Michelle Wood received the 2013 Distinguished Alumnus Award from Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi during TAMUCC’s Homecoming celebration on Feb. 9. Michelle began studying phytoplankton as an undergraduate at the college when it was the University of Corpus Christi, a private institution. During meetings with the university’s faculty at Harte Research Institute, a premier center for coastal systems science, she discovered her four-year study of seasonal cycles of plankton abundance in Matagorda Bay during the 1970s may be a valuable basis for collaborative work on climate change on the Texas Gulf coast.