From Gopher to Biologist
By Ricky Hayes- public relations intern
Imagine the racetrack, where cars are whizzing by at a hundred miles an hour. The pit crews’ adrenaline is rushing as their driver pulls in for a pit stop. The team rushes to change the tires and gas up the car before sending the driver back into the race.
How exciting would it be to be either the driver or part of the pit crew? But that’s not where James Pushnik was during the races. He was sometimes above the track with a chalkboard, which back then was the way to communicate to the drivers.
Pushnik was a gopher for McLaren Racing Team, whose job was not only to hold the chalkboard during races, but also to clean up the shop and paint the garage floors so mechanics could spot any oil leaks in the car.
At the time, Pushnik was going to Cypress College in Buena Park, Calif. Pushnik said he had a professor who loved to study cockroaches, and he brought Pushnik back to thinking about nature, mostly because the professor made fun of him for being a gopher.
“I’ve always been interested in the outdoors,” Pushnik said.
Growing up in a military family had allowed Pushnik to see several types of environments including, desert, tropical and forested areas in Canada. He had been to 16 different schools by the time he graduated from Western High in Anaheim, Calif.
Pushnik decided to go back and study nature at Humboldt State in Arcata, Calif. He said that he studied oceanography at first, but somewhere along the way he became extremely interested in plants.
Pushnik has been studying ecology for 40 years now. His main areas of studies are the response of plants to air pollution and mapping out impacts to plants from pollution.
He said during those years he took an interest in two main directions. First, he studies how air pollution impacts plants in areas where plants don’t store water very well. Second, he studies how carbon dioxide brings about climate change, which effects the way plants grow and survive.
Pushnik has also worked with biotechnology, where he studied genes in plants, trying to find an alternative, high quality fuel source. He said it was a side trip in his life about 25 years ago, but he decided to come and teach at Chico State in 1989.
The last 15 years, Pushnik’s passion has gone back to how plants hold water and the related effects of climate change. Ten years ago, he went on sabbatical to study ecology on a global scale at U.C. Davis. He used simulations to determine patterns in plant water uses. He has also studied such patterns at the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve.
One of Pushnik’s recent projects is working to help form the Center for Ecosystem Research (CER). He said it is a place of collaboration for different fields or “connecting the dots.” For students who work in CER, they are going to be exposed to many different disciplines, which could help them pick a field of study and learn more about the different areas of science.
He said for this reason, CER’s purpose for existence is about moving forward in science. Though Pushnik would also like to see one major stereotype about scientists destabilized, which is that scientists don’t communicate well with the general public. His hope is CER also uncovers new ways to breakdown the barriers between the public and scientists to create a more sustainable society.