Major: Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources
Award name: Roger Locandro Award for the Outstanding Student in Natural Resources
I’ll be interning at Fire Island National Seashore as an outdoor event coordinator this summer; this position is a partnership between the National Park Service and Environment for the Americas. As an intern, I’ll be engaging local communities through a variety of outdoor activities, including shing and birding. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to start my career with a position as cool as this! I would like to thank my mentors, Kendall Lynn Eldredge and Dr. Rick Lathrop. Your collective guidance and faith in me have led me up until this point and it’s something I’m incredibly grateful for.
I plan on pursuing a career with the National Park Service for several years after my internship with them this summer. At the moment, there’s no strict goal or plan; I know that there’s quite a lot to experience with the Park Service. There are so many positions to try and so many locations to see, and my goal is to try as many as I can! I’m excited to see where I’ll nd myself in a few years and I’m looking forward to guring out where exactly I belong in this eld. Thankfully, it’s a large eld and I’ve loved everything that I’ve seen in it so far.
Beyond that, I’m curious about graduate school; I know that eventually, I’ll want to engage with this eld more meaningfully. Part of the reason that I’d like to explore with the Park Service is to expose myself to as many di erent systems as I can. I’d like to encounter a question in the eld and when I do, I’d like to pursue that question by going back to school for a PhD one day. For now however, I’m happy to be starting out on Fire Island!
June 2024