Maddie Rhodes

she/her
Undergraduate Fellow
Plant Disease Team

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

So I did the SIFT program and I was a TERA last year. I originally heard about SIFT through one of my teachers at my school, then I heard about TERA through that, and then I heard about the undergrad program through TERA. I've really enjoyed it. I'm on the same team that I was last year. So it's nice that I'm still with Rachel [Penczykowski] because she was great last year. I worked a little bit in her lab over the school year, so I knew some of the people already, like Cheyenne [Morris]. It's been nice to have that familiarity and they're all super supportive.

Everyone here is continuously incredibly nice. I did SIFT work days here three years ago and there's still some faces that have stayed the same. The community is always welcoming, it doesn't matter who it is, and I feel it can be hard to find that in research.

Do you see yourself doing this work in the future? How might Tyson inform your future work?

I want to come back to Tyson next year and I hope to do work like this in the future. I'm currently thinking of going into something academia related, but we'll see if that changes. I like being able to figure out the answers to the questions I ask and I've really enjoyed how deep you can get into topics that seem so narrow. There are also obviously a lot of different ways that you can take research, so I don't think I'll ever get tired of it in that sense. I don't really think I’ll stick with plant disease topics, though. I really like what I'm studying here, but I don't see it being something that I'll do forever. I'm mostly interested in climate change topics and evolution, and I think aquatic stuff might be interesting.

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

All of the mentors on my team are so incredibly supportive. They're always willing to answer your questions and they never seem to get tired of them, even though I constantly bombard them with questions. So that's been really nice. It's really clear that they advocate for the undergrads and care about our experience. Rachel is always also coming to help us and helping us figure out logistics. She knows so much about plant disease, it's crazy. She's a great resource to have.