HOW A MIDLIFE CAREER CHANGE LED TO $1 MILLION ESTATE GIFT

Matthew Cimitile

She’s known as the “ant lady” at USF’s St. Petersburg campus.

When people think of Biology professor Deby Cassill, it’s almost impossible not to think of her lab, which is filled with ants, spiders and other creepycrawly creatures. But what most people don’t know about Cassill is that she’s not a lifelong biologist. In fact, she spent the first 20 years of her career in healthcare administration. Then one day, a David Attenborough nature documentary changed her life.

“I realized sitting there that I didn’t want to watch science, I wanted to do science,” Cassill said.

Shortly thereafter, she went back to college to pursue an undergraduate degree in biology. By the time she was 50, she had earned a doctorate in the field and in 2001, Cassill was hired on as the first full-time biology professor on the USF St. Petersburg campus.

Cassill said the university has provided her with a wonderful opportunity to explore her passion. In October 2022, she provided the institution with a $1 million estate gift to create the Cassill Endowed Scholarship in Biology to aid the next generation of aspiring biologists.

“It is such a privilege to work here, and for more than 20 years I have been able to teach courses in a way that I believe are great learning experiences for students while following my research instincts,” Cassill said. “I thought this would be a great way to give back to this institution by providing scholarships for students, including older students who are returning after a career change like me, to find their passion in biology.”

The generous gift is just one of many ways that Cassill has made the most of her midlife career change. In the interview below, Cassill describes how her fascination for science led her to chart a different path and details both her passion for research and teaching students the wonders of biology by providing them real-world research experiences.

YOU HAD A UNIQUE PATH TO GET TO WHERE YOU ARE TODAY, CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT YOUR MIDLIFE CAREER CHANGE?

My first degree was in psychology and I worked in that field for about 10 years. Then I went on to get a master’s in public administration and worked up in Tallahassee for another 10 years. I’m in my 40s, still somewhat enjoying my work, and one day I’m watching a nature documentary, a David Attenborough documentary on African wildlife, and it just hit me. I realized sitting there that I didn’t want to watch science, I wanted to do science. So, I reimagined the type of career I wanted and just started a new beginning, earning three biology degrees in 10 years. What really drove me to switch was an intense curiosity about life that psychology and being a bureaucrat in healthcare didn’t answer for me. It’s been a love affair ever since.

WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR RESEARCH FOCUS IN BIOLOGY WHILE AT USF?

My initial research was taking psychology and figuring out what is it that makes one group of animals social and another solitary. For example, humans have no claws and no sharp teeth, we are basically food on two legs. So how did we survive in nature? Strength in numbers. Ants do the same thing. By looking at and documenting ants over a 20-year period, I have discovered things in ants that are so common to humans. Examining social behaviors among ants, humans and other social animals, we find a lot of the same mechanisms that trigger social behaviors, which include competition, cooperation, altruism, sharing, stealing, murder and predation. While we are very different anatomically, we are so similar in why we cooperate and socialize.

WHAT SPECIFIC RESEARCH PROJECTS ARE YOU WORKING ON PRESENTLY?

Ants became a springboard to try and better understand the evolution of cooperative societies in all kinds of animals and among individuals within a species. One aspect of this that I have become extremely fascinated with is the diverse rearing practices of animals and why certain species spend decades caring for their young, such as elephants, while others abandon their offspring at birth, like fish. I developed a model named ‘maternal risk management,’ which looks at the wide diversity of maternal investment strategies and allows me to conduct research on pretty much any species that I or students in the lab are curious to learn more about. I am currently working on projects with students on black widow spiders, crabs and whales.

I realized sitting there that I didn’t want to watch science, I wanted to do science.

HOW DOES TEACHING AND ENGAGING WITH STUDENTS BENEFIT YOUR RESEARCH?

The importance of teaching for me is that students help me learn. You cannot teach something you don’t know well, and you figure that out quickly in a classroom because students ask questions and you need to know those answers. The other benefit of teaching is I get to tell stories I love about my research, which hopefully engages minds and encourages students to come into the lab and work on projects. They are so hungry for a real experience, not just learning by lecture but learning by doing.

WHAT DO YOU FIND MOST SATISFYING ABOUT YOUR SECOND CAREER?

What makes this job so much fun and such a privilege is the freedom we have to address research questions that are meaningful, finding new and unique ways to educate students and storytelling. We as humans are the storytellers of the world. By finding out an answer to a question, you are really trying to discover or tell a story. And for a student to find out such an answer, it just generates so much excitement. Working at this university, working with and learning from students and working on these research projects has been such a privilege to satisfy my sense of curiosity.