Fellowship Experiences

In early March, I visited the Anacostia River in Washington D.C. for the first time.

As I sat on the boat and looked out at the waters around me, I noticed large piles of trash floating along the sides of the river channel, harmful algal blooms clogging the river’s downstream reaches, and poor water quality, indicated by the deep brown color.

​Nearly two and a half years after starting my PhD research at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, I was finally ready to submit my first-author manuscript to a scientific journal.

After six years of anthropology courses, exams, proposal writing, and research, I’ve finally reached the last big hurdle of my Ph.D. career: writing the dissertation.  Read more...

In graduate school, I found it easy to find the impact and context of my fisheries research.  The data I was generating about Atlantic mackerel migration patterns were called for by managers and scientists looking to better understand the decline of the fishery.  While, studying at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory on the lower Patuxent River in Solomons, Maryland, the Chesapeake B  Read more...

The skies had opened and dumped a record-setting downpour in Washington, D.C. Wouldn’t you know that I was scheduled that day to participate as a volunteer scientist in an event called “Expert Is In” at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.