| Carrie
E. Seltzer |
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 I always find it
interesting to hear how people end up pursuing the paths that they do,
so I am sharing some of the experiences that combined to lead me to
pursue a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology.I grew up in Glenview, Illinois, where I was fortunate to enjoy countless hours at The Grove. I spent every childhood summer at nature day camp and all of my teen years volunteering and then working in the Interpretive Center where I cared for snakes, turtles, fish, birds, amphibians, and rodents. I was able to learn about organisms through hands-on interactions and observations, which fueled my interest in conservation and science, especially biology. In 2000, I started my undergraduate education at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Earlham has a great Biology Deptartment with the Joseph Moore Museum of Natural History as a unique on-campus resource. I worked at the Joseph Moore Museum as a student employee in animal care, museum tours, and the Invertebrate Collection. While at Earlham I participated in two off-campus study programs: a May term in the Galapagos Island and a semester in Kenya. During the summer of 2002, I was an intern at the Field Museum of Natural History for Dr. Rudiger Bieler. I sorted molluscs from ocean-bottom sediment from the Florida Keys as part of a major molluscan biodiversity survey. In 2003, I participated in the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program at the University of Kansas. I worked with Dr. Cameron Currie (now at UW-Madison) to develop a project investigating symbiotic associations between Kansas insects and antibiotic-producing bacteria. This research was related to Cameron's work with fungus-growing ants and their associated bacteria. After graduating from Earlham in 2004 with College Honors, I participated in an exchange program between the U.S. and Russia with the Tahoe-Baikal Institute (TBI). We focused on issues related to watershed management at Lake Tahoe (California/Nevada) and Lake Baikal in Russia. Lake Baikal is world's largest freshwater lake by volume, containing as much water as all of North America's Great Lakes combined. As the world's oldest lake, it has many unique species such as the world's only freshwater seal, the nerpa. Baikal is also home to 1/3 of the world's gammarid species (300 species in Baikal alone). I worked on a project with TBI to determine if near-shore gammarids (Amphipoda) can be used to assess anthropogenic impacts.  In
fall 2004, I started work as School Program Presenter at the University of
Virginia's Blandy Experimental Farm in the Shenandoah
Valley. I taught and developed science and environmental education
programs for K-12th graders who visited Blandy and helped classroom
teachers integrate the field trip activities into their curriculum. I
also developed curriculum for Growing
Native, a project of the Potomac
Conservancy that collects native tree seeds for tree plantings in
riparian buffers in the Potomac River watershed. During my time at
Blandy I learned a great deal about non-formal education and Virginia
natural history. In August 2006, I left my job at Blandy to travel in New Zealand for several months. While there, I worked as a field assistand for Kerry Borkin (Ph.D. candidate, University of Auckland) on her project with the New Zealand long-tailed bat (Chalinolobus tuberculatus) in the Kinleith pine forest. Pinus radiata, native to California, is a widespread commercial timber species in New Zealand. By radio tracking individual bats, we found that the long-tailed bat does roost in and forage around this and another introduced species (such as Eucalyptus). In summer 2007, I participated in a Bat Conservation and Management Workshop in Arizona with Bat Conservation International. Then I was fortunate to spend seven weeks at Kellogg Biological Station in their program called Enhancing Linkages between Mathematics and Ecology (ELME) where I learned about mathematical modeling and theoretical ecology. In 2008, I was accepted to UIC's Landscape, Ecological, and Anthropogenic Processes (LEAP) program. It is funded by the National Science Foundation's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT). This fellowship will allow me to work with graduate students from a variety of departments at UIC to tackle ecological issues in human-dominated landscapes such as the greater Chicago area, as well as my field site in Tanzania. All of these experiences have helped me to identify and pursue my interests in plant-animal interactions, science education, and community-based conservation. Now I live in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago with my partner, Matt. I love biking, drawing, houseplants, window box gardening, entertaining guests, dancing, museums, and traveling. |