Steven Allison is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology as well as Earth System Science at UC Irvine. He has been working at UCI for about 17 years on climate change, microbes, and local landscapes. As a kid, Steven have visited many iconic landscapes such as Yellowstone, Glacier National Park, and many more on family trips which sparked his interest in the natural world. His interest continued in his highschool AP Biology class where he first experienced ecological work monitoring the recovery of the the reef and the reef animals during his field trip to St. John. He then won a contest during his senior year for a project on dear ticks and Lyme disease. In college, Steven decided to major in Biology with a focus on ecology and went to a research lab on plant insect interactions at the Pennsylvania State University. As he moved to graduate school, he wanted his future work to focus more on environmental change to protect the landscapes he had visited as a kid and so he focused his studies on the cycling of carbon and nutrients. Growing up, Steven felt his high school was isolated and lacked a broader perspective on things so college was a significant part in broadening his horizons. Currently, Steven is working at the interface between microbes and climate change. The ecology community knows that microbes are very diverse, important, and widely distributed since we have them in our bodies, in the landscape, in the ocean, and floating around in the air. Consequently, Steven’s research addresses questions such as: What are they doing and what does it mean for the planet’s big cycle of carbon and nutrients? And how will the planet respond to climate change? Through field essays and experiments, he analyzes these microbes in the laboratory to address these questions and form new hypotheses. One concept Steven hopes everyone understand about microbes is that they aren’t all necessarily bad. From providing big nutrient carbon cycles to promoting crop health and food security, microbes are very beneficial in many ways. Steven suggests PK-12 teachers to hosts experiments such as observing microbes from students’ handprints grow in a petri dish or reading articles on the microbiome/human health. He believes education is the fundation to climate action which is a big, complex problem that requires all hands on deck no matter the field you work in. Steven understands that it may be depressing to think about all the the damage that's been done to the environment but he emphasizes that the environment is tremendously resilient and it's been through massive changes before. He believes that if we do education well, the next generation will have the skills and resources to fix these issues which is why the mission as a public university/school is really important. Steven wants to thank the PK-12 teachers for their hard work in shaping their students in preparation for college and all that they do. Lastly, Steven encourages PK-12 students to stick with their passions and be hopeful that opportunity can be found anywhere.