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Leah Johnson
Sustainability as the New Standard Leah Johnson BSx’19 didn’t have cable TV until her freshman year of high school. Even after the box arrived, her parents enforced a daily one-hour rule for screen time. So she spent much of her childhood exploring the natural landscape around the Twin Cities suburb where she grew up.
studies major, Leah is a fearless doer who complements her environmental ethics with concrete action. As a firstyear student, Johnson discovered the ASM Sustainability Committee, a subgroup of the Associated Students of Madison (ASM) that focuses on identifying and addressing ways for the university to advance its sustainability practices. She moved up the ranks quickly, serving most recently as chair. In this leadership role, she sought to infuse sustainability into the everyday fabric of campus, making green living an easy choice — and perhaps not a conscious choice at all. For instance, she argues, “No one cares about the tiny delay in automated lights in bathrooms and common areas. No one says, ‘this split second of darkness is terrible.’ And yet the energy-saving benefits of installing them are enormous.” But Johnson quickly realized that achieving large-scale operational change means building coalitions. She cofounded CLEAN (Campus Leaders for Environmental Action Now), a group of student leaders who want UW–Madison to commit to using solely renewable energy by 2030. The group has taken off, says Johnson, and campus leaders are taking notice: Photo by Michael P. King members of CLEAN recently “Our version of forced family fun presented their case to administrators was to go hiking or to tromp up and in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for down a muddy river,” Leah recalls. Finance and Administration and the Apparently, her parents’ approach Office of Sustainability. worked: Leah quickly decided that she Johnson has gone from tracing wanted to make the environment part muddy waterways in Minnesota to makof her career. “I realized it wasn’t enough ing waves in sustainability at the UW. to just care about the environment,” she It’s a safe assumption that she’ll keep says. “I wanted to do something.” expanding her green horizons through Now entering her senior year as her last year of college and beyond. a biochemistry and environmental —Nathan Jandl 10
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SUMMER 2018
I’D LIKE TO THANK THE ACADEMY The bacteriology and biochemistry departments keep adding to their list of accolades. Katherine “Trina” McMahon and Jue “Jade” Wang, both professors of bacteriology, were elected Fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology, and Robert C. Landick, the Charles Yanofsky Professor of Biochemistry and Bacteriology, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. DAIRY DOMINANCE Dairy-minded folks with CALS connections gathered a herd of awards and honors in recent months. In April, a team of now recently graduated dairy science students, including Charles Hamilton BS’18, Anthony Schmitz BS’18, Logan Voigts BS’18, and Connor Willems BS’18, took first place at the National Intercollegiate Dairy Challenge. They were coached by faculty associate Ted Halbach and professor David Combs PhD’85. Students weren’t the only ones to be recognized. Dairy science alumnus Pete Kappelman BS’85 of Reedsville, Wisconsin, was named the 2018 Dairyman of the Year by the World Dairy Expo, and dairy science assistant professor Heather White was honored as AgSource Friend of the Cooperative. In the world of cheese, John Lucey, director of the UW Center for Dairy Research, was inducted into La Guilde Internationale des Fromagers, and Babcock Hall Dairy Plant cheesemaker Gary Grossen received the Vanguard Award from the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association. Holy cow!
Number Crunching
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THE UW MICROBIOLOGY DOCTORAL TRAINING PROGRAM IS NUMBER ONE, according to the most recent graduate school rankings released by U.S. News & World Report. Other programs affiliated with CALS also fared well in the rankings. The biochemistry specialty ranked eighth and the biological/agricultural specialty ranked 14th.
