Jacob Cummings

he/him
Undergraduate Fellow
Forest Biodiversity Team

How did you get here? What brought you to Tyson?

The first time I heard about Tyson was through the SIFT program. In the summer after my sophomore year of high school, I did SIFT. Then, I did the TERA program after my junior year. I was in the Plant Disease Lab. I didn't do anything last summer. I kept on kind of the ecology and environmental track of education, and I thought it would be nice to reconnect with Tyson, to come back as an undergraduate. I applied and I was accepted and now I'm here.

Why did you choose your specific team?

I did Plant Disease when I was TERA and I really did enjoy that lab. That was one of my top picks this year, but I was hoping to gain some experience in other realms of ecology. I wanted to see what I was interested in, to try to help hone in on what I want to do. Something that interested me about the Forest Team was that we'd learn a lot of the trees. That is something that, as a lifetime Missourian, I hoped to do but never got around to. This was an opportunity to both have a job where I'm interacting with scientists, people that have already found their career paths, and to get out in nature during the summer, and gain the research experience.

How have your interests evolved as a result of being at Tyson?

That one's a little tricky I guess. I’ve learned a lot. Our team focuses a little bit less on individual research, but the research we're doing as a group, the census, is really interesting. It is showing us the kind of work that goes into these larger scale projects. We're finding out with the ForestGEO plot that you can collaborate well with people that aren't working directly with you. There are a lot of different plots and you can do really large scale projects with things like this. Before, my experience was more concentrated to a specific area or specific species. This one is from a wider lens, which is interesting. I think I'm definitely interested in looking at other things, but I do really enjoy the forest work. I enjoy being outside. Even if some days it's hot outside.

What’s been an affirming moment in your work this summer?

So one of the goals I talked about earlier was learning trees. Something I was glad to see coming in was that you learn the trees over time. I'm finding that I notice more and more differences between species that help them stand out. In the beginning I had to really look at the leaves, or look at different things, but now I’m able to look at them, put together a couple quick observations, and know what I’m looking at.

How do you stay motivated throughout the day?

A big thing that our team's been doing is “quiet mornings, loud afternoons.” That’s what we call it. In the morning we'll go in and we'll have just woken up, we'll be full of energy, and we'll go in and be able to listen to the birds, leaves rustling, and whatever else we can hear. But in the afternoon, things start to quiet down, it gets a bit hotter. I've been bringing my speaker and we all have a playlist. We all listen to music while measuring, which definitely helps us get into a flow. As we've gotten going, we're able to be a bit more efficient in our work, and it requires less brain power as it originally did, although we are still taking care with our measurements. So we're able to talk a little bit more with each other, get to know each other a bit better. Those conversations are nice, when you're still able to connect with people while working together, moving through these things. Having that good relationship with your team keeps one motivated.