Vinson Doyle ’04 recalls exactly when he realized he was going to be a Mycologist. Until winter 2004, just two quarters before graduation, Doyle had studied Botany and Organic Chemistry, but Fungal Kingdom was the “class that changed my life”. Doyle went on to earn a Ph.D at the City University of New York (CUNY) in 2012, and is already on a tenure track at Louisiana State University as an Assistant Professor of Mycology with a research emphasis on the biodiversity of fungi.

Vinson Doyle

Doyle grew up in eastern Oklahoma, the youngest in a large family. The time he spent on his family’s ranch during his childhood led him to his love of the outdoors and had a pronounced influence on his career path. He considered becoming a farmer then, and considered it again while at Western Washington University studying journalism and environmental studies. In fact, he left Western to get out of the traditional classroom and to spend a season working on an organic farm in Arkansas. Then he traveled to Asia, working on farms with a group that included an Evergreen graduate, Travis Eiva ‘99, who’s now an appellate and trial lawyer in an Oregon based law firm. Eiva’s enthusiasm about his own Evergreen experience was influential on Doyle when he started to consider going back to school, he found a unique class called Picturing Plants, and went on to apply and enroll at Evergreen. That year in 2003, he published his first collaborative scientific study with three other students, one of whom also went on to earn a PhD, Cody Hinchliff ’06. Together they  created a preliminary species list of 109 vascular plants in Glacial Heritage Preserve. Doyle has since gone on to work on a diversity of research topics, from population genetics and systematics of fungi to phylogenetic methods and their forensic applications.

After taking Fungal Kingdom with Mike Beug and Paul Przybylowicz, which was about the same time he started dating Christina Mozzicato ’03, whom he first met in Picturing Plants, Doyle traveled to Mexico for his final quarter. Doyle’s Independent Learning Contract built on his newly found passion for fungi. He studied with Gastón Guzmán at the Institute of Ecology in Xalapa, doing taxonomic research on two genera of mushrooms, Psilocybe and Scleroderma.

Vinson Doyle and Christina Mozzicato

Ten years later, this past May, Christina and Vinson got married and prepared to set their roots in Baton Rouge for the long term. Mozzicato, who studied plant science and agriculture at Evergreen, works for Slow Food International for a program called Greauxing Healthy Baton Rouge, which engages elementary school kids in gardening and nutrition. As a couple, Vinson thinks they are getting closer to making Christina’s dream of starting a farm of her own a reality. Married life and job stability in Louisiana is a far cry from their life in New York, when Christina was at times Vinson’s supervisor while she was a Curatorial Assistant at the New York Botanical Garden’s Herbarium. With that said, Doyle recalls that they chose CUNY over other options for his Ph.D, such as University of Hawaii, in part due to the close proximity to Christina’s family in the Northeast.

When Doyle considers the role of Evergreen in shaping his career, he singles out the realization that with the right tools, he could accomplish anything. When his Ph.D advisor commended his ability to find a solution to any problem, he gave credit to the opportunities he had to cultivate problem solving skills at Evergreen. When Doyle first called CUNY to ask if his unorthodox Evergreen transcript would be a problem, the admissions representative surprised him by saying “No, we know Evergreen,” followed shortly thereafter with an acceptance letter. Now Doyle is looking forward to teaching his own graduate students, and is hopeful Evergreen graduates interested in studying mycology will apply.

Learn more about Vinson Doyle on his website.