![\"A](\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2018\/08\/Jim-Levenson-and-wife2.jpg\")
Levenson\u2019s endowment will fund several fellowships each year in perpetuity, with a preference for students who are military veterans. Levenson is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. After leaving the military and earning his doctorate, he spent most of his career at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, where Dorathea worked in information technology and cyber security. Now that the Levensons are retired, they enjoy traveling and bird-watching, especially pelagic birds that spend the majority of their lives on the open ocean.<\/p>\n
Though her background is in computer science, Dorathea says she\u2019s excited to create this endowment that will support graduate student research.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a wonderful use of the money, supporting graduate students who do field work,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Biology professor Jeffrey Karron is grateful for the opportunities that will be open to current students.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis wonderful endowment will provide critical summer fellowship support,\u201d Karron said. \u201cOne of the major challenges for graduate students in ecology is that they need to focus on field work during the summer months and therefore can\u2019t be on campus supported by a teaching assistantship. With these very generous fellowships, students can spend all of their time doing field work.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the Levensons\u2019 great hope \u2013 that the students who receive fellowships from this fund can get their hands dirty as they work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to be sure with this endowment that we were providing an opportunity where scientific design, hands-on experience, primary data collection, and sound data collection, forms the basis for the recipients in pursuit of their research,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re out there swatting mosquitoes and sweating and working hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 51ÁÔÆæ Field Station sits in the Cedarburg Bog, a 2,000-acre piece of undisturbed wetlands that provide students with the opportunity to conduct field research in a natural setting. Located in Saukville, Wisconsin, the Field Station and bog are the ideal place to study plant and animal ecology.<\/p>\n
The Cedarburg Bog holds special meaning for Levenson; his grandfather was born in Cedarburg to German immigrant parents in 1886. He spent many years of his life exploring the bog on foot and snowshoe. He passed that love of the land onto Levenson\u2019s father, who passed it on to Levenson.<\/p>\n
Levenson conducted some of his doctoral research at the Field Station, where he studied \u201cforest islands\u201d \u2013 woodlots scattered in an urban and agricultural \u201csea\u201d \u2013 and how tree and animal species interacted between the lots, how the islands were distributed, how they sustained themselves, and more.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d love to see a 50-year follow-up study done on the forest islands he studied in graduate school. It may just be a project for one of the students who earns a fellowship from his fund.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Researchers at the 51ÁÔÆæ Field Station are about to get support from a $250,000 fund founded by a 51ÁÔÆæ Botany alum. The James and Dorathea Levenson Endowment for Ecology and Field Biology was established earlier this year and will provide fellowships to 51ÁÔÆæ graduate students who are conducting research at the Field Station or in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":785,"featured_media":61874,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[174,200],"tags":[],"section":[],"display_categories":[],"related-coverage":[],"uwmnews-feed":[],"class_list":["post-61872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-news-in-brief"],"yoast_head":"\n