BTC Experience Overview
My beyond the classroom experience was working as an undergraduate researcher with the Faist Lab at UM. During my time, I helped to work on a number of different graduate research projects working with soil seed banks in rangeland ecosystems, as well as start my own senior thesis with the lab. Most of my time was spent in the greenhouse managing the early stages of my senior thesis, doing literature reviews, actually crafting the research project, and helping others within the lab with things like data entry. My project is examining how soil seed bank community composition differs between depth and land management histories at a site south of Missoula.

Reflection | Before & After
Before my beyond the classroom experience with the Faist Lab, I was expecting a semester where I would be doing a lot of the grunt work of the lab as the undergraduate. What I didn’t expect was to take on nearly as much responsibility as I did. Being able to work on my own independent research has been such an amazing experience, and has really shaped what I envision as a future career for myself.

Global Theme & Challenge
My global theme is Resources & Sustainability, and my challenge is battling wide scale degradation and building sustainability within rangelands across the American West. Through this experience, I’ve realized that some of the most inspiring change in ecological research comes at the crossroads of advancing theoretical ecology, and also having the work be very applied as well. Diverse perspectives are incredibly important in this work, and I’ve found that connecting ranchers, restoration practitioners, land managers, undergraduate researchers, all the way to the highest level professors is the only way to make real rangeland restoration progress happen.

Cross-Cultural Understandings
Within my lab, and at MPG Ranch, researchers from all across the United States (and one researcher from Scandinavia) work together every single day. Ranging from Alabama, Oregon, Arizona, Tennessee, Minnesota, and so many other states, each and every person has such a unique backstory and connection to why they’ve committed their life work to rangeland conservation and restoration. This has made me realize why rangelands, taking up almost 50% of the terrestrial land surface, are a universal language of sorts. Nearly every culture on this planet interacts and relies on rangeland ecosystems in one way or another, making cross-cultural understanding and collaboration within research even more important.

Leadership Skills & Development
I think one of the most impactful parts of this experience was in the leadership skills I gained. Interestingly, I think that the majority of the leadership skills I gained were not actually in leading others, but leading myself. I learned that in order to make the most significant change in the things I am passionate about, there is no reason to not go for it with a 100% effort. Overcoming the feeling of imposter syndrome was a tricky challenge, but once I was able to believe myself when I said, “I am supposed to be here,” I felt so much more confident in the work I was doing.

Most Memorable Experience
I think my most memorable experience during this opportunity was when I was crafting my poster for the University of Montana Conference on Undergraduate Research. First off, I had such a blast with this and it was so fun to artistically express all of the ideas that I had spent so much time thinking about in the prior months. There was one graphic in particular that I was really proud of that I got a lot of compliments on. I also had lots of friends presenting at UMCUR, so it was really fun to be able to do practice presentations with them and hear about their research as well. Most importantly though, I was so grateful for the individuals who came to my poster and were genuinely interested and asking questions. I am obviously biased, but I think that my work is really interesting and empowering, so it was such an incredible experience to meet others who had the same interests and goals as me.