am a graduating senior, majoring in Biology with an Environmental Studies minor. While at the University of Kentucky, I was a runner-up in the Biological Sciences portion of the Oswald Research and Creativity Program. I am also a member of Beta Beta Beta biological honors society and Omicron Delta Kappa leadership honors society.In September of 2004, I am leaving to serve in the U.S. Peace Corps in The Gambia. The animal behavior analyses and bird identification skills I learned while completing this project will help me greatly in my position as an environmental extension agent, instructing native people in the importance of preserving a sustainable environment.
After the Peace Corps, I plan to return to the United States and apply to graduate schools in ecology. The experience I gained in the field and in the lab have helped to prepare me for a future in ecological research. The help and attention I received from both Dr. Westneat and Dr. Stewart truly showed me the amount of work and dedication it takes to start a new research project and see it through to the completion of a final paper.
My personal interests are wide and varied. As a student at the University of Kentucky, I have enjoyed starting up two women's rugby teams (one at the University of Kentucky, and a Lexington women's team) and serving as their captain. I also play soccer on two recreational teams, and snowboard, when time allows. I spend spare time hiking, camping, and writing poetry.
Emerging infectious diseases, such as West Nile Virus (WNV) and SARS, seem to be on the increase. Most of the research on them is either in the laboratory or clinical setting (or, in the case of WNV, at public health labs). But the appearance and spread of a disease is inherently an ecological process that demands more focused research on the natural events that lead to contracting the virus. In the case of WNV, what affects which birds acquire the virus, and then what happens to those individuals? Natalie’s project, part of the Independent Research course offered in Biology to majors (Biology 395) takes a much closer look at how the activities of individuals might affect WNV. Natalie sat for long hours watching parent birds feed their nestling, collected blood samples, used some tricky molecular techniques to identify those infected with WNV, and then put the field data together with the lab results. She had to learn a diverse array of skills in doing this, from behavioral to molecular. Her finding that nestlings contract the virus at fairly high rates is important because such birds are at a critical stage in their lives. Her other results, such as the effects of parents, are more ambiguous (as is often the case in research, particularly in natural systems). Natalie presents both types of findings here, and her paper is a great example of the ways doing research can lead students to advance technically and intellectually. Her study also makes a wonderful case for the value of mixing field and lab research.
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