Castetter Hall at the University of New Mexico is home to several greenhouses, utilized for everything from research to serving as a peaceful oasis on campus for students to gather and study, according to greenhouse manager Wesley Noe, who cares for the public greenhouse and teaching labs, along with providing support for the researchers.
Alongside faculty, graduate students are also able to use the greenhouse for their research projects, according to Noe.
"I think we all have a fun time whenever we work together. It's kind of a unique thing that people get to do here; even in the department, most people are just working in the lab," Noe said. "For those 10 select grad students that do get to have an experiment in the greenhouse, it's just a cool experience to have for them."
One of the graduate students currently researching in the Whitney lab, adjacent to the public greenhouse, is Maya Shamsid-Deen. She is currently researching phenotypic plasticity in mustard plants. Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of plants that have the exact same DNA, called "plastic," to exhibit variation based upon the conditions they grow in rather than genetic variation.
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