Campus Connection

All in a day’s work for thirty-three years

Barb Sonderman has spent the entirety of her 33-year-career at the University of Missouri working in the Arts and Science Division of Biological Sciences. She retired in January 2021 from the personally satisfying endeavors that have filled her days for the last three decades.

 

Sonderman, a Mizzou alumna, earned degrees in anthropology and later, horticulture because, she said, she realized what interested her most was how people use plants. And she herself has used them plenty.

 

In 1987, Sonderman was hired as a senior research technician to work in the botany greenhouse in the research park aiding faculty with a variety of horticulture research projects. Her original assignment involved assisting with maize genetics but eventually expanded to include projects examining amphibian habitat, prairie ecology and plants in the brassica family.

 

Faculty took notice of Sonderman’s knowledge, enthusiasm and dedication to her work and when a position opened up for a teaching assistant for plant systematics and botany courses — her two favorite classes as a student — she was tapped to teach them and has happily continued to do so, one each semester, for the past 10 years.

 

“Students in the botany labs are mostly freshmen,” she said. “It’s an introduction to plants at a cellular level — everything that evolved with chloroplasts. Students do their own experimental designs with space in the greenhouse,” she added in reference to the Tucker Greenhouse, located just north of the Anheuser-Busch Natural Resources Building. Her job evolved into management of the Tucker Greenhouse along the way.

 

In the plant systematics class, she said, students study 50 families of flowering plants.

 

“You name it and we’ve got it in Tucker,” she said.

 

Students in her class learn the intimate details of plants, dissecting and drawing them. They also learn to use a dichotomous key to identify plant families. A dichotomous key works by asking a series of questions about the visible characteristics of a plant and uses a process of elimination.

 

“Honestly, I feel like this knowledge, or skill, is being lost because now you can take a picture of a plant and use an app to find out what it is,” Sonderman said.

 

“I love it when I see students have that ‘ah-ha!’ moment when they discover they can do it.

 

“The best thing I’ve ever done is turn students into plant people,” she added. “A couple of students have told me they’ve changed their major because of my class. I’ll take that over a pay raise!”

 

Tucker Greenhouse, with its mini-prairie out front, has been at the heart of Sonderman’s work. When she took over management, one of her first orders of business was to make it more accessible by adding glass doors.

 

“It’s a way to get people to come in,”” she said.

 

In addition to a broad diversity of plants, many of which have been donated, the greenhouse has dedicated tropical and desert rooms, and an extensive succulent collection. Many plants were collected by faculty dating back to research trips when Tucker Greenhouse first opened in the early 1970s.

 

A part-time, paid attendant cares for the greenhouse on weekends, and student volunteers help with day-to-day tasks, including watering, squeegeeing the floors to keep mosquito larvae down and insect control.

 

“We use yellow sticky cards to trap and identify insects and beneficial insects to manage them,” Sonderman said, adding that faculty members like Dave Trinklein, a plant science professor, bring their students to the greenhouse to show them what kinds of greenhouse pests they might encounter in their careers.

 

The good guys — beetles, ladybugs, wasps and flies — help keep the bad guys — scale, white fly, mealy bugs, aphids, thrips and spider mites — at manageable levels. She also said safe insecticidal soaps are sometimes administered with “big guns”. Only occasionally will she use a systemic insecticide administered directly into the soil.

 

“We don’t spray any chemical insecticides. Fish and tree frogs live here, and children visit.”

 

In addition to hosting a variety of faculty teaching projects, Sonderman offers tours of Tucker.

 

“Herbs that are wonderfully fragrant are the kinds of things that get kids excited. They scream when we show them sensitive plants fold up their leaves when touched. You ask them why, and you can see them thinking. Kids need that,” she said.

 

In addition to working with faculty and students on campus, Sonderman also has ties to Mizzou Botanic Garden.

 

“Woody plants sprout in our little mini-prairie out front that was started with seed from Missouri’s Tucker Prairie,” Sonderman said. “It really needs burned every year, but that wouldn’t work here on campus. Jenna Rozum’s crew cuts it way back anually. They also come in and climb the big trees in the greenhouse two times a year to prune them. Some of our big tropicals push against the glass. It’s a safety issue.

 

“I could not do my job without Landscape Services.”

 

Rozum, Mizzou Botanic Garden (MUBG) horticulture manager, works for Pete Millier, head of Landscape Services and director of the botanic garden.

 

“This campus couldn’t be prettier,” Sonderman said of MUBG. “I can’t say enough about the entire crew, including Pete. I love talking to him.”

 

The admiration is mutual. Millier said he thinks of Sonderman as an unsung hero on the Mizzou campus.

 

“She is one of the people who has worked in the background but she’s crucial to the operation. She will be hard to replace,” Millier said of her roles working with faculty, managing the greenhouses and teaching.

 

Last Hurrah

Ten years ago, Chris Pires, a curators’ distinguished professor of biological sciences, was given five corms from a corpse plant (Amorphophallus titanum), also known as the titan arum. The corpse flower is one of the world’s largest and smelliest blooms on earth, an adaptation it uses to attract pollinators.

 

“I got one of the corms,” said Sonderman. “An arum specialist at Missouri Botanic Garden (in St. Louis) said once it reaches 20 pounds, I should be guaranteed a bloom.”

 

Well Stinker, as Sonderman has named the now-basketball-size corm, has reached the magic weight.

 

“Every year, I bring it into the greenhouse to warm it up. It gets fresh soil and I start watering it in December. The spathe gets a little pinker and it sends up a leaf, which can get really tall. Then the leaf eventually dies back and Stinker gets a two month rest period in my office she said.

 

“But this year, it should send up an inflorescence in February or March. We’ll have a media event.”

 

Life after Mizzou

When asked if she had plans on how she will spend her retirement, Sonderman smiled and nodded.

 

“I got a new bike. I’m going to get in shape. I plan to do more dog-walking, more genealogy and more reading.

 

“I like cooking. I will make Martha’s dinner every night,” she said in reference to her partner Martha Pickens, an executive assistant in the School of Journalism at MU.

 

“It’s all been a joy,” she said. “I’ve worked with outstanding individuals at MU who have appreciated me. This whole job has been a joy.”

 

You can read more about Sonderman’s contributions to the campus, recognition for her hard work and kind words from colleagues and students on the Biological Sciences webpage.