Bill said:

<BTW, Jerry, I thought the reason you shifted to bees to find land mines is 
you ran out of graduate students.>

I hope that's tongue in cheek.  I've had some wonderful graduate students, 
but I now encourage undergraduates, rarely take on graduate students.

The reason is simple. Its due to my history and how I'm funded.

I've worked in bee research for 31 year.  I came out of school in the wrong 
place, at the wrong time -- or maybe in the right place or the right time.

Jobs for entomologists with Ph.D.s were few and far between.  So, I took up 
a post-doc at UM, working on studies of the big coal development in eastern MT.

That forced me to deal with the 6000+ beehives surrounding the coal 
mine/power plant complex.  As things tend to do, the bee work turned out to 
be more useful to the federal and state agencies than the more basic work, 
such as the effects of sulfur dioxide on dung beetles, or impacts to 
rangeland pests.  Fortunately, the latter didn't pan out, if it had, every 
rancher would have wanted a power plant to fumigate the fields.

Well, there were jobs, but usually in large cities, and I'm and old farmer 
(first 20 yrs of my life), and I'm 3rd generation Montanan, and I like 
Missoula -- so I took the less worn track.  FYI, although I am a professor 
at UM, in a sense, I've never had a job at UM.

Every penny of our research comes from outside, usually competitively won, 
contracts and grants.  If I have a specialty, its convincing agencies and 
user groups, who never thought that bees had any importance to them, that 
they should invest in our bee research.  To date, I've gotten $1500 (career 
total) from USDA Ag for bee research.  I've received enough from EPA, DOD, 
DOE, BLM, Forest Service, State of 
MT,  Germany,  Croatia,  Malaysia,  several S. American countries,  seed 
companies, etc. to keep a program going.  And, I usually have to go to them 
first, convince them to even listen.  Good thing bees are such amazing 
critters, they sell themselves.

In recent years, our main client has been the Department of Defense.  They 
initially came to us (an exception to the rule), and wanted a 
solution.  We've come up with a boatload of technology since that first 
contract in 1995.  However, DoD funds run on 1 year cycles -- even if you 
get a multi-year project, they can pull the plug at any time.  And the 
higher the risk of failure, the more fickle the funds.  I lost more than a 
few hairs with our first DARPA project - especially over the language that 
allows them to stop the work on short notice.  DARPA likes to brag that 
they fund the high risk, high payoff that no other agency would fund.  But 
they want transition, and in a  hurry.  Six month contracts aren't unusual.

That's not good for a graduate student - starts them on the path, then the 
dollars run out.  However, I can hire on as many undergraduates as I need, 
for the periods that I need, and not destroy some long-term project that is 
the ticket to their own future.  These UGs learn on the job and we pay 
better than most -- if I'm asking them to take the risk of long-term 
employment, then I try to compensate appropriately.

So, how does it work?  Well, if we have a fall-off of $$ -- usually because 
of delays in funding cycles, although we're also experienced some revolving 
door problems, I cut back or lay off the students, with as much help as we 
can give them to find temp work elsewhere.  Soon as the $$ come in the 
door, they come back.  Seems to work, most stick with us from the first 
time they walk in the door until they graduate.

Now, the best thing is that these students get a wealth of 
experience.  They work summers on odd sites like Sandia labs and Yuma 
Proving Grounds.  They see and do things most UGs barely image.  They do 
research where the science has to be exacting -- people's lives may depend 
on it (Are any of you going to follow a bee across a mine field).  I always 
tell the students -- Remember, you're likely to be the first ones to cross.

These students get to play with our toys, and most become full members of 
the team, working to solve the next challenge.  Best of all, they're really 
competitive for good slots at other Graduate Schools -- its not a good 
thing in our academic society to get all of your training at one location 
-- I suffered from that bad choice.  I'll put our juniors and seniors up 
against most any Ph.D. candidate.  What they might lack in training is made 
up for in motivation and enthusiasm.

You don't see us publish much, because the DoD doesn't want us to publish 
lots of what we do.  Fortunately, landmines is not a major issue with DoD, 
so we can talk about that aspect.  We can also spin out some of our 
developments, like the RFID hive marking and tracking systems.

So, today, as in every other year, we're looking for the next 
contract.  We've got funding through June, 2007 -- that's a very long time 
in our world, a rare luxury.   I'm so non-traditional, my Division of 
Biological Sciences struggles on how to evaluate, the University doesn't 
want to fund the 18 people involved in our academic side of operations 
(part time senior scientists, technicians, students -- 4 at the moment, 
will be 12 in the summer) and pay my own salary, nor commit to our 
equipment and travel needs.  However, they back us in other ways, and they 
get a nice piece of change in IDCs for housing us.

However, don't expect me to retire soon, as have many of the bee scientists 
and colleagues of my generation.  We're so close to being able to make a 
difference -- to DoD, to the Humanitarian Demining Groups, and hopefully, 
to beekeeping -- I'd be a fool to retire now and miss all the fun.  I don't 
need papers to stroke my ego.  And I don't need to take sides on the DL 
issue, although I'll stir the pot once in a while.  Soon as I get a couple 
of our new lasers, we'll get our answers.  And my goals are never modest -- 
save some of the 20,000 people a year who are maimed or killed by mines 
(50% children),  help our troops and homeland security (much as I can say), 
and revolutionize beekeeping (we working to effect a change as radical as 
the transition from the thrashing machine to the yield mapping combine).

All for now, we put together three research proposals since last Monday, 
have more to write.

Cheers

Jerry

P.S.  Would I recommend full-time soft money as a career 
option?  Definitely NOT!  Has it been productive - yes.  It keeps us hungry 
and pushing the frontiers.  Can't depend on someone else just paying the bills.

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