In a slim, 36-page typescript thesis submitted for her UW master’s degree in zoology in 1971, Jane Lubchenco recounts her efforts to document the eating habits of two species of sea star, Pisaster ochraceous and Leptasterias hexactis. For a full year, she painstakingly counted and measured barnacles, mussels, snails, and limpets taken by the predatory sea stars at Point Caution, a jetty of rock on the eastern side of San Juan Island.
Pisaster can grow larger, which should make it the superior competitor, but Lubchenco found that when size is equal, Leptasterias is better at catching nutritionally dense prey. The results explain nothing less than, as Lubchenco writes, “How does Leptasterias manage to exist at all?”
This attention to detail and willingness to tackle the big questions, leavened with what her former adviser and UW Professor Emeritus of Zoology Robert Paine calls “a lot of charisma,” have vaulted Lubchenco to the top of her profession as a marine ecologist. These qualities have made her an effective advocate for greater scientific engagement with policymakers and the general public, and led President Barack Obama to nominate her to be the first female administrator (and ninth overall) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), where she has served since March 2009. They also explain why Jane Lubchenco is UW’s Alumna Summa Laude Dignata for 2011. It is the highest honor an alumnus can receive from the University.
Read the complete column from The University of Washington.