Dear readers,

My name is Maci Lesh, and I’m the new science editor, a title I still find a little funny, given I have spent most of my life actively avoiding anything that required a calculator. I was the kid who groaned through biology and negotiated my way out of every math class I could. And yet here I am, having somehow spent the last several years falling deeper and deeper into science and sustainability work anyway, until it became one of the things I care about most.

Here’s what I’ve learned along the way: Science was never really the part that scared me. It was the way it’s often communicated — dense, distant and allergic to a good story — that kept me at arm’s length. That’s the gap this desk intends to close. Because the actual work happening in CSU’s labs, forests, greenhouses and field stations isn’t boring; it’s the most human work on this campus. It’s people spending years, and sometimes their entire careers, chasing a single question because they believe the answer might change something. That kind of persistence deserves a story, not just a data point.

This year, the science desk will cover the full range of what CSU researches: climate and water, wildfire recovery, agriculture, public health, wildlife, atmospheric science and the stranger, smaller discoveries I can’t wait to find. We’re a land-grant university that ranks among the best in the world in sustainability. In other words, the work happening here isn’t abstract. It shapes how our state grows, burns, floods and heals. I don’t take that lightly and neither should you.

We are living through a time when science and journalism are both being asked to defend their own credibility, sometimes for good reason, often for none at all. I don’t believe the answer is defensiveness; it’s rigor. Every story published here will be well-sourced, thoroughly reported and carefully written because the surest way to earn trust is to consistently deserve it. Truth is slower than misinformation. It’s also the only thing that holds up under scrutiny.

None of this works without curiosity, and that part has never been hard for me. There is nothing I enjoy more than sitting down with someone who is passionate about their work and asking them to talk about it: the research, the process and the reason they do what they do. Scientists, it turns out, love to talk about what they love. I love listening. It’s a good match.

Every story this desk publishes is a small argument that the truth is still worth chasing, even when it’s slow, even when it’s inconvenient, even when it isn’t trendy. Especially then, actually.

Research doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and neither does the reporting on it. Every discovery on this campus, forest replanted, disease better understood and watershed studied ripples outward into how we live and what we protect and we pass on. Telling those stories accurately is more than journalism; it’s a form of care. And I’d like to think that’s what this desk is really for: making sure the people doing the work — and the people affected by it — get to understand each other a little better.

Sincerely,

Maci Lesh, Science Editor

Reach Maci Lesh at science@collegian.com or on social media @macileshmedia.