PELLSTON, Mich. — When Molly and Chris West met 12 years ago at the University of Michigan Biological Station, it wasn’t exactly love at first sight but changed their lives forever.
In celebration of Valentine’s Day, the pair is sharing the story of finding their future partner and memories of their seven summers of research and learning at UMBS.
“Getting to know him at the field station was definitely a perfect way to figure out our compatibility, and it also provided the basis of a love story for the ages,” Molly said. “I will forever enjoy describing our first summer together when people ask how we met. It was truly an idyllic backdrop for our love to blossom, strong and steady.”
First Impressions
They met on move-in day in 2013 at the research and teaching campus nestled along Douglas Lake in Pellston. Molly and Chris were both assigned to cabins on a stretch of West State Street.
“We had a meeting together with our RA right off the bat,” said Molly, who was 23 years old at the time and a senior at the University of Michigan taking two UMBS courses to get the final credits needed to obtain her undergraduate degree. “Honestly, I was very unimpressed with him initially because he came across as kind of a jerk.”
Molly made a first impression on Chris too — albeit in a much more flattering light.
“I can still picture the first time I saw her vividly,” Chris said. “She was wearing a long black summer dress, sunglasses, and standing nervously outside the dining facility. We didn’t talk as far as I can recall, but there was just something about her that made me want to learn more.”
After Molly and Chris chatted during a group karaoke outing later that first week, they proved inseparable the rest of the summer.
“He was not, in fact, a jerk,” Molly said, “but a very sensitive, kind person with a tough exterior.”
Molly went on to earn her bachelor’s degree in biology from U-M and a master’s degree in biology from Bowling Green State University.
She is a researcher at Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor studying glioblastoma, which is the brain cancer that took her sister’s life in 2020 at the start of the pandemic.
Chris teaches Biology and Critical Thinking at Bedford High School in Temperance, Michigan.
The Wests have been married for 10 years and have two daughters — 7 and 9 years old.
“My first summer at UMBS defined my entire adult life in just about every way,” Molly said. “Had I not gone, I’m not sure I would’ve gotten involved in research at all or met my husband.”
Their lives and careers took them across the country before settling back home in Michigan.
The couple lived in Wyoming for a few years when the Wyoming Game and Fish Department hired Molly. She tested for and tracked chronic wasting disease in deer, moose and elk. She later worked for the University of Wyoming Biocontainment Facility before being promoted to lead a sequencing and bioinformatics lab at the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory.
“The foundation of obtaining all of these jobs was my time doing field work at UMBS,” Molly said.
Love Takes Root
The couple believes the Biological Station served as the right place at the right time in that summer of 2013 for falling in love with each other and the natural world.
Chris’s memories include walks on the beaches of Douglas Lake, exploring Grapevine and Pine Points, hiking the Gorge and following Carp Creek down to Burt Lake, stargazing at the Milky Way in the UV field, being awakened by the dinner bell in the middle of the night to watch the Northern Lights.
“The sense of place that permeates the soil and seeps into your bones is impossible to describe unless you’ve been there, in which case, everyone who has already understands,” Chris said. “There’s a quietude at UMBS that allows a deeper level of connection with yourself, others, and the whole natural world. Nothing else seems to matter or exist. Maybe a better way to start a relationship exists, but I haven’t experienced it.”
Science, nature and romance also swept Molly away as she took Behavioral Ecology and General Ecology courses at the Biological Station.
“Chris, who was a TA for a different course, even helped me with my research projects for my classes, finding ants to feed my antlions for my Behavioral Ecology project, so that we could spend as much time together as possible,” Molly said. “We went on hikes, to live music at Legs Inn, and our first official date was at a local restaurant called Hoppies. Being together non-stop accelerated our relationship at lightning speed.”
After the summer term ended and they left UMBS, Molly moved in with Chris and they were engaged the following February.
“Chris actually proposed during Ski Weekend at UMBS after we dug our way through feet of snow into Cabin #5, where the important dates from our relationship are written in Sharpie,” Molly said.
Molly and Chris married exactly a year after they met, on the shore of Lake Michigan in Wilderness State Park, located about a half hour northwest of UMBS.
The couple returned to UMBS for the 2014 field season. In fact, they spent seven straight summers at the campus along Douglas Lake, while based the rest of the year in Toledo, Ohio, where Chris was teaching science and coaching soccer at the high school level.
Their second summer at UMBS, Molly volunteered in the Parasitology course while Chris was the TA for Rivers, Lakes and Wetlands.
The third summer featured their growing family. They brought their one-week-old newborn baby up to the field station while Chris TA’d the Limnology course.
The fourth summer Molly used the field season for her graduate research at the UMBS Stream Lab with a one-year-old in tow while Chris TA’d Limnology. The fifth summer they had their toddler and a one-month-old newborn baby at UMBS while Chris TA’d Limnology again. And the sixth and seventh summers, Molly TA’d the General Ecology course while Chris TA’d Limnology.
“People often expressed disbelief that we brought our kids up to a rustic campus when they were so little for eight weeks of summer, but it was honestly the ideal situation—no cooking, minimal cleaning, non-stop adventure for tiny humans, and the village provided by living on a small campus of like-minded individuals,” Molly said, “Many of them with kids of their own.”
Transformational Experiences
Both Molly and Chris believe all undergraduate students at the University of Michigan — and universities around the world — should consider taking courses or doing research at the Biological Station in northern Michigan at some point.
“Taking courses or doing research there is not some continuation of your degree in the traditional sense—it is a life-changing and epic experience with many opportunities that the Ann Arbor campus can’t provide,” Molly said.
“I had no idea the Biological Station existed until my biology advisor, Dr. Paul Webb, brought it to my attention, but it was perfect to go take field courses over the summer instead of waiting until the fall to take 10 more credits on the Ann Arbor campus. The courses were unlike anything I had ever experienced, and as a biology major that wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do with her degree, they changed my life trajectory completely. I fell in love with ecology and research at UMBS.”
Chris calls UMBS a place for “you to find yourself, center yourself, and become.”
“It’s not necessarily about the close relationships you’ll have with faculty, or the lifelong friends that you will make, or the way you’ll learn more standing in a river for a day than you will in a week of classes on campus,” Chris said. “Those things are all true and amazing. But they’re all secondary to the real purpose of the station which is transformation. That is truly priceless.”
The U-M Biological Station — the largest of U-M's campuses — is one of the nation's largest and longest continuously operating field research stations.
Founded in 1909, the Biological Station supports long-term research and education. It is where students and scientists from across the globe live and work as a community to learn from the place.
Subscribe to the UMBS monthly e-newsletter and follow the field station on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).
Students: Explore 2025 field-based courses and scholarships at the U-M Biological Station and apply for the four-week spring and summer terms on the UMBS Courses website. Applications are open for the spring term, which is from May 20 through June 19, and the summer 2025 term, which is from July 1 through July 31. The priority application deadline is March 15, 2025. Student research fellowships are also available. See the UMBS Student Research Opportunities website for details.
