Alumni Spotlight: Emily (Pierce) Lancaster '12

Alumna Spotlight: Emily (Pierce) Lancaster ‘12 
Professor at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida
PhD in Marine Biology, The University of Maine, Class of 2024
MS, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories - San Jose State University, Class of 2020
BS in Biology at Pepperdine University, Class of 2016 
Sage Ridge School, Class of 2012

Favorite Outdoor Education Week memory? 

"We did sea kayaking in Tomales Bay, and that was definitely my favorite. We did nighttime kayaking and it was very still on Tomales Bay. When we put our oar into the water, the bioluminescence in the water would light up. It was magical."

How did Sage Ridge prepare you for college and your future? 

"Sage Ridge from a college perspective prepared me for the schedule and requirements of college—including study habits. And Ms. Laurie Bissonette, my Upper School biology teacher, taught us how to read scientific papers, taught extra science classes and gave us research opportunities. At Sage Ridge, it is a small community and the teachers know who you are, they care about whether or not you are in class and doing your work. In college, it is bigger. And so you also need to be that student who sits in the front row and be that student who goes to office hours, and Sage Ridge set me up well to say at college, ‘I need to be known here.’"

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It was love at first sea cucumber when now marine biologist Emily (Pierce) Lancaster ‘12 first encountered one as a child in San Diego. 

Lancaster visited San Diego every summer with her family, and on their trips, she’d see whales and all of the more popular marine life. But the sea cucumber began Lancaster’s lifelong love of the ocean and its lesser-known creatures. Sea slugs are another of Lancaster’s favorites. 

As she finishes her PhD at The University of Maine, Lancaster prepares for a new aquatic adventure in St. Petersburg, Florida, where she recently accepted a tenured track faculty position at Eckerd College, which offers one of the best marine science programs in the U.S. Lancaster will start an environmental DNA (eDNA) lab and teach biological oceanography and invertebrate zoology at Eckerd. 

Lancaster’s PhD studies use eDNA to detect invasive invertebrates in nearshore ecosystems in the Gulf of Maine. 

“eDNA is shed by all organisms in the environment,” Lancaster said. “The cool thing about this is that we can use that DNA to detect the animal before we can see it with our eyes. The sooner we find invasive species, the better chance we have to battle them. If they take over, it becomes much harder. This is preventative work–like finding early-stage cancer.” 

Lancaster’s packed schedule includes PhD candidate life, teaching biology at Southern Maine Community College and as a graduate research assistant at The University of Maine, School of Marine Sciences. Even with all of those responsibilities, Lancaster lives by the schedule of the ocean—low tides and high tides. 

“The ocean determines my time,” Lancaster said.

It wasn’t just the San Diego summers that contributed to Emily’s marine biology pursuit. It was a combination of experiences in Reno-Tahoe—including working with a teacher at Sage Ridge School. 

“I did a lot of reading and kept pet snails as a kid,” Lancaster said. “So many things I did as a kid kept my interest alive. Really one of the things that helped me a lot was Dr. Laurie Bissonette, who was my biology teacher in Upper School. She was amazing. Not only did we have engaging classwork, but we also participated in extracurricular research with her. We’d go out during lunchtime or study hall and pop by the lab and do some work. And she’d take us to scientific genomic conferences in San Diego. All of these things led me from being interested to digging deeper into things outside of what I found in books. And then it led me to the ocean.” 

What should Sage Ridge students interested in sciences do to prepare for a career? Trust the process and persevere. 

“I think the hardest part about science is that things are going to go wrong all the time,” Lancaster said. “Experiments aren’t going to work out. Your hypothesis is going to be incorrect. For some people that can be really hard. The best thing someone can do in becoming a scientist is to be comfortable that things may not always be the way they seem. Don’t be discouraged if something doesn’t work.” 

Lancaster’s favorite Sage Ridge pillar—courage—is also needed to pursue a career in science. 

“I feel like a lot of the other pillars (Scholarship, Respect, Integrity, Community) come more naturally by how I was raised and who I was around, but courage is hard, especially as a woman in STEM,” Lancaster said, sharing that the lab has not always been a welcoming environment for women in her career. “I also want science to be something others are comfortable with as well. The class I currently teach at community college is science for non-majors and a lot of my students come in terrified because they have some fear of science. My goal throughout the semester is to show that there is a place in science for them. They need to be an advocate for the planet and make informed decisions about their health. That also applies to people from low-income communities or who don’t have what I had growing up, to share courage and to create a space for them.” 

Lancaster also emphasized that a science degree requires some understanding of politics and policy. 

“The ocean’s interests may not align with a person’s interest, and conversations tend to come up around politics,” Lancaster said. “As scientists, we do the research and know a lot about what’s going on but what people care about seems to them so much bigger than that. It becomes a question of, ‘How do I communicate what I know with others?’” 

Luckily she has found that more often than not, no matter who she is talking to, she can find some common ground when it comes to the ocean. 

“I think specifically my favorite thing about my job is that everybody cares to a certain extent," Lancaster said. "I can talk to a fisherman, I can talk to a politician or an entrepreneur. When it comes to the ocean, we all have something we care about. My field gives me the opportunity to make a change and connect with a lot of people while doing it.”

Follow @emilythemarinebiologist on Instagram, and you will see that if anyone is going to engage and educate people on caring for our oceans, it most certainly will be Lancaster, who packages her expertise with zest and creativity. That enthusiasm was evident while she was a student at Sage Ridge. Lancaster was on the debate team and very involved in the theatre program where some favorite roles included Dorothy in “Wizard of Oz” and Sandy in “Grease.” 

The next role she'll play? Dr. Emily Lancaster. 

Congratulations to Emily as she completes her PhD at The University of Maine this spring and begins her next chapter as a professor at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida!