THE ART OF RESEARCH
Jan Leach
College of Agricultural Sciences Distinguished Scholar
Department of Agricultural Biology
Interviewed by Christopher Outcalt
Published April 29, 2024
Editor's note: The Art of Research is a series focused on in-depth conversations with University Distinguished Professors about their research and careers.
n an email exchange arranging our meeting, Jan Leach politely suggested that I might have it wrong. I had reached out to Leach, a plant pathologist and one of Colorado State University’s 22 University Distinguished Professors, CSU’s highest academic honor, to explain that I hope to begin a series of conversations with CSU professors about their careers and how they’d gone about their research and work. During my first few months at CSU, I mentioned the idea to a handful of people, and Leach’s name came up more than once as someone who would be interesting to speak with first. “This sounds like a fun idea,” Leach responded, “although I’m not sure I’m the most ‘interesting’ person you could start with.”
I met Leach one morning shortly before the new year in her office on the third floor of CSU’s Plant Sciences Building. She was just wrapping up her semester teaching a course in plant bacteriology. Leach has a treadmill tucked in the far corner of her office, and there were papers covering most of her desk. She keeps a few pictures on display, snapshots that remind her of stories she likes to share with her students. There’s one of a space shuttle launch. Years ago, Leach collaborated with a team of Ukrainian scientists on a NASA-funded project examining whether plants are more susceptible to pathogens in microgravity. (They are.) There’s another one of Leach riding on the back of a water buffalo. That one reminds her of when she used to travel to Senegal and the Philippines to teach students about rice production. Farmers in those places utilize water buffalo to plow the fields they flood to grow rice.
Rice is what Leach is most well-known for. She’s spent most of her career trying to better understand the crop and the diseases that affect it and has developed a body of work that has made her an international authority on the topic. This year marks Leach’s 20th at CSU. She’s received numerous professional awards and honors during her time here. In 2021, she was selected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In addition to being a University Distinguished Professor, Leach spent eight years as associate dean for research for the College of Agricultural Sciences. We spoke for about an hour. The following conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
INTERVIEWER
Do you normally teach every semester?
JAN LEACH
When I was research associate dean, I just did guest lectures. Now — I give my final this afternoon — I’m teaching plant bacteriology, bacteria that causes diseases on plants. Then next semester I teach the molecular plant microbe interactions. And the first week of summer we do the “Exploring Colorado Agricultural Systems” course. Amy Charkowski and I teach that together.
INTERVIEWER
That sounds like a fun one.
LEACH
Oh, yeah. We take a big bus, and we get started at ARDEC, and then we go from there. We do all the research stations. I took a similar course when I was a student 100 years ago at Wisconsin. We called it the White Bus Course because we went around the state in this old white school bus. Amy took that same course, and we kind of modeled it after that. In that case it was diseases of economic crops. We do ours much more broadly, though, because we’re trying to attract a broader group of students — engineering students, students from animal sciences, artists, veterinary students. Last year, the dean of the vet school, Sue VandeWoude, came along.
INTERVIEWER
What do you remember about taking the White Bus Course in Wisconsin?
LEACH
We had so much fun. We had an instructor who was an elderly plant pathologist, and he knew so much about wildflowers. We also went through the potato growing region. We went through almost every economic crop they had and saw commercial production as well as small farm production. It wasn’t so linked to the experiment stations, so ours is quite different in that regard. For example, when we take students to the San Luis Valley, they see not only potato production, but the struggles with irrigation and lack of water.
The one that’s really the killer is when we go down to the southeast corner of the state. Talk about a stunner. When we go down there the students see how difficult production is. One year, the wind was up, the dirt was blowing — it’s a real eye opener.
INTERVIEWER
What a unique experience for the students.
LEACH
Oh, yeah. Then we take them over to the Western Slope. Last year, we went to a cider house. This year, I think we’re going to go to Talbott Farms in Palisade and try to arrange to see the contrast of organic versus traditional production. The first year, we met with migrant workers and had dinner with them. The workers talked about how difficult it is to get permits to come into the country. We had no idea. It was a real shock to the students, and, I have to say, a real shock to me too.
I was not raised on a farm, and many of the kids that come on the bus with us have not been raised on farms. The city kids, or the molecular biologists like me, who don’t really get our hands dirty — it’s really impressive what they learn. When the lightbulb goes on, you see it.
INTERVIEWER
Do you remember any of the big lightbulb moments in your career?
LEACH
Yeah, in fact, I just used this example. I was a young assistant professor, probably 30 years old. I was sitting on an airplane coming back from the Philippines — my first time in the Philippines. Actually, it was the first time I’d seen rice in production; the first time I’d seen the disease I worked with. I was sitting next to a doctor from the World Health Organization, and he was telling me all these wonderful things that WHO had done, making progress against malaria and progress against this disease and that disease. He went on and on, and I was sort of sitting there thinking, gosh, these guys are really rock stars, and here I am this plant pathologist, and I’m just nothing compared to these guys.
Finally, he turned to me, and he said, “What do you do?” I don’t know how it came out of my mouth, but I turned to him and said, “I’m an agricultural scientist; we feed the people who you keep alive.”
I don’t know where that came from, but it really was the realization for me that we are a system and we all fit together.
INTERVIEWER
Where do you think that answer came from?
LEACH
I don’t know. Because I was so young and naïve at the time. But for me it was a real sort of “aha” — what I do is important.
INTERVIEWER
Do you think that moment influenced how you went about your career from that point on?
LEACH
I think it did. I work with the pathogen and the host; I have to think about the whole system and how they work together. Now we work with the environment and its influence on the pathogen and the host — the interactions. Our spheres are expanding and expanding. So, I’ve always known I have to think of those things more broadly, but I had never really thought of plant health in the context of human health. I really hadn’t pushed it that far in my thinking as a young kid. So, yeah, I think that kind of helped to keep broadening how I think.
INTERVIEWER
How did you first get interested in plant biology?
LEACH
I was trained as a microbiologist. Then I got a summer job to pay for school while I was an undergraduate at Nebraska, and I worked in a plant pathology lab. In my day, there weren’t very many women around, there weren’t very many women in plant sciences at all. If you were in microbiology and you were a woman, they tried to push you into things like med-tech or nursing. And those are truly noble professions — but I didn’t want to go to a lab every day and do the same test over and over. And I’m not the kind of person who wants to be taking care of people. So, when I started working in plant pathology, I saw research instead of just testing. I saw you could ask questions. I saw how frustrating it can be, but when you figured something out how wonderful it can be. That can be a very simple thing. For example, every day I would go into the lab, and my cultures would be dead. I couldn’t figure out what was going on.
INTERVIEWER
In that initial lab you worked in?
LEACH
Yeah, as an undergraduate. I think my boss thought I was incompetent. But I persisted and then he persisted with me, and we tracked down that the distilled water system at Nebraska was condensed down off of steam lines, and it was contaminated with a chemical that killed all the microbes. After that, we would either go to another campus and get water or buy it.
INTERVIEWER
And that worked?
LEACH
It worked!
So, I saw the power of how to ask a question and run the proper controls to get a solution. And my advisor supported me — that was an important step because I learned that he had faith in me, and I learned the importance of that. I continued to work with him during that time, but then when it came time to do a Ph.D., he said, “I’ll give you two choices: You can go to Wisconsin or Cornell.” I went to Wisconsin and had a wonderful advisor there. Those mentors were critical. And there was a woman who was the department head in Nebraska who became a good friend, and she’s influenced me many times over the years. I’ve had some excellent mentors.
INTERVIEWER
You mentioned how you learned that you really liked asking questions — was that true for you early on? Did you like asking questions as a kid?
LEACH
I used to drive my dad nuts because I would follow him around and if he was fixing the car, I’d say, “Papa, what’s that?”
INTERVIEWER
What would he say? Would he answer?
LEACH
He would answer for a while, but I would keep on going and he’d finally get frustrated and say, “Go bother your mom.”
But I think there’s a part of that that’s critical. That’s what we do — we ask questions and then try to figure out the best way to solve or resolve them. That curiosity is absolutely essential in science.
INTERVIEWER
How do you decide what questions to ask?
LEACH
Yeah… Because you can run people down on red herrings. I’ve done that. I still remember my graduate students when I was at Kansas State. I walked into the lab one day and I said, “I was lying awake last night thinking about this and this, and we ought to try this.” And they turned to each other and said, “Yep, she didn’t sleep last night again.” They would laugh. And, of course, you know, you have limited time and limited hands. That’s where you have to learn to focus — and that’s really hard. For students. For us.
INTERVIEWER
Have you gotten better at that?
LEACH
I think so. Except I would say that I want it to be a partnership where students say, “OK, I agree with you; this is enough, I’ve gone down this rabbit hole far enough.” I’m better at it than I used to be, but I still make that mistake. I let them say, “One more experiment; one more try.” Because sometimes it takes that.
INTERVIEWER
It seems like finding that balance would be hard with curiosity being sort of an essential component of research. But then knowing when it’s too much or when enough is enough.
LEACH
And also, students have to have a product, so if you let them go down the rabbit hole too long, it’s not good. I confess to making that mistake, letting them convince me of one more experiment, when I should have nudged them in another direction. But, you know, you have to let them fail. It’s hard.
INTERVIEWER
That can be a good way to learn. Failing.
LEACH
Parents do the same thing. They have to let their kids fail in order to learn. But how much do you have to let them fail? Because some people get depressed really quickly. And I have always said that science is 99% failure and 1% success, if even that. You have to be kind of stubborn to do it.
INTERVIEWER
You’ve been so many different places academically. How did you get to CSU?
LEACH
When I finished my postdoc in Britain — I worked on hops, I was paid by Guinness beer.
INTERVIEWER
That sounds like a fun job — how did you end up there?
LEACH
Well, my advisor at Wisconsin when I was finishing up said, “Jan, you’ve lived in the Midwest your whole life; you need to get out.” He was Costa Rican, and he said, “You need to see the world.” He encouraged me to apply for a postdoctoral fellowship in the U.K. One of my weaknesses is I speak no other language, which I think is a big weakness in my career. So, he said, you know, they speak English, and he encouraged me to apply. It was an unusual fellowship because it was funded by Guinness and the Hops Marketing Board. It was at a research center, kind of like our research centers here. Not at a university, though. And I thought that’s what I wanted to do, pure research. I thought it was a good opportunity to see if that’s the right fit for me.
So, I got the interview. I got the position. I was at this research center southeast of London for almost three years. I studied diseases of hops. I learned that I could expand from working on bacteria and fungi to bigger things. I had a lot of interaction with the hops growers; that was important for me. And also, it was important for me to feel what it was like to be a foreigner. Because I’ve had international students my whole career, and even if I did speak the language, which took a huge barrier off, I was still a foreigner. They knew I was an American. It was a good experience in training me to deal with my international students later. I never regretted doing it.
INTERVIEWER
So, do you have kind of a sneaky awesome beer palate?
LEACH
[Whispers] I don’t like beer.
That was the funniest thing because I just really don’t like beer, but I drank Guinness the whole time.
INTERVIEWER
OK, so, back to how you got to CSU?
LEACH
From Britain, they said you’ll probably have to do another postdoc because it’s really hard to get a job. But there was a position that opened up at Kansas State. And so I applied for an interview for that. And my husband and I ended up there for 20 years. And then we were asked to apply here. We were contacted and recruited to come here together. That was 2004.
INTERVIEWER
Why did you decide to come?
LEACH
We were very happy at Kansas State. Both of us had very good research programs. But, you know, it’s kind of like painting. You finish a painting, and you can just start another one. I could have started another research project. Or you could move to a new environment with new colleagues and have a whole new canvas. One of the things that was happening at Kansas State was that a lot of my collaborators were moving into administration positions, or they were being hired outside. And the plant biology here was really strong. I thought, well, that’s great, because I can move in with new colleagues and new collaborators, and that’s exactly what I did.
INTERVIEWER
It sounds like CSU called at a good time.
LEACH
They did. They called at a perfect time. And also, my husband is a Colorado native. So that was coming home for him. He loves the mountains.
INTERVIEWER
Where did he grow up?
LEACH
He was born in Denver. Raised in Boulder. He’s a Colorado kid.
INTERVIEWER
What did you focus on when you first got to CSU?
LEACH
It was kind of fun because at that time bioenergy was a big thing. So, DOE was putting a lot of funding into crops for energy. I had not done any of that before but there was a call for a really large proposal – I think it was $5 million — and so I contacted Dan Bush in biology, who is a biochemist. And then shortly after that John McKay arrived. So, we had this group that could look for genes in plants that made them better for bioenergy crops. That was one of the things that I started when I got here.
I linked up with Ken Reardon in engineering and folks in biology, and we got a big training grant, which is nice because you could bring graduate students in and cross-train people in the area of bioenergy. I also brought my international connections from the Philippines, and the International Rice Research Institute, where I worked; they were very interested in using the biomass from rice. There is a push to use the stems and leaves, the parts you don’t eat, for bioenergy.
INTERVIEWER
And that works?
LEACH
Oh, yeah. There are facilities. But some of the byproducts — you burn it but the stuff that comes out is not so nice. But there are some in Cambodia in particular — facilities where the waste products from rice go into the production of energy.
INTERVIEWER
Thinking about the career you’ve had and how you’ve developed your thinking about research — how would you describe the moment we’re in now with science and agriculture and climate change? I wonder if it feels to you like we’re at an inflection point or an important moment.
LEACH
We’re at a critical moment — with climate in particular. I’ve done a lot of different kinds of work over my career, and there are parts of the work where you make incremental advances and contributions. So much of our work is that way. But this challenge is something we have to put on our radar, and we have to work together. It’s going to require working together to solve it. There’s no way that working in our own space in our own little world with one disease is going to make the big difference. It’s got to be broader. That’s one of the things that I feel good about with the research roadmap that Gene Kelly and I wrote. It really lays out that we need participatory research.
INTERVIEWER
Is that something that scientists traditionally are not as good at?
LEACH
I would argue we know how to work together. We can do it. But we’ve been rewarded historically for what we do on our own. My whole career has been teamwork, and I have been rewarded for it. But I hear my colleagues saying, “Well, I’m not rewarded for working as part of a team.” The system needs to change.
You’re promoted to tenure based on the package you put together. And I have heard people in tenure and promotion meetings say, “Well, what did they do in this collaboration?” And I think that’s wrong; they should view it as the person contributed. When I write letters supporting people for tenure, promotion or awards, I always emphasize if they worked in teams. Because I think that’s hard, and it’s important. Because you have to put your ego aside and work to build the whole team.
INTERVIEWER
And it sounds like you think that’s increasingly important given the stakes of what we’re dealing with — with climate change and agriculture.
LEACH
Yeah. And we have to think outside our boxes. We can’t limit ourselves to our own areas of expertise. And that’s hard for people because now you’re putting yourself in a vulnerable position. Maybe now you’re working with a sociologist, who speaks a different scientific language, and you’re trying to make it work.
INTERVIEWER
And you think that’s scary to scientists?
LEACH
Yeah! Absolutely. I can even see it in my students. One of the things I’ve always told them is that if you leave here only knowing what I know then I’ve failed miserably. You need to know way more than I know — and to know more than I know, you need to learn from other people. But that’s stepping outside of their comfort zone.
INTERVIEWER
It’s interesting to think how solving the big challenges of the moment might require a bit of a shift in the way that scientists approach their work.
LEACH
A fundamental shift. We can no longer look at temperature and disease alone. We have to look at the soil, the weather — there’s a whole lot of stuff we have to balance in that thinking.
INTERVIEWER
I wonder if that will help speed things up. If you’re looking at disease here, and this person at this university is looking at temperature, and over in the U.K. they’re looking at their own thing — it’s kind of slow. But I wonder if you somehow combine it all, maybe you can speed things up a little bit.
LEACH
Yeah. And it takes special people to lead that. Sometimes it’s not your experimental skills that are important. Sometimes it’s coordination skills. Maybe you’re not a deep expert in an area, but you have broad expertise, you can think broadly.
The other thing that’s hard for scientists is to appreciate and credit the people that are kind of on the fringes of what you know. So, for example, field-based people. We rely on that data. But sometimes I don’t think they get the credit because they’re the farmers in the field. Everybody needs to be given credit for what they do. That’s where these successes will really make a difference.
ABOUT THE ART OF RESEARCH
The Art of Research is a story series featuring in-depth interviews with some of the Colorado State University’s most accomplished professors. These wide-ranging conversations, led by the Colorado State University news and media relations team, aim to go beyond the basics of an individual’s work. The series offers unique insight into how some of CSU’s most distinguished faculty started their careers, experienced pivotal moments in their lives, and developed their philosophies on research, education and leadership.