Class of 2014<\/em> As a smart teenager in the small town of Dixon, Ill., David Goad considered two career options: become a doctor or an engineer. He came to Valparaiso University leaning toward pre-med and enrolled in biology courses. His Valpo education opened David up to many more career opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An experiment assigned by Professor Rob Swanson in BIO 171, Unity of Life, provided the first glimpse of David\u2019s future aspirations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen we started the project, Professor Swanson said, \u2018What you\u2019re going to be doing in here, no one else has done before. You\u2019re to going to find out things that no one has known before\u2019,\u201d David recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe way he said it, it flipped a switch in my head. I realized that\u2019s what science actually is and that I wanted to keep doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, David had a hospital internship that affirmed his interest in science. A doctor he was job-shadowing mentioned his regret at leaving his previous job as a researcher. The doctor counseled David, \u201cIf you love the lab, don\u2019t miss your opportunity to get involved with it.\u201d It was then that David decided to become a scientist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n David spent the next three years as one of Professor Swanson\u2019s student researchers, studying plant genetics in Swanson\u2019s lab. When the faculty-student team hit stumbling blocks, David got to experience the planning and re-planning stages of experimentation. Sometimes the team followed experimental procedures that David had developed \u2014 a rare experience for an undergraduate student.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After graduating from Valpo, David enrolled in his first-choice Ph.D. program at Washington University. He knew that his lab skills were strong, and after leading study sessions for introductory biology classes at Valpo, he was also looking forward to the opportunity to teach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cValpo taught me how to research, and how to communicate complex scientific ideas to people who\u2019ve never been exposed to them before,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Soon, that will be his full-time job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At Valpo, David Goad \u201914 learned to conduct research and to teach science. He has combining those skills in a Ph.D. program in Evolution, Ecology, and Population Biology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9,10,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-spotlight","category-biology","category-biology-student-spotlight"],"acf":[],"author_meta":{"display_name":"dev@eridesign.com","author_link":"https:\/\/staging.valpo.edu\/college-of-arts-and-sciences\/author\/deveridesign-com\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/staging.valpo.edu\/college-of-arts-and-sciences\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/07\/20140507-JLH-David-Goad-009-300x200.webp","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Student Spotlight<\/a>","Biology<\/a>","Biology Student Spotlight<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Student Spotlight<\/span>","Biology<\/span>","Biology Student Spotlight<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 9 months ago","modified":"Updated 9 months ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on July 23, 2025","modified":"Updated on July 24, 2025"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on July 23, 2025 2:53 pm","modified":"Updated on July 24, 2025 8:04 am"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.valpo.edu\/college-of-arts-and-sciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.valpo.edu\/college-of-arts-and-sciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.valpo.edu\/college-of-arts-and-sciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.valpo.edu\/college-of-arts-and-sciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.valpo.edu\/college-of-arts-and-sciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/staging.valpo.edu\/college-of-arts-and-sciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2230,"href":"https:\/\/staging.valpo.edu\/college-of-arts-and-sciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228\/revisions\/2230"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.valpo.edu\/college-of-arts-and-sciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.valpo.edu\/college-of-arts-and-sciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.valpo.edu\/college-of-arts-and-sciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.valpo.edu\/college-of-arts-and-sciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Majors: Biology, Chemistry
Hometown: Dixon, Ill.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n