Chris is featured on UW’s “Be Boundless” site. Read full article here. Below is a short snippet of the feature along with an amazing video!
On a windy June afternoon, Chris Mantegna, ’21, encourages a half-dozen undergraduates to flip over barnacle-studded rocks and sift through seaweed. Equipped with clipboards to record their findings, they’re creating a snapshot of the organisms in the island’s intertidal zone — from orange sea cucumbers to the camouflaged armored mollusks called chitons.
Mantegna, a third-year graduate student in aquatic and fishery sciences, has spent the past three summers in Washington’s San Juan Islands, mentoring undergrads here on Yellow Island — a pristine 11-acre nature preserve owned by the Nature Conservancy. She created this eight-week program for students to get their hands dirty in the field and learn cutting-edge lab techniques at the UW Friday Harbor Laboratories — where she had a transformational research experience herself as a Husky undergrad.
This mentorship program reflects Mantegna’s passion both for advancing the science and for making it more inclusive and accessible to others. Her face lights up when she spots a small chiton (her favorite) clinging to the bottom of a rock, and she invites others to feel the mollusk’s tough plated back. Even Mantegna’s doctoral work — examining the genetic response of shellfish to contaminants in Puget Sound waterways — has a focus on community outreach and environmental literacy.
Mantegna says we have a better chance at fighting climate change when everyone — scientists and community members — feels connected to their environment and each other. “I can tell you that the ocean is dying or that we have too much acidification,” says Mantegna, a U.S. Navy veteran who is the first in her family to graduate from college. “But it doesn’t matter if you’ve never had the chance to feel the joy that comes from this place.”
Finish feature here.