year 4
Senior year was when I finally became comfortable with the future I had created, which allowed me to focus on extracurricular activities and projects.
forestry summer camp
A requirement for the forestry degree is a 10-week residential summer camp. Students complete five classes while living with working with their peers. I gained another community of friends after summer camp. I also became Firefighter Type II certified, banded songbirds, and traveled to the mountains and the coast for even more dendrology.
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Looking back less than a year later, I can see how far I've come in my skills and the quality of my work. Being 21 at a summer camp is a unique experience, but I am grateful I got to participate in an NC State Forestry tradition.
Longleaf pine forest, during coast week.
Our classroom, mountain week.
Banding a great crested flycatcher.
Longleaf pine forest, during coast week.
society of american foresters national convention
One of the clubs I joined after Epsilon Eta was the Society of American Foresters, in which I became the president of my senior year. We planned to attend the National Convention in Sacramento, California in October. We completed a 28-mile backpacking trip in Yosemite National Park before the Convention, with Dr. Roise as our faculty chaperone.
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With this experience, I learned how to be responsible for people's enjoyment and safety, how to prioritize and organize under pressure, with the amazing experience to travel somewhere new. I created a Story Map to preserve our hike and travel.
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cruising data collection form
For our senior capstone, inventory data collection was split between all of the groups with the intention that everything would be shared among the class. Inventory collection by hand is tedious and even worse to enter into Excel, so I wanted to create an ESRI-based software to automate data entry and decrease errors. I had used proprietary and in-house software in the past, which I used to model my form off of. I'm a forester, not a programmer, so this was new territory for me.
This project taught me to push the bounds of my knowledge and how to fail in front of people. I also applied my GIS skills in a new way. Watch a video explaining the form here.