JCHS grad earns award

Everyone has a “thing.”

For Liza Haggenjos, it’s bugs.

The Jay County High School graduate has parlayed that love of insects into an award from Denison College for her research on dragonflies.

Haggenjos, a senior majoring in biology at the central Ohio college, has worked for the past year studying the mating habits of dragonflies. Her work caught the attention of Denison’s biology department, which chose her and a few other students to receive research awards.

“My paper is going to be composed of why mating behaviors happen they way they do,” Haggenjos said. “Most of the faculty know what’s going on with everybody’s project. We have lots of get-togethers where we will have dinner and everybody can talk about their research projects.”

It has been apparent that bugs were “her thing” since she was 5 years old and her family moved to a new house.

“I don’t know why they allowed us to do this, but (my parents) allowed us to pick out our wallpaper and I chose this really garish bug wallpaper that was absolutely wonderful,” said Haggenjos, the daughter of Mark and Donna Haggenjos of Portland. “And years later we had the fun task of taking it down.”

As she was always interested in medicine — her father is a doctor — Haggenjos focused more on the sciences that would help her in college and ultimately medical school. But a few years ago when her advisor mentioned a class he would be teaching about insects, Haggenjos jumped at the chance to take it.

“It just kind of blossomed into really loving the class and being able to learn about how insects are identified, how to pin them, just everything that you would need,” Haggenjos said. “My advisor is very much into making sure we can do science, as opposed to just kind of learning science.”

With graduation in sight this May, Haggenjos is preparing to attend medical school at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. While her research doesn’t necessarily relate to her future studies, she said it’s still been very beneficial. Her project requires meticulous work, which every scientist has to do at some point.

“It really helps diversify your thinking when you are looking at one specific problem,” Haggenjos said. “It’s been incredibly helpful alone in some of the classes that I’ve taken, to sort of expand your mind and understand the problem from all angles. This in-depth research has really helped me expand myself as a scientist, or a questioner.”