ERIE, Pa. — When Michael Campbell joined the faculty at Penn State Behrend in 1994, students signed up for classes on paper. Email was just catching on, and research meant hours spent in the library stacks.
Thirty-two years later, as his last academic year came to close, Campbell, who retired with the rank of distinguished professor of biology, packed up three decades of lab notebooks. They landed in the box with a soft thud, the sound of thousands of questions asked and answered.
As a longtime faculty member in the School of Science and director of the Lake Erie Regional Grape Research and Extension Center ― a role he held since 2017 ― Campbell shaped the careers of generations of students. He strengthened the college’s research mission and deepened Penn State’s connection to the region’s agricultural community.
In the Q&A below, Campbell looks back on a career shaped by potatoes, grapes and constant change.
Q: When did it hit you that you were leaving?
Campbell: I was too busy for it to truly register, at first. There was so much to wrap up, especially at the grape center. But I did think about it at graduation. I realized, "Wow, this is my last one."
Cleaning out my office made it more real. I have lab notebooks from every student who has done research work with me since 1994.
Q: Tell us a bit about that research, and why it matters.
Campbell: My research is about plant dormancy — why plants go to sleep. It sounds simple, but it’s a fundamental biological process. When winter comes, the entire landscape shifts. Everything is tuned to that clock.
Understanding how dormancy works, and how it can be controlled, has real implications for how we store food and how crops respond to a changing climate.
Potatoes are the world’s third-largest crop. How you control sprouting in stored potatoes matters enormously to the food supply. And on the grape side, understanding dormancy is central to figuring out how vineyards are going to adapt as our winters get shorter.
Q: Throughout your career, you published research with undergraduate co-authors. Why was that important to you?
Campbell: I’ve always believed undergraduates are capable of real research work. But I had a rule: If your name goes on the paper, you have to write part of it. That’s not a punishment. That’s what being a researcher means. You must be able to communicate your findings and explain why they matter.
Seeing a student’s name on a published study is one of the best feelings in this job.
Q: How does research with undergraduates differ from working with graduate students?
Campbell: Undergraduates don’t have as much time. You have to take a project and break it into smaller, manageable pieces they can complete in a semester or two. But that constraint is good. It forces you to think about the essential question and the steps needed to answer it.
Q: Is there a student research experience that sticks with you?
Campbell: There’s one I think about a lot. We had an experiment set up a certain way, and the student came to me afterward and said, “We need to rethink this. We need a different control group, and here’s why.” He’d thought it through. And he was right.
That takes courage. Some professors struggle when a student pushes back. It can feel like a challenge to authority. But in research, there’s no right answer handed down from above. You just have to try things. When a student plants a flag like that, it means they are thinking like a scientist. And that’s the goal.
Q: The grape research station directly serves the local farming community. What does that look like, in practice?
Campbell: It’s a true open lab. We constantly get people coming in. Farmers stop by, mostly with pathology problems. Companies come to us when they want to test a new product, an antifungal treatment, something like that. The center provides a controlled environment without putting a farmer’s livelihood at risk. Nobody wants to test an unproven product on the crop they depend on to pay their bills.
Q: What did you most enjoy about teaching?
Campbell: The students themselves. I liked meeting new biology majors and being a compass for some of them. That’s really all they need: someone to point them in a good direction. You don’t have to hand them a map. Just point.
Q: What does retirement look like for you?
Campbell: I’m going to take some time to enjoy the lack of responsibility ― and take better care of myself. I want to swim laps when I feel like it, not when I can fit it in. I want to travel. There’s so much to see, even right here in Pennsylvania.
I’m really looking forward to sitting on the deck with my coffee, reading a New Yorker article all the way through without stopping. I have a pile of them waiting. Retirement means never having to dog-ear a long article again.