downloadable PDF - Young Harris College

The Science of Life
By Peggy Cozart
Upon entering the office of Associate Professor of Biology Linda G. Jones, Ph.D., at
Young Harris College, one immediately gets the sense that science is, indeed, in her bones.
Specimens large and small fill a display case, and there is a story to go with each one.
Faculty Feature
Front and center is the horse skull
she collected as a graduate student in
Tennessee. Most she found. Some were
gifts. There is even the stuffed squirrel
quietly keeping watch that her brother
bagged and stored in the family fridge for
years before sending it to the taxidermist.
Dr. Linda Jones
In an academic life that has taken
her all over the country, from South
Carolina to the California coast and to
many points in between, it is doubtful
she could have dreamed up or plotted
the career path that would bring her to
Young Harris College in 2009.
Dr. Jones grew up in Florida
in a tight-knit family that put a
premium on education.
“My father graduated from
Vanderbilt with a degree in
chemistry and finally wound
up farming with his dad in
Florida,” she explained. “My
mother was a math/chemistry
double major, graduating
first in her class from
Agnes Scott College.
She taught math and
chemistry in high
school, and I was the
only one of my siblings who didn’t have
her as a teacher!”
After graduating from Stetson
University in DeLand, Fla., with a B.S. in
biology, Dr. Jones earned both her M.A.
in biology and her Ph.D. in pathology
at her father’s alma mater, Vanderbilt
University.
Early on she had the desire to teach,
but first she would spend more than two
decades doing academic research and
post-doctoral work, studying everything
from lung function in newborn babies to
cellular structures in plants—all while
taking teaching assignments on the side.
Though her career led her far from
home, she maintains, “My whole family
is very close,” and, in her words, she has
proudly taken on the role of “the crazy
aunt who has lived all over the U.S., in
great places that they often visited.”
Dr. Jones was living and working
in Missoula, Mont., and had just gone
through a painful and unexpected
divorce when she saw the hiring notice
posted by YHC. “In a move to reinvent
my life,” she decided to “see what was
going on in the mountains of north
Georgia.” She had known of Young
Harris and the Georgia mountains since
her youth, thanks to relatives who lived
in neighboring towns.
“This is one of the most collegial places I’ve been.
I’ve never been with a harder working group of
people that are truly dedicated to the students.”
27