20th Annual Undergraduate Research Conference

Dr. Emily Deaver is Professor Emerita in Environmental Science from Southwest Minnesota State University (SMSU). She has a BS in Biology from the College of William and Mary, an MS in Biological Oceanography from Old Dominion University and a PhD in Biology from the University of Mississippi. She taught for 7 years at Chowan College (now University) in North Carolina where she coordinated their Environmental Biology program. She then moved to Minnesota where she worked with her colleague Dr. Tom Dilley in the Environmental Science program at SMSU for the next 17 years. After serving as a member of the SMSU Project Kaleidoscope STEM Leadership team she was inspired to initiate a reorganization of the Environmental Science major to include a required capstone research project. With support from the Science Department, she planned and organized the first SMSU Undergraduate Research Conference (URC) in 2006 as a place for students to present their research findings. The first URC included only Science students but interest from across campus meant that the conference quickly expanded to include all interested disciplines, and ballooned to hundreds of students and presentations from as many as 20 different disciplines. Over the course of her career, Dr. Deaver supervised over 130 different undergraduate research projects.  She continued as the SMSU URC conference organizer and coordinator until her retirement in 2020.  Recently Emily has enjoyed playing pickleball (lots and lots of pickleball), yoga, traveling, volunteer ushering at the performing arts center and participating in three book clubs. Dr. Deaver will be sharing information about her unconventional work experiences on the way to becoming a college professor. She worked for 12 years after completing her master’s degree in Biological Oceanography before returning to school to get a PhD.  She first spent about 5 years as a fish farmer and aquaculture specialist. She then worked at a variety of other jobs- environmental monitoring, hazardous waste sampling, several years as a construction worker, a lab manager and research coordinator, culturing estuarine organisms and conducting environmental research in the Chesapeake Bay region. She will share lessons learned along the way and connect these experiences to undergraduate research and the importance of asking questions, striving to get answers, and learning about the world around us.