The DRAGONMagazine - Bishop O'Dowd High School

Raised in Oakland, Cadenasso attended Corpus
Christi School prior to enrolling at O’Dowd,
where she was active in sports, music and campus
ministry.
After majoring in biology at Santa Clara,
Cadenasso worked as a marine biologist for an
environmental consulting firm in Marin County.
“They had me on a job surveying invertebrates
in wetland soil and determining the anticipated
changes in water drainage through the wetland
after the construction of a proposed parking lot.
The job was supposed to be temporary but when
my boss figured out I knew the plants of California
I was put on additional jobs as a botanist and
conducted rare plant surveys and mapped habitats
in various places around California,” she said.
Cadenasso subsequently earned a doctorate in
ecology and evolution from Rutgers University,
where she worked as a teaching assistant and
taught undergraduate general biology and botany
labs. She worked as a research assistant at the
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies (CIES) in
Millbrook, N.Y., while conducting her dissertation
research, which focused on forest edges. She
continued at CIES as a post-doctoral associate.
She held a visiting scholar position at the Hixon
Center for Urban Ecology at Yale University,
School of Forestry and Environmental Studies,
where she developed two graduate courses – urban
ecology and integrating urban ecology and urban
design. “I also collaborated with urban designers
in New York City and would contribute to their
graduate urban design studios at the Graduate
School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
at Columbia University,” she said.
At Davis, Cadenasso teaches an upper division
undergraduate course in urban ecology. She also
teaches a graduate course on ecosystems and
landscapes with a colleague. Every other year, she
teaches a seminar course for graduate students
on different topics, such as ecosystems services
and environmental justice and social-ecological
systems.
Meanwhile, much of Cadenasso’s research
focuses on urban systems. She loves cities and
welcomes the opportunity to contribute her
professional knowledge and skills to promoting
healthy cities and making cities more livable. “I
think that if we can achieve that then we can be
more successful in limiting the low density sprawl
that is removing or impacting so much of our
unaltered land,” she said.
Cadenasso says the most rewarding aspect of
her job is working with graduate students and
Mary Cadenasso and her husband, James Maness.
colleagues to generate new project ideas. “There is a lot of creativity
involved in science, which frequently gets overlooked. Students bring
new ideas and excitement and I have the luxury of constantly stretching
my mind. I also get to interact with people from many different fields
and I travel a lot for research or meetings. As a consequence I have
friends and colleagues all over the world,” she said.
Looking to the future, Cadenasso says she firmly believes there is a
way to make cities healthy, socially just and ecologically functioning.
However, many of the country’s development strategies have not yet
fostered those goals.
“I am concerned with both sides of the coin – how to make cities
more livable while at the same time limiting the impact of cities on
natural systems,” she said. “As a society we have very clever people and
we have good ideas
about how to solve
problems, but it’s the
wide implementation
of those ideas to
benefit all people
that seems to be the
tricky part.”
Cadenasso and
her husband, James
Maness, reside in
Sacramento. In her
free time, Cadenasso
enjoys cycling,
rowing, cooking,
literature and travel.
29 THE DRAGON
Online Information &
Resources
The Bishop O’Dowd High
School website (www.
bishopodowd.org) provides
comprehensive information
about the school’s history,
academic programs,
extracurricular activities, alumni
events, advancement initiatives and more.
Throughout The Dragon you will find the
mouse symbol pictured here, which will
direct you to supplemental online resources
on our website.