On the Volleyball Court and in Marine Science, Paalman Wants to Play Her Part
On the Volleyball Court and in Marine Science, Paalman Wants to Play Her Part
Number 20 on the Duke volleyball team, Tiffany Paalman is one of three graduate students who will be on the court this year. She’ll also be in the water studying marine biology.
A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Paalman earned her bachelor’s degree in animal biology with a minor in environmental science.
“I want to be a professor. I love to teach, and I want to continue in academia because I also love the research side of things,” she says.
Paalman began settling in at Duke earlier than most. She moved to Durham in July and spent the month before that at Duke’s Marine Lab in Beaufort, taking part in the lab's first open house since COVID.
“It was a great opportunity to meet a bunch of the marine science community and everybody at Duke before I start this fall,” she says.
Paalman will study community ecology by researching predator interactions in oyster reefs.
Sports has been a big part of her life. Paalman played for five years on the UW Green Bay volleyball team and will play a sixth season as a Blue Devil in the middle blocker position.
“We are a competitive bunch,” she says of her family.
Paalman was in Durham for the start of Duke’s volleyball season in early August, but she expects to spend summers conducting research at the Marine Lab.
She earned a certificate in nonprofit management from UW-Green Bay, which has come in handy on many fronts. Her family founded Cole’s Crusade, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping children and families in Wisconsin who have had or have a critical illness. It was named after her younger brother, who was diagnosed with a rare, serious chronic liver disease.
That certificate also helped in her work with the Nature Conservancy.
“I've been able to bridge all these different parts of my life, which has been cool,” she says.
