We're a department of environmental
science and policy and so we offer two programs,
one is Environmental Planning and Policy,
the other is Environmental Science.
and the premise is the people who go on to do planning and policy,
need some basic
environmental science,
about which they're doing planning and policy
and similarly the people who are studying environmental science,
well, environmental science takes place in the real world,
and most of it is done in
consequence of policy; Clean Air Act,
Clean Water Act, hazardous waste.
So we kind of marry both of those with
the basic sciences.
With biology and chemistry and geology things like that.
Most of our students, one of the things
they have in common is they like to be outside.
another thing they tend to have in common,
is they like to do things with their hands.
- I had no idea I'd be interested in researching insects.
I got into the department after taking
the introductory environmental science course,
my freshman year.
And then my professor Dr. Staples hired me as a research associate.
Where I started doing research with insects.
The introduced pine sawfly lays its
eggs on many different pine species,
but in Maine primarily it defoliates eastern white pine.
The larvae emerge from the eggs and
start eating the needles.
- I've learned a lot about insects which
weren't necessarily what I had
anticipated being interested in.
I wasn't interested in that at all when I
came here.
I kind of stumbled into the program after taking the 101 course
and immediately I know it's what I wanted to major in.
I'm looking at the rates of
parasitism of the introduced pine sawfly cocoons.
To find out whether it's parasitized or not when the insect emerges,
whether it's the pine sawfly or
the parasitoid and the
parasitoids emerge from much smaller
holes and different species create
different types of holes while they are
emerging.
-  When our students graduate and they enter the real world what they've done is
they do not generally right term papers in this major.
You write an assessment report,
you write a land management plan,
you write a soil analysis.
So when they leave here, they leave here with a toolkit,
a portfolio, of tangible products that they could show a prospective employer.
And this also works
fine for graduate school because doing practical things
includes covering the
theoretical.
- As an undergraduate you really don't get to experience going to these conferences
and I'm going to be going to my third conference which is just amazing.
Getting to meet all these experts in the field
and getting to make these connections I would never would have made before.
- I haven't had any
published papers yet but
I learned very very quickly,
how to write scientifically
with being exposed to it and
hopefully if everything goes well with
this study and we get more data in the
summer and might be able to publish this
research.
Which would be amazing
