The path from a glittering crown to doctoral research in primate behavior is a logical one for Erin Sullivan.
The 1999-2000 National Cherry Festival Queen is now studying rhesus monkeys at the University of California Davis, observing, gathering, analyzing and processing data and attending scientific conferences. She works at the California National Primate Research Center where she is studying the development of trait-level characteristics, such as temperament, and also the development of the stress response — the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis to be specific.
"It's just funny to put the two worlds together, science and having been the National Cherry Festival Queen,” said Sullivan, who completed her master's degree last fall and will give an oral defense of her dissertation this winter. "Most wouldn't put the two together.”
In June, Sullivan received a small research grant from the American Society of Primatologists to help fund her studies on the development of the HPA axis in rhesus monkeys. In addition, her first year in the doctoral program, she received a National Institutes of Mental Health fellowship to support her schooling for three years plus a stipend.
"I don't have research funding and research with monkeys is really expensive although much of my stuff is behavior observation,” said Sullivan, who plans to use the most recent grant money to collect and analyze blood samples.
A 1995 graduate of Traverse City Senior High School — where she credits teacher Tom Czarny's anatomy and physiology class with furthering her fascination with biology — Sullivan attended the University of Michigan. She graduated in 1999 with a double major in psychology and anthropology, even then intending to go back to graduate school. She first took a few years off to make sure that was what she wanted to do.
This window after completing her bachelor's degree proved a perfect fit to tuck in National Cherry Festival Queen duties. She had already planned to take some time off to regroup and that year she worked as a substitute teacher, did research and waited tables. These part-time jobs gave her time to travel around the state and nation as the National Cherry Festival Queen.
"You're always surprised, I'm humble enough to be surprised,” she said of winning.
Actually her winning year was Sullivan's second year in the competition: she was a finalist the year before. She was inspired to enter the 1998 event while studying abroad in Ireland.
"Just living there I recognized how much I loved being from northern Michigan and what a special place it is,” recalled Sullivan.
"I really liked the organization and all the people involved,” she added of that first year's competition. "I liked what the 'pageant' was all about, it was not your typical beauty pageant.”
Sullivan noted that the networking and public speaking skills honed during her year's reign still serve her today.
"The speaking especially, I have to give a talk at Berkeley tomorrow and had I not had all the public speaking experience from being the Cherry Queen this would have been much more difficult,” she said last week. "Networking is part of any job and as Cherry Queen there was tons of networking and that's helped me as well.”
Summer is usually a busy season for her primate observations as babies are born in spring but, when she can, Sullivan comes home for the National Cherry Festival. When she cannot, like this year, she tracks the queen candidates and winner via the Traverse City Record-Eagle web site.
"You read them all [the candidates' bios] and see who you think will make it on,” she said.
When she is home at festival time, she appreciates the warm welcome for past Cherry Queens.
"It's totally a sorority and when you come back, you catch up,” Sullivan said. "There's a luncheon for the past queens where we get to meet the queen and her court.”