Plant Science Leaders - Kristine Callis-Duehl

Kristine Callis-Duehl, Ph.D., is the Sally and Derick Driemeyer Executive Director of Education at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. Kristine brings a unique interdisciplinary approach to her role, blending her background and expertise in medicine, plant science, and education to transform communities and provide cutting-edge science education to students in K-12.

Kristine’s work ignites students’ innate curiosity and creativity and builds pathways to plant science careers, providing support systems that empower students to thrive. Driven by her vision to transform science education and community resilience, Kristine is shaping the next generation of plant scientists who will tackle some of our most pressing global challenges.

Conviron sat down with Kristine to talk about her role at the Danforth Center and the impact of her work on local and global communities.

Tell us about your background, education, and experience

Growing up in the American education system, I was always good at math and science. I was often told I should become a doctor, so that’s what I did.

While working with a newly opened MSF (Doctor’s without borders) clinic in Laos, PDR, I learned about the local use of medicinal plants. These skills allowed us to stretch the western pharmaceutical medicines that were a limited resource

While I was in Laos, the UN passed REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), and China signed on to reduce deforestation in its southern provinces. Plantation owners were told they could not expand their rubber plantations, so they moved 15 kilometers south to the valley where I was working in Laos. Farmers were told they had to plant as many hectares of rubber as there were hectares of rice, or their families would be put in jail. Some that voiced concern and resisted, disappeared. This had a big impact on me.

Prior to this, despite average income being quite low (about $50 per family per year), no one in the communities where I worked was homeless or hungry or unclothed. Their needs were met through the plants they grew and harvested in the valley. However, as deforestation and rubber plantations spread to the area - everything changed. During monsoon season, the valley filled up like a bowl, and for the first time, its people were starving.

What I learned from this experience is the deep connection between medicine and conservation. Plants are essential to life on earth. I decided then that if I was going to make a global impact, it would be through plant science.

I earned my master’s degree in ethnobotany when I came back from Laos and after that completed my PhD in plant science at the University of Florida. There, I combined plant science with my work in medicine, studying secondary plant metabolites as plant defenses as well as physical plant defenses. My research explored the trade-offs between physical and chemical plant defenses to see how we can induce plants to produce the chemistry that we use as humans.

While I was in my PhD program, I was also part of a National Science Foundation program called GK-12, which provided funding for graduate students in STEM disciplines. My fellowship was to be a science instructor in a middle school classroom for two years.

Through that work, I started to understand what I had failed to see in Laos—that it was lack of education that led to a lot of the poor decision making that was happening. I decided that I wanted to focus my career on combining education and science and using that for community transformation.

From there, I completed two post-docs: at UC Irvine in plant defenses, and UC Davis in education technology. I started my own EdTech company and was awarded a Small Business Innovative Research grant (NSF SBIR). I exited that company when I was offered a faculty position at East Carolina University, where I focused on education research within the biology department in partnership with the Brody School of Medicine.

I taught at ECU for four years, then came to the Danforth Center in 2019 and took over first as Director, then Executive Director.

Can you describe what you do in your role as Executive Director of Education?

I oversee everything from education research to education outreach to community engagement to community transformation to workforce development and more—most of the things that are outward facing.

I'm very big on facilitating and promoting public-private partnerships. I work with all of the universities and higher education institutions in the area, as well as all of the K-12 educational systems in the area, and connect them with the industry that’s here, as we are the AgTech capital of the U.S. - and arguably North America.

We work as an ecosystem to provide opportunities for historically underserved and marginalized communities to access careers in the plant and AgTech sciences. We make sure students from pre-K all the way up to young professionals can work with established professionals in the field and learn what it means to be a plant scientist.

One of the most exciting examples of this is our partnership with the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation. Jackie is an American Olympian, a six-time medalist in track and field who was on the cover of Sports Illustrated many times. She is renowned in her sport.

She is also from East St. Louis, where the median income for a family of four is about $28,500 per year.

Jackie approached us, along with Chancellor Jones at the University of Illinois, and we have a fourth local partner called Lansdowne. About four years ago, we worked together to launch the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Innovation Center. We acquired ~100 acres in East Saint Louis and raised ~$50 million dollars.

There, students grow and cook their own food. They learn about the science of food, and they do that while doing sports. Sports is a big part of this because it's all about full-person wellness—being physically active and having good nutrition. About 120-200 students participate in the JJK program every day.

What is it about STEM in K-12 that you find exciting?

Closing disparities in education is the foundation for closing all other disparities in our communities, and science is one of the universal ways for promoting education in a way that all students can actually understand.

Right now, in the U.S., our education system is largely based on a literacy system that isn’t moving the needle on literacy. Shifting the focus to science means harnessing creativity, curiosity, reasoning, logic, and problem-solving skills—all things that are innate to children.

Children are born curious; they’re born creative. If we lean into those traits and build them up instead of forcing children into an academic box, then we create a populace that is more innovative and entrepreneurial. Those are the skills we need in plant science because they will help us push the envelope on the questions we’re asking.

I see this as my ultimate goal. In the lab, I can make a small incremental difference, but if I can change the way we educate people so it is based on innate scientific curiosity, then I move the needle tremendously not just for science now, but for science forever.

How do you spark curiosity in plant science in the classroom?

The key is providing authentic research experiences and hands-on learning opportunities. I use a sports analogy to demonstrate just how important this is. If a child wanted to learn to play basketball, we wouldn’t tell them to read a book or watch a video about basketball—we would put a basketball in their hands so they could start to figure it out.

We don’t learn as humans just by watching. At the Danforth Center, we take the research our plant scientists are doing and scaffold it into opportunities for students to truly engage in that research. We provide training and resources for teachers to take the science experiments going on at Danforth and perform them in the classrooms so that children aren’t just learning science, they are the scientists.

For example, Jim Umen’s lab here at the Danforth Center is really interested in understanding the rise of multicellularity. He does that through working with Volvox, a type of multicellular green algae. He exposes the Volvox to various levels of UV light to induce mutations.

So, in the classroom, the students get vials of wild-type Volvox and vials of different levels of UV exposure. They go through the screening process either using hand lenses or microscopes, looking for the mutated individuals.

What we're really looking for is individuals who have become single-celled, but they see all kinds of mutations. So in this process, they're learning about genetics, they're learning about genetic mutations, they're learning about algae, they're learning about the importance of algae in producing the oxygen we need in the world.

When they find a mutation that is single-celled, they actually collect it and grow it up in their classroom to see if that genetic abnormality will transfer from generation to generation. If it does, those vials come back to Jim's lab to be screened for which genes have been induced or knocked out so he can understand what genes are involved in the rise of multicellularity.

In this way, students are doing the same science that the lab technicians are doing. We scaffold it to the level of the student and the teacher, but they're actually doing real science, and it taps that innate curiosity and creativity.

How can young students get started in plant science?

I would say “Let’s come up with a project. Let’s start doing research.” I can always tell students what it’s like to be a scientist or a researcher, but what’s going to really teach them is to actually do it. So together, we’d sit down and create a project, I’d find you a mentor, and we’d start doing actual science experiments.

We have a wonderful science fair here in the St. Louis area run by the St. Louis Academy of Sciences, and we often help these individual students. We extend the experiments performed in the classroom and do independent projects for the fair.

What is it about plant science you find fun and exciting?

I really enjoy the autonomy of my job. I choose my schedule and the research I do. Nobody is dictating what I do, and that’s both exciting and very enjoyable.

This kind of autonomy matters because it allows me to be passionate about what I do, and follow the things I feel most passionate about. That’s what I tell students—to try as much as possible, and find what brings them passion. When you find what really ignites you, you’ll want to dive in and keep doing it.

How can one overcome the financial challenges pursing a plant science education?

We create pathways for aspiring plant scientists to launch their careers at any education level—you definitely do not need a bachelors degree, masters degree, or PhD to get started in this field.

Through our programs, high school students can take community college courses and graduate with a certificate in life sciences. They can go right to work in a lab working on actual experiments. Starting this early is beneficial because it helps students develop soft skills that are difficult to teach in a classroom—including collaboration, which is one of our most important values here at the Danforth Center.

From there, students can start working on their associates degree and continue with their bachelors degree if they want. Danforth offers internships and funding opportunities at those levels, as well as graduate-level funding and fellowships.

We try to holistically remove barriers by providing support in many areas—healthcare benefits, childcare, transportation, scholarships and more. We encourage students to pursue the aspects of plant science that align most with their goals and interests, which could be reaching the highest levels of academia or staying hands-on in the lab.

Is plant science hard? Like all fields of study, it has requirements, challenges, and demands. But if you love it, those won’t feel hard—they’ll feel well worth pursuing and overcoming.