At family reunions growing up, Mike Schueller’s mother used to tell him, “Stay out of the water! Don’t get muddy!” Years later, as a Limnologist and Environmental Manager at the Hygienic Lab, Schueller’s job is to break those rules. And he still returns to the park where those gatherings were held to fish for trout with his son.

Describe the average day of a limnologist.

The average day of a limnologist, especially during the field season, is to be out around the state sampling streams -- collecting water samples, fish samples and aquatic insect samples. Limnologists also take the physical habitat measurements of the stream, such as width and depth, and stream bank stability, and buffer strip widths around the stream.

What is the “field season?”

The primary part of our [field] season is usually from about April 1 to October 15 when we collect the majority of our samples. We sample year-round, but during the winter months our sampling activities are at a reduced intensity.

What’s the sampling process like?

It’s kind of a fifty-fifty proposition. Depending upon the contract or the project we’re working on, you may go out and come back in the same day. Like next week, I’m going to go out and come back in two days. I’ll leave in the morning and come back in the afternoon the next day. When the Limnology staff is doing biological assessments, many nights are spent away—often a couple nights a week.

What does it mean to be an environmental manager?

Essentially I manage the Limnology section. That entails oversight of the operations of the section. I review contracts. I review work completed to ensure that everything we’ve done meets the obligations of all the contracts we have, especially from the Limnology standpoint, but from other contract aspects as well. I also take phone calls from people who call in with questions about different kinds of water quality issues. A typical question is, “I’ve got a pond on my land, and the fish are dying. What do I need to test for to figure out why they’re dying?”

Why are you a subject matter expert?

I have a master’s degree in biology with a concentration in aquatic ecology, so I have a combination of education and 25 years of experience here and 30 years of experience total doing this kind of work. So you have that combination of education and that many years of experience, you know. Hopefully you’ve accumulated enough knowledge that people are going to look to you as a subject matter expert in that area. And I wouldn’t consider myself to be the only subject matter expert here. There are four or five others within the section who are really good, I just happened to be the manager of the section.

What are your goals?

My goal right now is to be able to mine the wealth of data that is available to us that we’ve accumulated over the years, and to start working on data analysis. Because the reality of it is, the data is not much good if nobody sees it, and as subject matter experts, it’s really kind of our responsibility to utilize the data that we’ve collected over the years. So that’s really my goal and I believe should be a goal always.

What is your favorite part about being a limnologist?

Always doing fieldwork. Experiencing the environment around you: being in a stream, being on a lake because you not only interact with the environment around you, but you also interact with a lot of people. If you’re outside, it’s different every day. You just see so much. You experience so much of your environment. It’s never routine.

So you don’t mind going out on a sub-zero morning like today?

Well, I don’t go out as much anymore because my responsibilities don’t allow me to, but extreme weather doesn’t bother me a whole lot. The day after Christmas, one of the first years I started here, a client had an issue. When their initial sample had been collected, it got broken and they had to get the analysis done by the end of the year. I was brand new here, I mean I had only been here a little over a year, and I had to chop a hole through 24 inches of ice with a spud bar by myself in 20 below zero weather. By the time I was done, my coat was laying on the ice. I was stripped down to my shirt, pants, gloves and a stocking cap still chopping. If I didn’t have to go out in cold weather I wouldn’t, but it doesn’t bother me.

What is your favorite part about being a subject matter expert?

The opportunities it affords me. Being a subject matter expert, in the eyes of some people, makes you the expert. But being a subject matter expert, through my eyes, means I have the opportunity to interact with people who are a whole lot smarter than me. You have to kind of stay humble if you want to continue to learn. If you keep your eyes open and you’re willing to learn, it just affords you so many more opportunities.

What motivates you as a professional?

I’m a customer service nut. When things leave here, I want them to reflect well, not only on me, but on this place as a whole because I want people coming back to us for work. That’s what it’s all about. I want people to be happy with the product that we turn out.

Did you have a role model that inspired you growing up?

Two professional mentors. My first mentor is a guy that I worked for in a Bishop’s Cafeteria—a chain of cafeterias that originated in Cedar Rapids—and he’s the one that really motivated me to be the customer service nut that I am. I worked for that guy for seven years and he taught me everything I needed to know about customer service. So from that standpoint he was my first true professional mentor. My other mentor was my co-major advisor and my boss when I worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service. She taught me how to do science well, in my opinion. Basically she told me, “When you leave here you won’t know all the science in the world, but you’ll know enough about your own discipline. If you’re presented with a science-based problem, you’ll know how to solve it. You may not know how to do everything to solve it, but you will be able to organize all the resources-- human and capital -- you need to figure out how to solve that problem.”