W. Jones Ecological Research Center at Ichauway, where she lived for two years performing field work during her graduate work. This past summer she worked with one of her previous graduate school advisors, Mike Conner, to create a computer model to show how tick populations were affected by burns. “The model essentially can account for host habitat preference, tick host preference, tick lifecycle characteristics, and burn cycle intervals,” according to Gleim. They hoped the model would illustrate mechanisms behind the trends observed during her graduate work. Just as the researchers hoped, the model predicts how the burns could reduce tick populations in various land management scenarios. Gleim is also working with an Emory undergraduate, completing pathogen testing of ticks she gathered. She had performed the large majority of testing while a doctoral student, but her student is currently focusing on testing the ticks for Panola Mountain Ehrlichia—which is yet another tickborne pathogen. One, she says, that has emerged in the last 10 years or so. And another of many pathogens transmitted by ticks that is capable of causing disease in humans.
50,000 MILES LATER... En route to her research sites, Gleim’s various vehicles became what she jokingly calls a mobile closet. Or better yet, a mobile office. An F-150 field truck, which was white but more reddish tan due to the Georgia clay and sand roads she travelled, had a name: Timothy. While Gleim lived at Ichauway in Newton, Ga., she zigzagged across southwest Georgia in Timothy. “So much so that the very last slide of my defense, as a ‘ha-ha,’ I (among other things) tallied how many ‘field miles’ I put on my field truck—just shy of 35,000.” The road miles were no big deal, because Gleim was plain driven to succeed. Come weekends, she ditched Timothy for her own car, a gray Mustang named J-Ci, and commuted to Atlanta, due to the double draw of a fiancé there and a horse stabled in Decatur. Sometimes the blues blared on the radio, but most of the time, Gleim tuned into an upbeat song and sang with gusto. She put nearly 20,000 miles on the Mustang before trouble struck. “J-Ci was rear-ended when my now husband and I were headed out of town for our four-year anniversary—it turned out he proposed to me that weekend. I thought he seemed particularly agitated about being rear-ended, and later
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found out it was because the ring was in the trunk!” The engagement ring survived and so did Gleim. But she replaced J-Ci with a sturdier SUV, one that fellow researchers wouldn’t mock. Gleim bought a black Subaru Forester (naming it Cole) and kept on trucking to the tune of another 30,000 miles. Cole was immediately introduced to the cruel vagaries of life on the road. “I promptly put a dent in it on the very first day I owned it when I ran over a stick at Ichauway,” she says ruefully. “I also appreciated the all-wheel drive as I ran through more than a few mud puddles getting to and from my house onsite at Ichauway.” Cole was forever dusty, splattered with mud and pine sap. “And sporting hundreds of gnats and other bugs plastered onto the front grill and windshield at any given time.” It was ironic that Gleim was about to marry a car buff, who quickly gave up on keeping Cole pristine. “During my last semester when commuting back and forth between Oxford and UGA I still had/have the Forester. I didn’t track my miles quite as well back then, but I would estimate it was approximately 700 miles per week. The dust and mud were no longer an issue, but bugs still were.” Cole looked slightly better once Gleim left Ichauway. But, Gleim laughs, “The interior took a hit during my first semester at Oxford as it reflected my nomadic life via acting as a mobile shoe and clothing closet—work shoes/clothes, lab shoes/clothes, barn shoes/clothes, etc. I still had lab work to do, so I was driving to Athens once or twice a week to do my research,” she says matter-of-factly. Gleim actually defended her dissertation on the effects of long-term prescribed burning on tick and tick-borne pathogen dynamics while also responsible for lab management at Oxford College of Emory University and observing the class she would soon be teaching. All of this was achieved “while finishing lab work and writing my dissertation and finally, defending my dissertation.” But Gleim felt the Oxford opportunity was a stroke of sheer good fortune. “I got really lucky,” she marvels. No accident of fate, disagrees Lindsay Boring, who directs the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center at Ichauway. Prior to working as a visiting scientist there last summer, Gleim spent nearly two years at Ichauway as a doctoral student. Boring came to know Gleim well. He also was in the audience observing her performance at a UGA event the prior year. “She had one of the lead finishes at the 3MT competition,” recalls Boring. “She is a