Saint Mary's Newsroom

Looking back, Dorothy Kirsch ’19 and JoAnn Harren ’11 may not have always appreciated their chores — growing up on their family hog farm in Wesley, Iowa.

But both sisters now appreciate the strong work ethic, the responsibility, and the agricultural life that ultimately has led them to careers in plant breeding.

Harren, who majored in biology at Saint Mary’s, now works as a senior research associate with DuPont Pioneer Research Station in Algona, Iowa; Kirsch, a junior biology major, is currently interning at the same facility.

Harren paved the way. In high school, she really enjoyed the sciences and got involved with the World Food Prize Youth Institute. She earned a Borlaug-Ruan International Internship through which, after high school, she worked at a grad school lab at China Agriculture University in Beijing.

While attending Saint Mary’s, she did internships through DuPont Pioneer for three summers. And after graduating, she continued her studies at the University of Minnesota and did an internship at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines.

“The professor/student interaction in the Science Department at Saint Mary’s helped me discern how I would like to further my education,” Harren said. “The support I received prepared me for graduate school.”

She returned to Pioneer about four years ago after getting married.

“As a senior research associate,” she said. “I do a lot of the molecular breeding work, looking at corn and soy plants creating whole genome predictions. So we don’t need to grow a plant to see if it’s going to grow or not.”

Harren thrives on the challenging environment at Pioneer and says it’s exciting to see her work utilized. “For my master’s thesis, I mapped and published quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for Soybean Death Syndrome in soybeans. These QTLs have never been utilized outside of my graduate thesis work. With Pioneer, I can see the research I do being put to use. That’s what drives me to enjoy my job.”

When her sister arrived at Saint Mary’s, she too knew she wanted to go into agriculture with a chemistry emphasis. Kirsch discovered she fit better in biology than chemistry, but is quick to point out she’s enjoyed all of her classes.

“I haven’t had a single professor I don’t like,” she said. “The professors are always there and willing to help. It’s a great college and I’ve had a great experience so far.”

Kirsch is currently completing an eight-month internship at DuPont Pioneer Research Station, where she enjoys meeting with and learning from breeders. She’ll also be completing her senior thesis, “Plant breeding techniques by the use of Per Se Traits in Maize (Zea Mays).”

Her objective is to compare the phenotypic traits between hybrids and their corresponding inbred parents  to determine if the inbred traits are indicative of the hybrid phenotypes.  “I’m going to look into the way that breeders develop hybrid lines based on the inbred data and determine if it’s a good way or if they should be doing it differently,” she said.

Her future goal is to earn an advanced degree in plant breeding. “When I talk to corn breeders, it’s exciting to hear the new developments and see the progress they’re making,” she said. “Years of material goes into one hybrid. The goal is to have a high-yielding hybrid that can withstand diseases and droughts and high wind, all the conditions it might encounter in a field.”

Kirsch said there’s no doubt her background has made an impact on what she’s decided to do with her future. “I appreciated living on a family farm. It helped me have a better work ethic.”

Harren agrees. “The work ethic is huge along with the respect for the land, as well as respect for people,” she said. “You need to have that strong work ethic to be able to thrive in this type of industry. I would not be where I am today if I did not grow up on that family farm.”

Harren said she’s proud to work with a company like DuPont Pioneer, which is working to help farmers in Africa and the Middle East increase agricultural productivity and food production through improved crop yields. Additionally, she said, the company has found a way to fortify sorghum grain, a mainstay in African diets, with nutrients to make it healthier.

“Pioneer is about feeding the world. It’s great to be part of a company like that,” she said.

Photo caption: Sisters JoAnn Harren ’11, left, and Dorothy Kirsch ’19 

Adam Pfister C’06, M’10 can’t deny that speaking to the U.N. in early December was a career highlight.

But Pfister’s career is full of highlights. As a solutions engineer on the nonprofit and global organizations team for Esri, he works closely with organizations who are solving global problems like the World Health Organization and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is successfully eradicating Polio.

A graduate of Saint Mary’s University’s M.S. in Geographic Information Science program, Pfister works for a company which is an international supplier of geographic information system (GIS) software and technology.

“A solutions engineer is just a fancy term for talking with customers or anyone interested in GIS technology, understanding their problems, and seeing how spatial technology can help them. It’s a unique opportunity to talk with people doing some really amazing work,” Pfister said. “We work with foundations, nonprofits and U.N. departments and entities, and national organizations — a wide gamut of people.”

During a presentation at the U.N. Secretariat Building in New York City at the beginning of December, Pfister was able to explain how Esri uses GIS that can speed and shift sustainable development. The Office for Outer Space Affairs, together with the United Nations Development Program, organized the “Discovery Day.”

“It was a one-day event, with a number of speakers, and everyone had 10 minutes to talk,” Pfister said. “We chose to focus on those two themes, shift and speed, and what I talked about was shifting our thinking, how GIS is changing, moving more into the web space. And then I talked about how we can use modern technology to really speed up assisting sustainable development activities.”

Pfister was able to share a number of examples, including how one of Esri’s customers is using GIS technology to vaccinate people in remote areas against polio.

“WHO and the Gates Foundation use GIS to isolate remote areas to see if people have been vaccinated for polio,” Pfister said. “There are people on the ground who really need help with the software we have. It’s so powerful that we can get rid of a disease.” Bill Gates has said that he is optimistic that the last case of polio could be seen this year.

Pfister said it was a lot of information to squeeze into a 10-minute presentation. “We wanted to bring a high level view of what Esri is doing and more importantly what our users are doing with the technology,” he said. “I wanted people to realize what’s available now, how it can help them and how quickly they can act on what they want to accomplish.

“There are a lot of really good people in the U.N.,” he added. “We wanted to connect with those people. Ultimately we could provide humanitarian assistance or assist in refugee crisis situations. There are a lot of people who need help and we are in a unique position to deploy our geospatial help when necessary.”

Pfister started working with Esri in 2010 but originally worked with commercial industries. Once he learned about how another team was helping with dispatch infrastructure and services during an Ebola outbreak, he knew he wanted to switch. “I was blessed that it worked out that way,” he said.

Pfister said he knows he joins several other Saint Mary’s alumni at Esri and said he loved his time at Saint Mary’s.

“I was doing 911 addressing work for Dane County in Madison, Wis., when I heard about Saint Mary’s program,” he said. “I was making sure address ranges were correct and going section by section through counties, looking at road segments—really just getting my hands dirty with GIS when I got an email from the university. I saw it was an accelerated program and that really piqued my interest. I knew it would open doors for me career wise.”

Pfister said he’s grateful for the programming courses he took at Saint Mary’s. “I didn’t have any interest in programming, but I saw what it could do, and now programming is one of my strengths and it has opened a lot of doors. It’s an asset I continue to develop and I’m thankful that it was part of the curriculum. Teachers taught it in a way that gave it context of how powerful it could be. The faculty is great; John Ebert is an all-star.”

Pfister said that the GIS area is growing quickly and opportunities are endless. “The future has shifted already to using the web and using configurable applications,” he said. “We can get people up and running without a lot of time. We can take an app, configure it, create a survey using Excel and deploy it within minutes, with tons of configurable options. My job is to educate people and help them navigate the breadth of their software. We don’t want them to drown in it. We want to help them figure out what will work best for them.”

View Pfister’s presentation on UN Web TV.

Dr. Susan Strauss believes educational system must step up to play a larger role

The list of high-profile men — in media, in sports, in entertainment, and in politics — who are being fired due to inappropriate sexual behavior continues to grow longer.

Susan Strauss D’07, for one, isn’t surprised.

“I guess what surprises me is that finally it’s all erupting; there are women coming forward to proclaim what they’ve experienced for years, but they had never felt safe in coming forward before,” she said. “But does it surprise me that these men are guilty of it? No, not in the least.”

Although the “#Me Too” movement is empowering women to come forward, Dr. Strauss — a national and international speaker, trainer, consultant, investigator, and an expert witness for harassment and bullying lawsuits — said the focus needs to be on how we create a culture where women are respected and no longer subjected to this harassment.

And she believes it begins with the education system. “It’s an important issue and it needs to get out,” she said. “It doesn’t just erupt once they get a job. These men have had a lot of practice in K-12, and it’s not being addressed there.”

A registered nurse as well as an accomplished author and expert witness, Dr. Strauss offices out of Burnsville. Her training and consulting work has taken her around the world, where she has counseled businesses, government, healthcare, and education organizations. Not surprisingly, she’s been interviewed on numerous local, international, and national media outlets including NBC Nightly News, World News Tonight, the New York Times.

An alumna of Saint Mary’s Ed.D. in Leadership program, Dr. Strauss knows, from her research and consulting experience, that a large percentage of women in the workforce are being sexually harassed, and many are never reported. But how do we even begin to make a change?

Too often boys being aggressive is passed off as “boys being boys,” she said. “We have to examine how our society sustains patriarchy and misogyny. We have to look at how we educate little boys to view little girls as people, and not as inferior. As much as we tell little girls they can be anything they want to be, we need to be sure little boys know that too. They can be a ballet dancer or play the violin, and they don’t have to play football. The box of masculinity needs to be countered. It starts in the home, and then in school they reinforce gender norms and stereotypes.

“If boys are taught to express their feminine side and girls are taught they can express their masculine side in the home, then they get into schools and are harassed because they don’t fit the gender stereotype,” Dr. Strauss said. “Teachers will discriminate too, not even intentionally or consciously. They will call on boys more often. They don’t believe they do until they are videotaped and shown. They allow boys to yell out answers while girls raise their hands. We reinforce those gender norms that way. We need to look at how we perpetuate male superiority.”

Dr. Strauss believes the educational system, at every level, needs to play a conscious role in battling harassment and bullying. “We have to have speakers about this. But merely having speakers and conducting training to faculty and staff and education to students isn’t enough she said. We need to address the issues from a systems perspective. We need to have teachers trained about unconscious bias and how that presents itself in the classroom. We need to offer specific coursework. And in higher education, it needs to be integrated into every academic discipline. How does sexual harassment impact economics, for example? Are there classes about gender studies that include masculinity and feminism? Often, I hear there are classes about feminism, but where are the classes that deal with masculinity to challenge men’s introspection?”

In the end, Dr. Strauss said there is much work to be done to counteract a culture where sexual harassment is the norm, which is why she decided to become a consultant full-time about 15 years ago.

Not long after, Dr. Strauss went back to school for her doctorate. She heard about Saint Mary’s from a friend. “She said, ‘I have found a university that fits with our values and beliefs.’ I was 54, but I had always wanted my doctorate and like to learn, so I registered,” she said. “I loved it. I thought it was very rigorous, and it was an excellent fit.”

For her dissertation, Dr. Strauss was able to conduct research that was especially meaningful to her as an RN. Her dissertation was titled, “Quantitative and qualitative analysis of physician abuse as gender harassment to female and male registered nurses in the operating room.”

“Saint Mary’s had a couple of different tracks in leadership. One was more organizational, which fit beautifully with what I do as a consultant. It worked perfectly for me.”

Dr. Strauss admits that her work can be both stressful and exhausting. “My passion is providing training and strategic development to organizations seeking to create respectful, healthy workplaces free of discrimination,” she said. “It gives me purpose, and I hope to make workplaces a little bit better. It makes me angry that it occurs in the first place, but my work gives me a place to focus my anger.”