Education

My education has spanned across a number of institutions including Texas A&M University, University of Vermont and Arizona State University.  I also punctuated my undergraduate career with two study abroad programs.  The first was an international tourism program in summer of 2002 at the Internationale Hogeshool in Breda, Holland.  Secondly, I studied Castilian Spanish for one academic year (2004-2005) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. 

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

Currently, I'm working as a Ph.D. student with of Dr. Gerard Kyle in the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Laboratory at Texas A&M University.  I'm also pursuing a certificate in the NSF-IGERT Applied Biodiversity Sciences program, which is an integrative graduate education and research initiative supported by the National Science Foundation.  My research examines the connections between people and their environments in the context of island national parks in Australia and the US.  

UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT

I earned a master's degree in natural resources from the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont.  I had the honor of working with Dr. Robert Manning and other members of the Park Studies Laboratory from 2007-2009.  My research focused on recreation carrying capacity related issues on mountain summits in the northeastern US.  Specifically, I used stated choice analysis to determine the tradeoffs visitors were willing to make among resource, social, and management conditions.  This  information helped resource and recreation managers  prioritize their decisions about human use of natural resources. 

For an example of some course work I completed at the University of Vermont, please see the following URL:  www.beyondthesidewalks.com/vermontfieldstudies

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

In spring 2007 I graduated with a B.A. from the School of Interdisciplinary Studies in University College at  Arizona State University.  My concentration areas were conservation biology and outdoor recreation management, which fed into an interdisciplinary degree that bridged together two fields of study.  For my undergraduate thesis, I worked with Dr. Dave White in the School of Community Resources and Development on a project that compared manager and visitor perceptions of recreation conditions in a cultural park named Canyon de Chelly National Monument.  I also assisted Dr. White with other projects that examined visitor use of Yosemite National Park, CA, and the Mollala River Recreation Corridor, OR.