Jesse Traub

Instructor

Today, Jesse Traub is the co-owner of the Canterbury Book Store in Escanaba. For the past several years, he has also helped teach science-related courses at Bay College.

After spending the first decade of his life in Pittsburg, Kansas, Jesse moved to Nashville, Tennessee and graduated from Hillwood High School in 2007. He then went on to get his bachelor’s degree from Middle Tennessee State University in plant and soil science.

“I’ve always enjoyed science, and I just randomly picked between chemistry and biology when it was time to choose a major. I thought I could change my major if I didn’t like biology, but I never had to,” he said.

Jesse graduated from MTSU in late 2010.

“After that, I spent six months working at a water testing lab—people would send us one-liter samples of water, and it was my job to extract the organic compounds from those samples,” he said.

Later, Jesse returned to higher education, earning his Ph. D in plant breeding, genetics, and biotechnology from Michigan State University in late 2015. There, he met his wife, Rebecca Bender, whom he married in 2016.

“Two years later, we moved to Escanaba and took over the Canterbury Book Store. I also started working at Bay off and on as time allowed,” he said.

According to Jesse, he had heard good things about Bay from other people working there, which sparked his interest in getting involved with the college. Fortunately, his experiences as a Bay instructor have met his expectations.

“I’ve liked everyone I’ve worked with at Bay, including the students I’ve taught. There’s a very welcoming and inclusive atmosphere at the college that I appreciate,” he said.

During his time at Bay, Jesse has taught labs for an entry-level chemistry class and a plant pathology course offered through Bay’s partnership with the MSU Institute of Agricultural Technology. Most recently, Jesse has been a part-time instructor for the college’s essential biology class during the winter 2023 semester.

“It’s an introductory biology course for students not majoring in the sciences,” he said of his latest class.

Before he started teaching at Bay, Jesse worked as a coordinator for the MSU Institute of Agricultural Technology’s programs at Bay. He said his experiences at both colleges were very different.

“It was much easier to feel detached at MSU but at Bay, you feel like you’re part of everything,” he said.

Jesse said he has no plans to stop teaching at Bay anytime soon.

“I should be teaching essential biology as an evening course during the fall 2023 semester,” he said, noting he hopes to continue as a Bay instructor in some capacity beyond that point.

He also expressed his appreciation to Bay for making education as accessible as possible to people in the Upper Peninsula.

“There’s a quotation from [Baha’i Faith founder] Baha’u’llah: ‘Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.’ I also have a very strong belief in the decency and dignity of humans, and I believe that education is key to helping humanity reach its true potential,” Jesse said.