Liberal arts, Ripon professors led Liz

Walsh ’14 to her dream career

Liz Walsh ’14 felt lost.

As a junior at Ripon College in about 2012, she had lost confidence in her plan to become a high school English or biology teacher. “I enjoyed both subjects very much and I thought I could keep students’ attention talking about either sex and death (the vast majority of English themes) or poop and sex (the vast majority of biology connects to metabolisis or reproduction),” Walsh says.

But teaching no longer interested her. What was she to do with her life? So Walsh did what so many Ripon College students do. She unloaded her worries onto her advisor.

“It was an emotional meeting on my end for poor Dr. Bob (Wallace),” Walsh recalls, “but he reassured me that I had plenty of other options: with my grades and passion for beekeeping, he asked me why I wasn’t considering doing something with research?

“That was extremely good advice.”

With the varied tools Ripon College’s liberal arts education provided her, Walsh pivoted into what would become an exciting field of study for her. Today, she’s with the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a research entomologist with the Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics and Physiology Unit in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She and other scientists use genetics to improve honey bee breeding and health.

“There’s still so much to learn!” Walsh says. “We’re making new discoveries in honey bee biology all the time, so getting to help make some of those discoveries is beyond fun and exciting.”

Dr. Bob’s advice carved a clear niche for Walsh toward bee research, and Walsh flew toward it. Even her English professors were on board: Professor David Graham, for instance, allowed her to use Sylvia Plath’s poems on honey bees for a seminar focus.

“Dr. Bob and Dr. (George ‘Skip’) Wittler were very encouraging of my exploratory work with honey bees as an independent study and as a senior seminar topic,” Walsh says, adding that she “never really considered (bee research) as an option for myself until Dr. Bob suggested considering it.”

Prior to graduating from Ripon in 2014, Walsh joined an undergraduate research experience at Texas A&M University, and later received her doctorate degree there after researching how pesticides impact honey bee queen health. A postdoctoral fellowship took her to Alberta, Canada, for further research on honey bee diseases.

“I knew that I wanted to continue to do practical honey bee research and that the best place to do that was likely in the USDA,” Walsh says, explaining that in her current role, “I’m able to do the work that I’ve always wanted to do and to see the difference I’m making when a beekeeper stakeholder gets excited about my findings.”

Given continuing — though decreasing — concerns about bee colonies collapsing, Walsh finds herself at the heart of an important effort. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “Once thought to pose a major long-term threat to bees, reported cases of CCD have declined substantially over the last five years. … The USDA is leading the federal government response (to this problem).”

Walsh’s current research examines how the environmental stressors honey bees en-

Liz Walsh ’14 marks bees with paint as a part of her research for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She joined the USDA in May 2022, and enjoys the work. “Some days I spend in the field doing beekeeping, others I spend in the lab doing dissections or DNA or RNA extractions, yet other days I have meetings with collaborators or am writing. It’s fun for me to have a job with this much variability because there’s never enough monotony to be bored.”

Liz Walsh ’ 14 , a researcher for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is establishing a lab that studies honey bees. “I am able to conduct experiments which then lead to new information that beekeepers can utilize to make management decisions within their apiaries.” counter may affect traits that are either bred into, or out of, honey bee stocks. She’s also researching honey bee reproductive health, particularly as it relates to drone (male honey bee) behavior.

“Drones are understudied compared to queens, so it’s fun to work with them because we know relatively little about their reproductive behaviors and the mechanisms for their choices,” Walsh says, adding that her lab is growing. “... In a world where food scarcity is already an issue, honey bee health becomes an important aspect of human health. My work directly helps improve and maintain honey bee health,” she says.

She even gets to use numerous facets of her Ripon education in her work. Whether they are the writing techniques she picked up in the English department or the tenets she learned from her biology classes, Walsh sees her investment in a Ripon College education pay off time and again.

“I hadn’t realized how much the different things I learned in various departments would combine to be helpful to me in my career,” she says, adding that it’s a career that continues to put a smile on her face, day after day. “I have my dream job,” she says. “I’ve never had a job where I was so excited to go to work every day, so this is exciting and humbling to me.”

IAN STEPLETON ’98 ADJUNCT INSTRUCTOR OF JOURNALISM