By Lara Ivanitch
Ever since Giuliana Mendoza was a young child collecting acorns, she’s found plants fascinating. Her love of the outdoors exposed her to all types of flowers, shrubs, trees and mosses. She wondered why they all looked so different — and why they were so important to our ecosystem.
Now a plant biology major in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at NC State University, Mendoza still asks questions when she comes across a bed of flowers while walking across campus.
“I’m usually thinking, ‘How does it work? Why are you a different color than the plant that’s right next to you?’”
Discovering the Science of Flora
Mendoza began to learn the answers to some of her questions in her high school biology class at Macon Early College in Franklin, North Carolina. Suddenly she could see how one of her greatest interests could carry into her future.
“I was like, ‘Whoa, this is what I want to do,’” she says. “I knew I wanted to study plants.”
Mendoza has a special connection to all things green and growing through her religion, Santeria. Within the Afro-Cuban faith, each follower has a “sign,” somewhat akin to an astrology sign.
“My sign basically tells me that I need to follow the path of plants and study plants,” she says.
Connecting on Campus
At NC State, Mendoza, a junior, feels at home in the Botany Club. An active member since her freshman year, she’s now the club’s vice president and is a past Agri-Life Council representative and secretary. Mendoza enjoys planning both creative club activities, like building terrariums and flower origami, and informative events, such as a Q&A session with club officers.
She also likes coordinating speakers whose work relates to botany. “They talk about what they do and how they’ve applied either plant biology or plant science-related degrees to their jobs,” Mendoza says. “They give a different perspective on what your future could look like.”
And the club draws plant enthusiasts from a range of majors.
“It’s a way to meet with other people who are also interested in plants who are in plant science-related degrees, or honestly, even engineers, and it’s not just environmental engineering,” Mendoza says. “People from all different colleges come [participate in the] Botany Club. It’s a way to get us together — a thing that we have in common.”
In the Lab
To meet her degree’s research requirements, Mendoza works in the lab of Marcela Rojas-Pierce, associate head of the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology. The hands-on nature of working in a lab gives Mendoza the chance to take concepts covered in her courses and use them in a more immersive way.
“Things you learn about in class, like how to run PCRs [polymerase chain reactions], are much different in the lab, where things don’t always work as well,” she says. “Working in Dr. Rojas-Pierce’s lab has allowed me to apply what I have learned in classes and labs into real-life where there are a lot more factors that go into whether an experiment will be successful or not.”
Before working in the lab, Mendoza got real-world experience working at NC State’s Phytotron, a plant controlled environmental laboratory located on North Campus.
“This was my first real plant-related job ever, and I liked it very much. I was able to learn about the importance of correctly watering plants with water or nutrients added, as well as how often and the method of delivery,” says Mendoza, adding she also learned about managing pests in greenhouses. “What I really liked about working at the Phytotron was seeing what different labs were doing their experiments on and how they personalized each greenhouse according to their experiment with different contraptions to aid their plant research.”
These roles, Mendoza says, have shaped her academic and career goals.
“Both of these jobs have definitely helped me find what I want to do in life,” she says. “I am not exactly sure what the future holds for me 10 years from now, but one thing is for certain: I will be working on improving plants and our agriculture.”
Looking toward the Future
Mendoza plans to pursue a doctorate before entering the workforce. She hopes to have a career related to food, food production or food regulations.
“I want to work around genetically modified organisms, specifically food crops,” Mendoza says. “I would love to work for the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] or the USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture]. Honestly, anywhere that oversees food here in the United States.”
Ultimately she wants to incorporate her passion for addressing food insecurity and improving access to food into her work.
“Food shouldn’t be a privilege. It’s a basic thing,” Mendoza says. “People should be able to have the food they need.”
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