Teresa Dorado
A love for conservation leads to a career in agriculture
Teresa Dorado
Coordinator, Applied Farmscape Ecology Program – Hudson Valley Farm Hub
Teresa Dorado found her career path as an environmental science student at Loyola University in Chicago. A pivotal point came when, as a sophomore, she was accepted into the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program. Geared towards students from underrepresented groups with an interest in a career in conservation, the program offers opportunities to work in research and complete an internship. Dorado worked on a research project with a Ph.D. student and later interned at the Matthaei Botanical Garden and Nichols Arboretum where she developed outreach tools including digitizing the botanical garden’s Great Lakes Garden.
We all move forward when we recognize how resilient and striking the women around us are.
Top left to right, scouting for common sweet corn pests, all smiles after completing field work for a Forest Ecology course at the University of Michigan and sharing more about the Applied Farmscape Ecology Program with visitors to the farm.
Dorado calls the program “impactful” when it came to her career path. “It was for early career students to get their foot in the door into the conservation ecology field. It provided me with the research experience, work experience and a lot of professional development and exposure to different jobs and careers in the different fields of ecology, policy, and land management. The exposure was helpful,” she says. Most notably she found her tribe–a community of young people with a common interest in the outdoors, conservation, and sustainability. The positive experience prompted her to continue studies at the University of Michigan where she earned a graduate degree in Ecosystem Science and Management. She realized that she had found her calling.
Dorado’s parents were born and raised in Mexico; Her mother was a schoolteacher in Mexico. Her father held a variety of jobs including working as a mechanic, factory worker, and field worker in California. Dorado and her siblings were raised in Wisconsin where the family spent a lot of time outdoors recreationally.
“My parents were people who enjoy being outdoors and they never stopped us from playing outside all day in the summer. Most years they had a garden in the house I grew up in,” she recalls. Her parents maintained the language and culture by speaking Spanish at home. As a girl she loved art and at one point dreamt of being an artist.
Growing up she was aware of what Dorado calls the “classic jobs that everyone knows about, doctors, teachers, and lawyers.” She briefly considered becoming a teacher and worked at an after-school program while in high school. She has held different educator roles since then, such as an outdoor educator and substitute teacher.
Bottom left to right: After fieldwork in the winter; Releasing parasitic wasps as biocontrol in a Michigan forest; Preparing materials to harvest below ground biomass at a research plot; Assisting farmer Will Yandik’s fieldwork on overwintering birds on cover crops. Photos provided by Teresa Dorado.
Dorado has made it a point to incorporate education into her work in environmental science. As program coordinator for the Applied Farmscape Ecology Program, she has led public events such as the Grassland Bird Walk and co-leads the Applied Farmscape Ecology Field Day, an annual event open to the community that showcases the work of the Applied Farmscape Ecology Research Collaborative (AFERC).
Bilingual in English and Spanish, Teresa helped plan the public Tomato Scouting Workshop, held in Spanish, and facilitated by New York State Integrated Pest Monitoring Program and more recently the Spanish Ecology Walk.
Dorado maintains a close connection with fellow Doris Duke alum. “That was many years ago, but we still keep in touch I think that [the program] was very helpful and created a supportive network of friends and colleagues in the field,” she says.
Outside of her job at the Farm Hub she enjoys gardening, especially tomatoes and sweet peppers, and at the Farm Hub she is an avid member of the staff community garden. Art remains a personal passion. She enjoys painting and learning new art skills.
Q & A with Teresa
Read the full interview with Dorado. The interview was conducted in 2023 and early 2024 and has been edited for length and clarity.
As Coordinator for the Applied Farmscape Ecology Program, my work involves four main areas. Supporting the Applied Farmscape Ecology Research Collaborative (AFERC), long-term wildlife and pest monitoring, habitat management, and public outreach. During the field season, much of my time is spent in the vegetable fields maintaining the sweet corn traps, and monitoring pests on crops.
I am excited to pilot a new project this season looking more closely at biodiversity in the vegetable fields. I also enjoy facilitating public events such as the grassland bird walk this past June and creating educational resources in both English and Spanish for staff and the public.
The sweet corn pest monitoring is an example of how the Applied Farmscape Ecology program supports production. These traps are checked every week, and the information is shared with the farm hub’s production team and the sweet corn pheromone trap network. Another example is bird collision monitoring in our machine shop building. Every morning, I walk around the shop to document if there is any evidence of bird collisions on the windows. In the spring of 2022 Acopian BirdSavers, parachute cords hung vertically along windows, were placed on one side of the building. By spring of 2023, all windows in the shop had bird savers and we have not seen collisions so far this season. Consistent monitoring helps us collect data and take actions towards protecting birds, including species that have been in drastic decline.
I studied environmental science in undergraduate school at Loyola University Chicago and Ecosystem Science and Management in graduate school at the University of Michigan with a focus on ecology. Growing up in the Midwest, I was always near a great lake. During my college lab courses, I was constantly amazed at the different Great Lakes ecosystems – from sand dunes to coastal wetlands to prairies – and the life they support. During grad school, I became interested in biodiversity within food systems because of the concept that productive lands also have an important role as habitat. I was specifically interested in the complex interactions between insects and plants such as pests and biological controls.
I had enjoyed engaging people in ecology topics and encouraging others to notice the nature around them – both among a crop field or in the middle of an urban garden. I think at the core, I wanted to be working in the ecology field but also ignite in others the awe and curiosity for nature.
Growing up I was not aware ecology, conservation, or wildlife biology were professional fields I could be a part of. Once I started college, I took a required Environmental Science course and became fascinated with the topic and decided to pursue opportunities in this field. My participation in the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program (DDCSP) during my undergraduate years opened up pathways for me to connect with mentors, professionals, and other students in the ecology and conservation fields. When I was an intern at Nectandra Institute, while studying abroad in Costa Rica, I helped classify macroinvertebrates from river and stream water samples. Being involved in fieldwork, lab work, and outreach efforts to local communities motivated me to continue in this field. After some experience in nature centers, herbariums, and educational roles I wanted to continue my education and research experience which led me to a master’s degree. During this time, I took coursework and gained research experience in topics of biodiversity and complex ecological systems in both urban and rural landscapes. The links between food production, biodiversity and human interactions were exciting to me and I wanted to continue on this track.
I enjoy spending time among vegetable fields and documenting the pests, beneficial insects, and other wildlife that one finds there. One of my favorite aspects is sharing with others the different interactions insects have with plants and with each other. On a farm, there are both natural areas and production areas where much wildlife activity occurs, it is exciting to be able to monitor and document it. Because I also support the logistics of the Applied Farmscape Ecology Research Collaborative (AFERC), I am always learning something new about the different research projects at the farm.
Women have been involved in the ecology, environmental, and wildlife fields for years but their work had not been as widely or officially recognized. A few years ago working at a herbarium, I came across many plant specimens collected by Ynés Mexía who I later learned was a Mexican-American botanist in the early 1900’s who led expeditions in Latin America and was involved with the Sierra Club in California. Jessie Price was a veterinary microbiologist in the late 1900’s known for her work in controlling microbial diseases in waterfowl. The number of women and others underrepresented in the fields of ecology, conservation, and wildlife biology has increased but there is still some work to be done. To keep the momentum going, it requires people in positions of power to be open to new skillsets and experiences as well as commit time to specifically mentor those that are underrepresented in these fields.
Make connections with people in positions you are interested in and find work or internship opportunities relevant to your interests. Find mentors that will support your career and keep you in mind when opportunities arise. Create a network of friends, family, and mentors that will support you in your career and personal life. Celebrate your accomplishments, because as women, especially for women of color, sometimes it’s necessary to remind yourself of all you’ve done.
There’s been a high number of women in the field of ecology and fields of conservation and biology in college, but as you go deeper in grad schools and Ph.D. programs the numbers go down. What was beneficial to me was having the mentors and the support system to go to share if I had a new experience. I think having a sense of community is important. I think things have gotten better but there’s still a ways to go especially when you get into the actual workforce.
“We all move forward when we recognize how resilient and striking the women around us are”
-Rupi Kaur