About me

I received my bachelor of science from Gonzaga University in 2017 and my master's of science from the University of South Carolina in 2021. I am a current PhD student at the University of Wyoming, Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.

While at Gonzaga University, I worked to develop tools for monitoring waterfowl migrations in the Channeled Scablands region of Washington. I was an outdoor educator for Gonzaga Outdoors leading biking, skiing, and wildlife viewing trips for students and worked as the gear shop manager for two years. In my 2nd and 3rd years, I studied abroad in Ecuador and travelled to Costa Rica during an NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program to study the influence of roost-site temperature on mating systems of proboscis bats.

After graduating, I began teaching a wildlife-ecology field course in Yellowstone National Park, where we worked closely with the Bison and Bear Management teams to collect data on park visitor behavior and how bison grazing affects the productivity of the park's grasslands. Then, in 2017-2018, I worked as a biological field and lab technician in Eastern Washington, Colorado and Montana, studying the effect of parasites on the metabolic performance of high-altitude deer mice and the aerobically active tissues of the Dark-eyed Juncos with the Cheviron Lab at the University of Montana, and the predator-prey interactions of an ecosystem following Grey Wolf reintroductions with the Prugh Lab at the University of Washington. 

I joined the Senner Lab at the University of South Carolina in Spring 2019 to study the bottom-up and top-down drivers of early-life growth and survival of shorebird chicks. My thesis culminated in two papers, documenting the social decisions shorebirds use to optimize brood survival and the influence of metabolic needs in determining the population-level effects of phenological mismatches. In 2019, I worked with environmental leaders of the Native Village of Tyonek Alaska and together, we initiated an on-going outreach program between the Tebughna Elementary School and the Senner Lab. 

​In May 2021, I joined the Kauffman Lab at the University of Wyoming to begin work on the Red Desert Mule Deer Migration Project, where I study a partially migratory herd with the longest migration in the continental US (and 3rd longest terrestrial migration on earth). For my dissertation, I am studying the origins of migratory flexibility and individual variation in behavior, with an additional focus on synthesizing information from across migratory taxa. I continue to devote much of my efforts towards outreach, and am currently working with web-developers to design an inquiry-based education tool for the Fort Washakie School of the Eastern Shoshone tribe on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.