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A Simple Twist of Fate
Environmental Science master’s student Moore looks back on the circuitous route that took him to TSU | By Charlie Morrison
Filled with classes, field research, time in the lab, numbers to crunch and presentations to make, the academic life of a graduate student in the hard sciences is a busy one. The rigors of building one’s success around the acts of capturing and processing data, developing a thesis on what the data’s telling you and presenting that data present a challenge to any student. Graduate students in the hard sciences that come from STEM-bases undergraduate experiences generally find the step up to be a challenge, but when your undergraduate experience equated to a Bachelor of Arts degree it’s “a whole different world.”
Those are the words of Tennessee State University College of Agriculture (TSUAg) master’s degree student Devin Moore, who not only made that transition, he did it with gusto. Before all of that took place however, it took a twist of fate to even get the talented student to the TSU campus in the first place.
The Twist
It was the summer of 2020. The pandemic had arrived, the world was in turmoil, and Moore was in a place of contemplation. Having graduated from prestigious Ivy League school Yale University that May, Moore’s future was bright, and yet his path forward was unclear.
The Master of Science degree in Environmental Science Moore is pursuing at TSU wasn’t even on the radar for him at that point. Moore knew he wanted to take the Bachelor of Arts degree he’d earned from Yale with the dual majors in Environmental Studies and African-American Studies and pursue the topic of environmental justice. Knowing that put him in a position for fate to intervene, and in the end, it did just that.
Moore had been doing due diligence on his future by meeting with select environmental lawyers for advice on his career. One of those lawyers operating in his home state of Michigan was environmental lawyer John Byl of the firm Warner, Norcross and Judd. It turns out, the attorney had a brother at TSU, Dr. Tom Byl, and in his view doing some hard science would only help the aspirational Moore get to the cause of environmental justice with a solid foundation. Maybe, he suggested, Moore should speak with him.
Jumping in Feet First
With the COVID lockdown in full effect during his time between schools, Moore never got the chance to visit TSU’s Nashville campus before signing up for graduate school at the College of Agriculture. He did however speak extensively with Dr. Byl, a research biologist and TSUAg assistant professor, along with other faculty members and in the end, it was those discussions that brought him to campus.
After speaking with Moore, Dr. Byl invited him to conduct a guest lecture on environmental justice over Zoom for some TSU students. Moore held the lecture with aplomb, and an invitation to join TSU as a master’s student followed soon after. That he was able to secure a Title III “POTUS” scholarship assisting him with all his expenses while pursuing his graduate work only solidified things.
“I wasn’t able to come visit the campus before I signed on to join TSU, but I was able to look up the facilities, see the big farm and wetlands, and know what I was getting myself into,” said Moore in an interview with AgLink. “Through the lens of environmental justice, the opportunity to look at a farm in an urban area was really cool to me, and the opportunity to do it at an HBCU was really cool to me.”
Once on campus, Moore’s life as a graduate student accelerated quickly. He began his classes, an experience he described as “a plunge into cold water,” but too he got out into the field and almost immediately since arriving in Nashville, began to do field work. Backed by Drs. Byl and Bill Sutton, his education soon gained focus. “I said to myself ‘man, you are really back in school.’”
It was his connections with the faculty that has propelled Moore through his time at the TSUAg graduate school. His interactions with not only Drs. Byl and Sutton, but too Dr. De’Etra Young and towards the end of his TSU run, thesis advisor Dr. Reginald Archer put him in a place to succeed, according to Moore, who graduates this fall.
“Coming into TSU, the people and the potential to make those connections was a factor. It’s been really rewarding to have faculty members that I’m really close with to lean on if I need help,” he said. “Going from the social sciences to a hard science, it’s just a different world. I’m sure a lot of times it took me a little bit longer to understand some of these concepts. They helped out a lot.”
Secrets to Success
Moore credits not only the faculty members proper who assisted him in his journey, but also his research colleagues like Graduate Assistant Kristi
Hill, who was “very, very patient with me as I learned. She really definitely took me under her wing when it came to learning the hard science.”
“To have success in science you have to be methodical, but more so you have to have organization, those are the two things you have to have,” Moore continued Moore. “She’s very methodical, very organized and that makes everything, whether it’s in the lab or the field 100 times easier because you know where everything is. You can work really hard on getting good data but lose some hold over it if it’s not organized.”
Moore certainly leaned on his support in performing what is inevitably the most arduous task in pursuing any graduate degree in the hard sciences, that of writing and defending a thesis.
Moore’s thesis, titled “Harmful Algae in Nashville’s Urban Watersheds: Challenging Traditional Monitoring Programs,” called on all the skills he’d amassed his time at Yale and the two years he spent working the science here at TSU. That said, he did complete the work and will be defending it over the summer during his public defense of his thesis.
Definitive Results
For Moore, the results of his research were definitive. “Not only do harmful algal blooms exist in Nashville’s urban water bodies, they exist in concentrations that pose a threat to the nearby ecosystem and organisms that interact with the affected water bodies,” he said to AgLink. “And very, very few people know actually what to do about toxic algal blooms and how to address them.”
Moore, like the scientist he now is, will review all the data and work with it before making a decision on his post-TSU future. As he did before coming to campus, he is surveying his environment for the logical next steps, steps he believes as of now will be a job in the field of hard science, followed by an eventual pursuit of a law degree. First however, he needs that diploma.
With his impending graduation this fall in sight, Moore is able to look back at his time on campus at TSU and smile with fondness at his time here in Nashville. “I feel like TSU has provided me with a really good foundation. TSU ended up being the perfect place for me,” he said. The number one thing has been the support that I’ve gotten, and I’ve had fun too, I’ve had fun in the wetlands, in the lab, everything has been great.”
