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Research Experience
Miss van Riper's
professional interests are centered on use and preservation of
natural resources, parks and protected area management, and
conservation policy. She has supported this long-term goal through involvement in both social and biological
science research positions.
Ph.D. RESEARCH
 Carena
is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Texas A&M University in the
Department of
Recreation, Parks and Tourism Sciences. She is researching
sense of place and management decision-making within
the Great Barrier
Reef Marine Park, Australia. Doctoral programs, whether at institutions such as Texas
A&M or through top
online universities
require much thorough consideration and time. Carena is
approaching her work with much discipline and dedication.
M.S. RESEARCH
Northern Forest region of USA
Carena
was fortunate to be engaged in a collaborative research endeavor during her time
at the University of Vermont. Her master's
thesis research was carried out alongside colleagues associated with the
Park Studies Laboratory and
Utah State University. The project explores visitor experiences
within high elevation ecosystems in the summer and
fall of 2008. The overarching project's goals were to measure indicators
and standards of quality, predict tradeoffs that visitors
would be willing to make among outdoor recreation conditions, and conduct
ecological inventories across a spectrum of mountain
summits in the Northern Forest, including Cascade Mountain, NY, Camel's Hump,
VT, and Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park, ME.
An article featured
on the front page of the local newspaper highlighted the
research taking place at
one of the three project study sites. If you are interested to learn more, please click
here for page one and
here for page two. More
information can also be found in a
web write-up
from a 2008 survey respondent.
Golden Gate National Recreation Area, CA
Carena also had privilege of learning about other exciting
research efforts facilitated through the Parks Studies
Lab. For example, Carena spent the summer of
2007 administering surveys within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, CA.
She helped several researchers from Colorado State University with a soundscapes
research project at Muir Woods National Monument. She
administered surveys to visitors at Alcatraz Island
National Park as part of a longitudinal study of perceived crowding, and
baseline survey data on visitor use levels and preferences for future management
of an area in San Mateo County.
B.A. RESEARCH
For the final year of Carena's
undergraduate career, she worked
at the
School of Community Resources and Development research lab at
Arizona State University, carrying out her undergraduate thesis research with
Dr. Dave White. She also worked for one year as a bilingual interviewer
researching ethnic identification among Hispanic families living in central
Phoenix. This work was conducted for Dr. Daniel Arreola in the Geography
Department at ASU.
Canyon de Chelly
National Monument, AZ
Carena was involved with a study designed to examine
visitor experiences at a cultural park located on Navajo Tribal Trust
Land. The principal investigator, Dr. Dave White, allowed Carena to carve
out a subset of this research for her senior thesis through the School of
Interdisciplinary Studies.
She administered the visitor use questionnaire to park managers and asked them to predict the responses of their visitors. She
then conducted semi-structured interviews with the staff to better
understand the similarities and differences among responses. In addition, Miss
van Riper became involved in an aspect of the study that examined levels of
place attachment and perceptions of authenticity at the park.
 Mollala
River National Recreation Area, OR
Miss van Riper assisted with a study at the Mollala River,
carried out by Dr. Dave White and Dr. Randy Virden with the School of Community
Resources and Development at ASU. This research examined how experience-use-history, place
identity and place dependence influenced visitor perceptions of
recreation-related impacts at a highly impacted site. While some level of biophysical and social impact is
an inevitable consequence of recreation related impacts, the degree to which
these impacts negatively affected visitor experiences at the park was determined.
Yosemite National Park, CA
Carena was tangentially involved with a transportation study
carried out at Yosemite National Park, CA. She traveled to Yosemite with several
of her labmates to meet with the outdoor recreation coordinator at the park and
to select future sampling sites for the subsequent field season. This
research aimed to select indicators and standards of quality at the park and
assess visitors’ perceptions of alternative transportation systems used at
National Park Service sites.
ADDITIONAL EXPERIENCES
Carena's research experiences also
extend into the
biological sciences. She worked as a field technician on the
Northern Divide
Grizzly Bear Project, collecting hair samples in the
backcountry of Montana, just south of Glacier National Park. Carena also interned with the Student Conservation Association, identifying
suitable lynx habitat and monitoring peregrine falcon nesting sites in
Colville, Washington. During this time, she trained for her red card and fought wild land
forest fires for the US Forest Service. Lastly, Carena worked as a
chimpanzee caregiver at a primate behavioral research center in Phoenix, Arizona.
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