, because that’s what I drive down every day to come to school. What are some places that you recommend in LA if students want to learn more about marine ecology or about the environment for them to check out while they’re students at UCLA and are around so many great resources?
TK: So, yeah, there’s such an opportunity, because there’s so many options really nearby, right? So you could go to the aquarium at the Santa Monica Pier – Heal the Bay has a small little aquarium there – and I have many students who’ve volunteered there and done programs for elementary school kids or beach cleanup programs. You can take the bus there, right? So that’s totally easy to do. A little farther away, you can go to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, which is down in San Pedro. They have an excellent program there. They also have a lot of education and outreach that they do for school groups. You can get involved that way, and it’s just a great little aquarium to explore. There’s a touch tank, and there’s also a lot of habitat nearby. You can go out tide pooling during a low tide and actually see some of those things in their real-life habitat. Other great things that are related to ecology and sort of the history of this area – of course, the Natural History Museum is amazing, and that’s easy to get to as well. And then right down Wilshire, we have the Page Museum and the La Brea Tar Pits. And that’s what I was telling you about in class the other day, right? We were talking about how there used to be camels in North America and how, you know, saber-toothed cats would be walking down what is now Wilshire. So just thinking about what it would have been like here, long before we were here.
MV: So hard to imagine now because of, you know, the fact that we’re a bustling city, and you can pretty much only see cars in the distance wherever you go.
TK: But there’s also a lot of really great urban ecology that’s going on. And there’s people here at UCLA studying urban ecology too. So, you know, looking at birds on campus and going locally to areas where you could hike and seeing the plants and the birds and the lizards and everything else that are there, right – there’s a lot of opportunities. Even though the city is so big, there’s lots of wildlife both nearby and next – like right within our campus. So, you know, just keeping your eyes open and observing what’s around you. I think that people can connect with nature more than they realize, right?
MV: And especially in a very digitized age, sometimes we need to look up from our phones and appreciate the beautiful ecosystem around us. And even on our campus, we have so many incredible resources for students to check out that you’ve mentioned. I think you’re someone who a lot of students turn to for advice. You’re someone who’s very anecdotal about moments of being a college student. I’ve even heard about your college roommates, and I think that that’s so central to what you’re teaching. And whether it’s a recommendation – like you were just talking about a place to visit on campus or beyond the LA community – or just a story from your past, you’re someone who a lot of students look up to. So to finish off today’s interview, I wanted to ask – what is the No. 1 piece of advice you have for UCLA students trying to figure out what career they want to pursue?
TK: I really think you kind of have to get yourself out of your comfort zone a little bit and put yourself out there. It’s really hard to do that, and it feels like it gets harder to do that, you know, as we become more in our little bubble – but you have to. You have to put yourself out there and try so many things. Get involved. Talk to people. Apply for things you never thought you should apply for or you don’t think you’re ever going to get. But try it anyway, because you never know. Travel if you can. There are ways to do that, you know, relatively inexpensively. I know it’s hard to do, but, you know, I’m somebody who – through my summers – I always had to have a job in college. I had to work through college. But I also tried to do things that would give me some experience at the same time.
The other thing is, what I did – and this, I don’t know whether it’s right for everybody or not – but I often support students who want to take some time after they finish their bachelor’s degree before they go on to the next step that they’re trying to figure out. Some people want to go on to med school or dental school or law school. Some people want to go to graduate school and be a science researcher or something completely different. But you want to be sure that that’s the right choice for you in the moment. Because I feel like sometimes we pick things because we’re not sure what else to do, and we feel like that’s what we should do – that’s the next thing to do, right? So take some time and do some self-reflection and evaluation and make sure that you’re doing that because that’s really the right thing for you and your path.
I did. I took a break, and you mentioned London at one point, right? I was just enjoying my life in London. So I did a study abroad program my second semester of my second year of college, where I did 2 1/2 months in London as a study abroad, which I highly recommend – study abroad. And then I loved it, but I wanted to go back and live there without other people that I knew. And so I went, I got a work visa, and I went back after undergrad and spent some time living and working in London before coming back for grad school. And part of the reason I did that is because I wanted to make sure that I was coming to graduate school because I really wanted to, not because I just didn’t know what else to do.
And so I went to London. I started for the first couple of weeks working as a temp in an investment bank, and I was miserable, and the people were not nice. And then a friend that I met there – who ended up becoming my best friend to this day, we’re the closest of anybody almost in my life – and we decided to go get pub jobs. So we lived above a pub, and we worked in the pub. We just traveled, and we made friends with lots of other people that were doing the same thing. And now we have friends from all over the world who are all very accomplished and successful people who were doing the same – trying to take some time and really getting to know what they wanted to do with their next steps and making a little money so that they could support themselves while they figured it out. And so that’s what we did.
And I think that was a really important and life-changing experience for me, and it also helped me to solidify that, yes, this is what I want to do next. I do want to go to grad school. I do want to use my brain. I do want to be studying the ocean. And I found opportunities to still travel, which is something I’m really passionate about, right?
MV: Yes, it’s so important to hit pause sometimes and take a break, because it’s sometimes hard to think that that is the most beneficial to your career. But those moments of reflection, which you’ve emphasized so many times, are critical to making sure that you’re on the right path.
TK: It’s really hard to fit in, right? We’re all so busy all the time. If you looked at my calendar, you would be a little horrified. Or my emails, which – I’m sorry to everyone I haven’t responded to yet – it’d be, yeah, it’s just go, go, go, go, go, go, with very few, if any, breaks in between on a day. But then I try to every so often give myself the afternoon, or, you know, make sure there’s a weekend where I don’t schedule myself, and I can just stay home and be quiet and not talk to anybody for a day or two, right? Because we all need those moments of being able to just think and being able to not have all those outside pressures and just have some time, right? So it’s really hard to fit in, but it’s really important.
MV: Thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Kane. I’m sure so many students will appreciate your invaluable advice.
TK: Thank you for having me.
MV: This episode of “Bruin to Bruin” was brought to you by The Daily Bruin podcasts. You can listen to this episode and all Daily Bruin podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud. The audio and transcript of today’s interview are available at dailybruin.com. I’m Megan Vahdat. Thank you for listening.
Comments are closed.