35 Under the Microscope Professor and student making their marks. It only makes sense that scientist Janette Steets ended up in the field of botany. She grew up on the bucolic Raritan River in Clinton, N.J., surrounded by cornfields and mill wheels. Her mom was the town librarian, her dad a tool and die maker. She and her two siblings watched their dad tend a vegetable garden year after year at their western New Jersey home. “Everyone thinks of New Jersey as urban, but Clinton has wide-open spaces and I was exposed to the outdoors a lot,” Steets says. The experience led Steets to the field of botany. She knew she wanted to be a biologist but wondered how to apply her passion for nature to the professional world. CONTINUES STORY BY Lorene A. Roberson ‘84 LAB PHOTOGRAPH BY Gary Lawson Professor Janette Steets, left, and Lydia Meador work in a lab at OSU. Steets served as Meador’s mentor in the Col lege of Arts and Sciences, a partnership that produced topnotch research. Arabidopsis thal iana: Thale cress or mouseear cress, left, and Orange jewelweed.
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