In the University Farm’s habitats and laboratories, research and education flourish

The director of Case Western Reserve’s University Farm dresses elegantly and works out of a charming office on the top floor of a former dairy barn. But Ana Locci once had a less illustrious post on these 400 acres 10 miles east of campus. During the early 1980s, while completing her master’s degree in aquatic ecology, she assisted her faculty advisor on the farm. Once a week, she climbed inside giant, foul-smelling fish tanks and scrubbed them clean. Fieldwork in the Snowbelt was no joke either, particularly for a native Venezuelan. “I was in the ponds in the middle of the winter, breaking through the ice and doing all sorts of water measurements,” she laughs. “It nearly killed me!”