Dr. Seth H Bromagen
Assistant Professor of Zoology
seth.bromagen@kwc.edu
270-852-3162
120 Yu Hak Hahn Center for the Sciences
Education:
PhD Ecology and Evolution, Rutgers University – New Brunswick 2022
MS Biology, Morehead State University, 2015
BS Biology, Morehead State University, 2012
Research:
I am a parasitologist, ecologist, and ichthyologist. Meaning I study the ecology and evolutionary biology of the little organisms living on and in fish. I prefer to focus on the sexual systems of these parasites, interactions with their host species, and the community dynamics of both. I am always looking for new ways to approach the study of parasites and fish.
If you want to know more about the specifics of my research and future plans, visit my website, bromagenparasitology.com, or follow me on twitter @seth_bromagen.
My Academic Story:
Ask ten college professors about their path to academia and you are likely to get ten entirely distinct answers. I am no different, I grew up in the foothills of Appalachia in eastern Kentucky around Morehead. I had rarely left Kentucky, I went to Tennessee twice, and once when I was too young to remember anything about it, I went to California with my grandmother.
I was aimless as a teenager, I played football, won some minor conference awards, but wasn’t good enough to keep playing. I was always told I was smart by other people, and I spent a lot of time trying to convince them they were wrong, got suspended a few times, ignored classes, and by the time I finished high school I still was not sure what I wanted to do and that continued into my college career.
I went to college in a privileged position, with a full academic scholarship due to ACT scores. People continued to tell me I was smart, and in my mind smart people went to Med School to become doctors—the wrong kind in my case. Going to Med School was never something I WANTED, it was more that I felt it was what I was supposed to do. So, I drifted in my course work in my early years, I think I was only one course shy of a philosophy minor.
As I progressed through my biology courses I drifted further and further from the path to medical school. Taking more ecology, evolution, and other courses unrelated to medicine, I ended up graduating and was still unsure about my future. I took the MCAT, the GRE, and the LSAT for reasons that do not make a ton of sense now and I ended up staying in school at Morehead State to pursue an MS. Again, because I was not sure where to go or what to do.
It was then that I fell in love with the biology of parasites, some of their, frankly bizarre, life history, morphology, and physiology. I became interested in how they responded to their host and the outside environment. My Master’s thesis was on the response of parasites in minnows to different sources of stream pollution (coal mine and agricultural runoff). It was poorly written but scientifically sound. As I dug into the literature surrounding parasites, I become more and more curious about the potential of what I finally knew was a legitimate career path, academia. That led me to further pursue academics and eventually apply to PhD programs.
I got into Rutgers University in New Jersey and moved there to join a fantastic program with an enthusiastic and supportive graduate student body. This was the first time I had spent significant time outside of a 40 miles radius around my family. I struggled with the transition, but ultimately found my footing and earned a PhD. Along the way I taught and worked with some very impressive undergraduate students who then went on to bigger and better things. I look forward to working with more students in a research capacity and helping them form their own unique academic journey.