2024 Award: Environmental Studies and Sciences Environmental Stewardship Award
Major: Environmental Studies, Biology
Hometown: Star, Idaho
Extracurricular activities: I am a Gonzaga Outdoors Trip Leader, plant and salamander biology researcher, and part of the Climate Institutes Resilience Team.
More about Olivia
Future plans:
This summer I will be working for the BLM and University of Montana as an Aquatic Technician. Starting this fall I will be a fulltime wildfire ecology researcher for the United States Geological Survey. I would like to eventually pursue graduate school in land management or field biology.
How has your major contributed to your professional or personal development?
Learning about life via BIOL as well the human impact and interaction with our natural world via ENVS has really integrated a passion in me for connecting humans back to nature. Through my research and CPSC experience, I have been able to couple this scientifically. I want to protect natural spaces while allowing sustainable recreational activities for others to grow a relationship and ethic of care for our lands.
What has been your proudest or most significant accomplishment during your Gonzaga career?
Thus far I have two publications during my time at Gonzaga, one of which was in the Reflection student journal on my experience Swimming with Salmon in the South Fork of the Salmon River and the other is a feminist paper on salamander courtship gland morphology in the Journal of Herptelogica.