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VOICE OVER: This is Alumni Aloud, a podcast by Graduate Center students for Graduate Center students. In each episode we talk with a GC graduate about their career path, the ins and outs of their current position, and the career advice they have for students. This series is sponsored by the Graduate Center’s Office of Career Planning & Professional Development. 

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ABBIE TURNER, EDITOR: This interview was recorded by Katherine Rivera Gómez who is a student in the Biology PhD program at the Graduate Center. She interviewed James Lendemer, who got his PhD in Biology and works at the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx.  

KATHERINE RIVERA GOMEZ, HOST: Hi James! Can you tell us your name and what you do for a living? 

JAMES LENDEMER, GUEST: Sure, so my name’s James Lendemer and I am an assistant curator in the Institute of Systematic Botany at the New York Botanical Garden where I study lichens.  

RIVERA GOMEZ: Can you tell me a little bit about your academic background.  

LENDEMER: So I have a Bachelor’s in Biology and I came to the CUNY PhD program in Biology in 2007. As part of getting my PhD I also got a Master’s in Plant Science. 

RIVERA GOMEZ: When did you realize that you wanted to pursue a PhD in biology? 

LENDEMER: I actually realized that I wanted to move on to do doctoral research and ultimately pursue a career in biodiversity science somewhere around 2006 or 2007 after finishing my undergraduate and after working in a museum during my undergraduate and prior to that for about ten years.  

RIVERA GOMEZ: Can you tell us a little bit about your current position at the New York Botanical Gardens and at the Graduate Center? 

LENDEMER: So I’m basically a staff researcher at the Botanical Garden so I have a lab and I have graduate students who are also associated with the City University of New York. They’re in the exact same Plant Science program that I came through as well. And I study lichens, which are fungi that enter into symbioses with algae for the purpose of obtaining nutrition. It’s a really cool lifestyle, it’s really unique. And basically I developed an externally funded research program on my own to do this kind of research. And then also curation of the collections there. That’s sort of part of my job as well and it dovetails with the research that I do. And my relationship with the Graduate Center and with CUNY is that I’m faculty in the Biology program here. So I have graduate students that come through for which I serve as their primary mentor and then I also sit on committees of students in the plant sciences and now also the EEB program potentially.  

RIVERA GOMEZ: Can you tell us what’s a typical day at work like for you at the Botanical Gardens? 

LENDEMER: I will honestly tell you that I don’t have a typical day. So no two days are alike and that’s partially because of the freedom that I have as a full-time researcher is really that most of my time is not necessarily spent here in New York City or on campus at the Botanical Gardens. So I mean I’m carrying out my research and my outreach in education objectives really wherever they may lead. And so for instance a lot of my work, because of the organisms I study, are highly sensitive to pollution and disturbance, there are not as many species in urban areas like New York City. And so the areas that I work in are often you know twelve, sixteen hour drive away. So when I’m doing work in the field, I’m typically gone for two to three or four months out of the year spaced throughout the year. Working twenty-four hours a day more or less myself and my students and my collaborators to sort of accomplish various projects that we have.  

And then when I’m actually at the Botanical Garden a day could be as diverse as sort of sitting and crunching numbers and analyzing data in my office at a computer. I could be in a lab doing chemical analyses, thin-layer chromatography, I could be extracting DNA, sending DNA out for sequencing, I could be doing any number of things. And I could also be examining specimens sent by other people to verify their identifications and doing work like that and then also curating the collections. Literally no two days are the same and you never know what the next day will bring. It’s sort of a matter of prioritizing all the different tasks I have. And that’s in addition of course to editing journals and books and writing my own papers, mentoring students, things like that. It all fits in the schedule somehow one way or another! 

RIVERA GOMEZ: Can you tell us about the journey you took from the Graduate Center to when you graduated from your PhD to the New York Botanical Gardens? 

LENDEMER: Sure so for me it was actually a kind of direct road more or less. There aren’t very many places in the United States or really the world even where you can study what I wanted to study for my PhD. And so that’s part of the reason that I decided to apply to the Botanical Garden and CUNY which are a joint program was that really it was the only place where I could go and develop an independent research program you know studying the things I wanted to study. There just was not the type of mentorship available anywhere else. So the experts that I needed to have training from were at the Botanical Garden and at CUNY. And it just so happens that I thought it turned out to be a great atmosphere with a diversity of colleagues and diversity of research interests.  

And I mean that really prompted me to realize that if I was going to be continuing doing the work that I was doing, I really wanted to continue at the Botanical Garden and CUNY because it was the primary place to do it and I thought it was sort of the best place to advance my goals as well. And so after graduating from the PhD program, I collaborated with another colleague at the Botanical Garden and another colleague who was then at Duke University to get an NSF grant which my colleague from Duke and I were both the PI’s and postdocs on. So we essentially wrote an NSF grant that funded our own postdoc’s so that allowed me to stay at the institution where I ultimately wanted to obtain a position. 

RIVERA GOMEZ: Are there any mentors that helped you through your PhD that you are…are you still connected to them? 

LENDEMER: Well so the funny thing is and this is I think actually very true for students in the EEB and especially in the Plant Sciences subprograms in the Biology PhD program here at the Graduate Center, is that a lot of the students essentially come in already with a lot of sort of baseline like knowledge of what they are interested in, a potential plan for what they want to do and they’re here to get that work done. You know I don’t think that’s necessarily the case in a lot of the other PhD programs here, maybe it is, but just to sort of speak for the student body there, I mean I think a lot of the students come in with sort of like…I am already kind of an expert on a thing, I need to get a degree, you know. *laughs* To advance my career. And so you find someone who also has you know overlapping interests or skillsets or what have you to work with. But a lot of the faculty are…I won’t say hands-off, that’s not the right way to say it, but really encourage this sort of independent, original research model of sort of, “ok pursue the thing that you are already very interested in.”  

So I mean I worked with a lot of great people over the years here who I learned a tremendous amount from you know. Some of whom are retired, some of whom are unfortunately no longer alive. This was, as horrifying as it is, now twelve years ago that I entered the PhD program so…. *laughs*. I don’t think it’s that long but at the same time it’s amazing how things can change. You know the mentors that were for me most important in my career were the people who early on, the scientists early on in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia where I worked before I entered the program here. Those were the people who really like in a fundamental way shaped how I think about science and how I approach science and collaboration and mentorship and training of students and things like that. Like you know those early…and I suspect that’s the case for many people you know…If you’re already coming into a PhD program saying you know, “I’m motivated, I have an idea of what I want to do. Maybe I don’t know the specifics but like I know I’m going to work on this thing and like I really want to do that.”  

You know you’ve probably already had these sort of like fundamental experiences earlier than that that like have shaped so much of how you will ultimately function as a graduate student. You know you’ll have great mentorship here for sure, you’ll learn like lots of great things and you’ll have like great lifelong friends and colleagues and collaborators but you know I think like at a baseline level there’s just sort of those initial interactions, hopefully all very positive, can really shape how you sort of move forward in your entire career. Those sort of first steps are so important and that’s how I sort of view working with students. 

RIVERA GOMEZ: Postdocs are a common first step for many science PhD’s leaving graduate school. Do you have any tips on applying to them? 

LENDEMER: Well I mean I think the first thing I would say is that when you’re searching for a postdoc mentor the first thing that you want is to find someone who you know that you can work with. Because it’s the same kind of thing as entering into a Master’s or a PhD,–the reality is that the person you’re going to work with you know you have to be able to get along. And if you don’t get along and you don’t think you’ll work well together that should be a red flag that, you know you should maybe not consider that as an option. Because it could ultimately not work well for you. And you know beyond that, I think that what I really encourage recent graduates or soon to be graduates who are looking at postdocs to think about is whether the postdoc that they are potentially walking into is going to serve them and serve advancing their careers.  

So how much original research are they going to be able to carry out? How much of their own work are they going to be able to do? How many papers will they be able to author? And what opportunities will they have for professional development, especially in terms of applying for their own external funding to further their own research and potentially take that as a next step after a postdoc. You know, are they walking into a situation like that or is it a you know situation where they’re sort of working within the confines of a larger project and they might not be afforded all those opportunities. There are certain things like you know your own research time not necessarily related to the projects that you might be paid from that you know, you can negotiate certainly. And I think maybe some students don’t know that you do have the ability to negotiate this. A postdoc is essentially a job. That’s really for me, that’s why I basically tried to fund my own, was that I wanted to be able to pursue what I was interested in and what I thought was worthy of being pursued. And advancing my own career that way. I thought that that was sort of the best thing to do. So if there’s a way that you can prioritize that and make that happen I think that’s really…You know if your goal is the ultimately be you know someone who is doing independent, original research, getting external funding. Then that is what you should be doing from day one because you have to demonstrate that you have that ability and that you are trying to advance those causes in order to get a job ultimately.  

RIVERA GOMEZ: That’s always an interesting question.  

LENDEMER: Do you get different answers for that? *laughs* 

RIVERA GOMEZ: No, no I feel like the postdoc question is always like interesting because it’s like you have so many ways of like choosing a mentor and yeah. 

LENDEMER: Right, but I mean you know I guess, what I always tell incoming graduate students who are going to work with me is, “I am not looking for a student per se, I’m looking for a colleague and a collaborator.” So I want someone whose going to you know, come and bring skills to the table but is also going to you know, learn skills that I have to train, knowledge that I have to transfer. But at the same time, I want it to be a sort of situation where we’re collaborating on work that they are leading. Because ultimately it’s their career and their advancement that I care about. I mean I’d also like to get my work done, believe me, and advance my goals, but you know success of your students is you know, sort of success of your own work as well. So, anyway. And I think it’s the same situation for a postdoc. I mean you want somebody that’s going to treat you as a colleague and a collaborator. I think that’s the ideal relationship. It does not always happen that way and it can be a gradation you know, between the extremes but at the same time to me that’s really important if you’re going to go… if you’re trying to get a job somewhere then you have to show that you are independent and you know, capable of obtaining funding and grant writing and writing papers and everything and taking the lead in leadership positions. And that can be hard to do in certain contexts. 

RIVERA GOMEZ: So the New York Botanical Gardens must source its specimens from around the world. Do you get to travel a lot in this position? 

LENDEMER: Yes the New York Botanical Garden is like one of the largest and sort of most active research institutions in the world. And our scientists work all over the world. So you know I wouldn’t say we source our specimens from all over the world, we do, but you know it’s mainly that our research and our activities are carried out all over the world. Especially in the New World tropics. That’s historically been a place where the Botanical Garden has had a primary interest and role going back over a century to its founding. But also you know, equally important going back that amount of time is work in the southeastern United States and in the United States in general. You know we’ve had a lot of scientists who have worked in the US in general and that’s where most of my research is focused. I think that’s personally where I have the most connection to that area and you know that’s where I’m from. And I think I can have the most impact sort of in a more applied way in you know, education and all things like that. Capacity-building and sort of incorporating things into sort of meaningful action and policies on the ground in that region.  

So I travel all the time. I was just out to dinner last night and someone pointed out like, “you’ve been away a whole lot!.” And I was like, “what are you talking about, I was only in North Carolina a week ago.” And then they started listing the places and I was like, “oh that’s right, in the last you know, four months I had indeed been in Tucson for a botany conference, I was in Spokane visiting my colleague Jessica Allen where she teaches at Eastern Washington University to see genomes.” I was all over Quebec and Ontario for a workshop that I lead with a colleague from the Canadian Museum of Nature. And then I guess after that there was also like this two-week trip to Tennessee and North Carolina and you know, and I’m leaving next week Sunday for Colorado to work with colleagues there at the University of Colorado to work on a dimensions of biodiversity project. And then I come back and two weeks later I’m working eastern Tennessee on a project looking at sort of the impacts of a dam that was built in the 1930’s on lichens in a remote area of the southern Appalachian Mountains. So that’s like a standard three-month travel window right there. *laughs*  

RIVERA GOMEZ: Oh wow. So you’re…it sounds like collaboration is very highly encouraged in your field.  

LENDEMER: Yes, absolutely yeah. But that’s science in general and also that’s just like everything. I mean you can’t, no one can exist as an island on their own right. Like especially now, everything is so sort of interdisciplinary and sort of integrative that you can’t just be one person doing one thing. You have to collaborate with other people with other skillsets that are sort of…interests and you know life goals and things. Because really you know, you never where it will take you. And I mean that’s important to recognize you know. I’m a scientist, right. And I’m a scientist, I think most people think, “oh scientists collaborate with other scientists and they produce more science.” Right, yeah that’s true, science begets science and that’s great. But we also you know collaborate with like actual people that are managing lands, people who manage the national forests, people who you know manage or protect resources in the national parks. Or The Nature Conservancy restoring ecosystems in various parts of the United States.  

And then at the same time we collaborate with artists. So like I just collaborated with an artist who had a show on Governor’s Island with the Lower Manhattan Community Council, LMCC. About extirpated species from New York City and he had one of the lichens that is not growing here anymore that I brought from North Carolina growing in the exhibition. And so it was sort of, you know from my perspective it’s a great opportunity to sort of be made aware of the fact that there are these things and they are not here anymore. And you know those are just three random examples. You never know where collaborations will come from but it’s always important to just sort of take them and do what you can with them. Because you never know where they will lead and who will see them and what will come of it. The important thing is recognizing that you have to collaborate and that collaboration is very key. 

RIVERA GOMEZ: It leads to progress. 

LENDEMER: Yes, yeah exactly. Especially now. I mean the only way to sort of address big questions and solve big problems, which incidentally, in case no one realized, is what the world is facing right now. The only way to deal with those things and advance sort of understanding and solve problems is with collaboration. And collaboration with people who you might never have thought you would collaborate with.  

RIVERA GOMEZ: Definitely. Does your curator position allow you to continue your own research? 

LENDEMER: Yes so one of the benefits of the position I have, which is unusual in some regards, is that I really do have the academic freedom to pursue the research that I am interested in pursuing. And granted it does have to be funded so you know it has to be supported in some way, often externally. So it’s not that I just do whatever I want. I mean it does have to actually have some basis in reality and some relevance to society. But that being said I really am lucky that I have the freedom to pursue the lines of inquiry that I want, that take me where I’m interested in going but also where the work leads. Not being forced to sort of study one thing and instead being able to explore these different lines. Like oh hey we worked for four years in this region, we did this amazing you know we did this great study that had lots of stuff to it. It’s like oh yeah there’s all these other questions that are in many ways more interesting and relevant to those outside of my narrow field of biology. And so I’m really lucky that I have the ability to sort of pursue that. And also pursue funding wherever it may come from in that regard as well. So I don’t have to get funding for instance from the National Science Foundation consistently to study that like one thing. Like if I want to apply for funding from conservation organizations, National Wildlife Service, National Park Service, you know those are also options as well. It’s not always just 100% hard science. We also are encouraged to you know apply things, boots on the ground as well. Which again I think is a little bit different from how it works in other places.  

RIVERA GOMEZ: Are you actively publishing right now? 

LENDEMER: Oh yeah. I mean we’re expected to publish just like anyone else. You can do the best work possible but if it’s not published it’s basically not out there and it might as well not exist. However insignificant some result may seem, it might actually be relevant. So it’s important to aim for sort of these really big, broad, grand syntheses of things or really important you know hypothesis-driven you know studies. That’s really great, that’s really important, we do that. I definitely do that you know. But at the same time finding you know a new population of a rare species in New York City merits a note that’s being published somewhere. And that being published can potentially have a lot of impact at a different level than something else that’s perceived maybe as of more value to science, let’s put it that way.  

I will say that working on a lesser-studied and sort of what I call neglected biodiversity, so things like insects and fungi. Things that are the basis of the food chain and the ecosystems around us, those sorts of organisms I would say, broadly speaking, are not as well appreciated. So a study that might be about panda’s might be instantly given a higher priority or given more option of being published. Whereas if you just changed panda to lichen, it just will be probably set aside and rejected outright by most larger journals because it’s not seen as being broadly relevant. So I study basically thousands and thousands and thousands of species dispersed, with a unique lifestyle, dispersed across all the fungi. Organisms that constitute millions of species on Earth and are fundamentally important to ecosystem functioning and ultimately to our society.  

And yet when I submit a paper about that broad subject, it’s seen as being too narrow. Whereas someone who studies a single species that’s much higher profile can submit the same paper and will not get that criticism. And I mean that’s just something we have to know and acknowledge. I actually think it’s a really prevalent and important phenomenon to understand. That people sort of generally recognize exists in the sciences. But at the same time it’s never really to my knowledge been quantified. And that’s hugely important you know not only for the science itself and for getting the research out there and for funding. But also for people’s careers right. You know I mean if it’s harder for you to get a paper in a journal because of the organisms that you study then that’s going to impact certain peoples’ career trajectories more than it may others. So I think it’s important to step back for a second and say like… so my career has spanned the like paper age to digital age right.  

My first manuscripts I was submitting like type-written… Maybe not type-written, written word and printed out in triplicate and sent to a journal where someone like physically sent those paper copies to someone. They marked them up with a red pen and then like returned them to you to then correct and send a returned version to them. So like I have experienced that style of publishing. Moving to now when everything is digital right including the actual publication process where most things are sort of moving away from print and towards digital you know platforms. And to me what that has resulted in is this leveling of the playing field in terms of availability to science. So you know most things I think that, within my narrow field, if there’s a paper published on lichens, every single lichenologist has the potential to read it because the reality is that there isn’t comparatively that much out there. So there’s a lot out there but at the same time it’s like pretty manageable for like one person to see it all. But that being said you know, I think in the past if that was published, it was really hard for workers in other fields, be it science or conservation management, whatever, to access and even know that that information exists. Whereas now it’s a lot easier with just sort of online search tools for people to find that information.  

So I think like from the science perspective of like getting your work out there, that playing field has really started to be level in a lot of ways. You know maybe people aren’t doing the searches necessarily but if they did the search, they could find that stuff a lot easier than they would otherwise, regardless of where it was published potentially. But you know that’s one side of it. The other side is that, which I think is in some ways as important, is getting your work out there to you know people who will apply it to real world use. And you know more broadly to people in society who it affects but who they might not necessarily need to know the details of it but they do need to know that these things are important and we need to protect them and they’re not protected. Maybe why they’re important. So I do like a lot of work in terms of outreach and education you know, if like someone on 5th Avenue doesn’t understand why it’s important then why did we do it you know? 

RIVERA GOMEZ: What do you find most rewarding intellectually or otherwise about what you do? 

LENDEMER: Broadly speaking, I love nature and being outside. And so you know one of the driving things, even though I grew up in inner-city Philadelphia, I spent a lot of time outside of the city in nature thanks to my family. I was really lucky you know, an inner-city kid that was lucky enough to have those kinds of opportunities. Probably for me the most rewarding part of my job is that I get to be in New York City in this amazing, diverse, you know urban place but at the same time I also get to spend a lot of time in nature. But that being said I you know, I think that when I was younger I witnessed sort of the large-scale urbanization and suburbanization of the eastern United States. And you know when I was a kid you could drive from Washington DC to Philadelphia and there were farms everywhere and lots of forest and now it’s all pretty much suburban sprawl. That for me was one of the driving forces that ultimately led me to you know try to pursue in biodiversity. And it’s really rewarding that I get to now have some kind of impact to sort of understand the natural world and apply the knowledge that we gain to sort of do our best to sort of thoughtfully manage and develop the landscape. And also protect the resources that maybe aren’t already being protected. Yeah. There’s lots of other ways it’s rewarding too. 

RIVERA GOMEZ: What are some of the challenges that you’ve found in your career? 

LENDEMER: I would say that the number one challenge in my career has been convincing people of, convincing others of the value and importance of the work that I do and the organisms that I study. Hands down. If there’s one thing that I think people should know and that I do my most to sort of articulate to others, it’s that the things that I work on, these like fungi are so cool and so dynamic. They’re like the things that are basically around you all the time and you kind of like vaguely recognize as like being in your daily vignette. Here are lichens! And then not only here are lichens but like here are the crazy things they’re doing in the environment which are incredibly important. Here’s like all the bizarre evolutionary things they’ve developed which are so amazing. And then like they have like the most complex reproductive biology of any multicellular organisms. So they’re crazy. And also, that we know like nothing about them! So like fundamental questions in biology that like are known for many other groups of organisms are not known for these things. That’s why I just, I’m always constantly trying to sort of get people to understand like that there’s this like huge area of like research where just sort of there’s so many questions to be answered and you know anyone could answer them. 

RIVERA GOMEZ: There’s so much potential there. 

LENDEMER: Yes, yeah, yeah. 

RIVERA GOMEZ: What do you think are the keys to success in your field? 

LENDEMER: I think that there’s a lot of bumps along the road in terms of you know getting criticism for things. And peer review is a great example of that. You know everyone sort of gets back comments on their first manuscript and it’s like oh my goodness, this is a disaster, what am I going to do, how am I going to deal with this. And you know like if you don’t just step back and say ok, this is an opportunity to make what I did better and communicate what I did in a more clear and coherent way. And to try and address these criticisms, you know here’s what I think is right, here’s what I don’t agree with you know, here’s how I made it better. Like that gets a lot of people down really early on and if you don’t sort of just develop the ability to just say ok this is how, this is the criticism I am receiving. It does not necessarily reflect negatively upon me you know. And you know therefore like I have an opinion and a viewpoint that’s worth sharing. And I just need to figure out how to more clearly articulate it. Or you know maybe this person just disagrees and that’s just how it is. You know that’s a kind of thing that you have to learn over time. And I think that that sets a lot of people back. Because it’s really hard to develop that you know kind of things. Those are just soft skills that I think are really hard to develop. Yeah.  

RIVERA GOMEZ: Takes time. 

LENDEMER: It takes time, but you know it takes stick to it -ness. You know you have to really stick to it. 

RIVERA GOMEZ: Well it looks like we’re running out of time.  

LENDEMER: *laughs* Story of my life.  

RIVERA GOMEZ: Ok, so I would like to thank you for your time today, for letting us interview you for Alumni Aloud.  

LENDEMER: Sure! Thank you so much, yeah. I will always talk to anyone about lichens, especially at the Graduate Center so, I’m going to take this opportunity to go upstairs and visit Joan Reed in the Biology office anyways. *laughs* So any day that I get to come to the Graduate Center is a good day.   

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