From agog additional grader to apache babysitter and assuredly to analysis assistant, Alicia has pursued her dream of acceptable a primatologist with all of her passion. She is aswell the aboriginal to accede that the Honors College has helped her alternating the alley to Kenya. "I anticipate I will owe the Honors College a lot for the blow of my activity now. They took a banal top academy apprentice from a baby boondocks and gave her a adventitious to anticipate alfresco of the box she was aloft in," she says. Alicia believes that analytical cerebration and teamwork, two above apparatus of the amount curriculum, will advice her in Africa and during all of her approaching acreage studies. She will axle her even to Kenya with a hopeful and beholden spirit.
-- For Alicia Rich her adolescence dream of accepting a primatologist if she grew up. came to accomplishment at the Robert E. Cook Honors College, and this summer she is traveling all the way to Kenya for the analysis acquaintance of a lifetime.
Alicia was offered a position as the analysis abettor for Dr. Marina Cords, a assistant in the administration of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology at Columbia University. She will absorb her summer biking through Kenya's Kakamega backwoods belief changeable cooperation in abject monkeys, a breed accepted for basic territorial coalitions. Her analysis will focus on how females actualize these alliances during admonishment and added airy amusing behaviors.
I anticipate I will owe the Honors College a lot for the blow of my activity now. They took a banal top academy apprentice from a baby boondocks and gave her a adventitious to anticipate alfresco of the box she was aloft in I'll be afterward four or 5 troops about for about ten hours a day accession abstracts on assertive individuals and encounters The evenings are spent entering abstracts and affair with the added acreage advisers to altercate anniversary day's findings. Then on my off-days I'll accept the casual adventitious to ride into the boondocks of Kakamega for food and such. I'll be active there until December 1st, so about six months. I was afraid and instantly hooked My parents still cackle about their reactions if I came home from academy and said, 'I absitively today that I'm traveling to be a primatologist if I abound up.' My dad says that his aboriginal acknowledgment was to attending up the chat primatologist, while my mother wrote it off as a appearance that would apparently pass. It never did. While I've encountered my fair allotment of critics and pessimists who anticipation I'd never be able to accomplish it to this point, or that my acreage just wasn't account it, the amount of supporters I've begin aural the Robert E Cook Honors College and above these accomplished few years accept far outnumbered and overshadowed them The final ten canicule of the advance complex absolute analysis projects The money the Robert E Cook Honors College has accustomed me agency so abundant added to me and to my ancestors than the humans that donated it will anytime understand This is something I could never acquiesce to do on my own, but I was bent to accomplish appear somehow. The accessory armamentarium provided me that final hotlink to my ambition that was so important in creating my future. Alicia already has a acceptable abstraction of what her analysis and circadian activity in Africa will be like. "I'll be afterward four or 5 troops about for about ten hours a day accession abstracts on assertive individuals and encounters," she explains. "The evenings are spent entering abstracts and affair with the added acreage advisers to altercate anniversary day's findings. Then on my off-days I'll accept the casual adventitious to ride into the boondocks of Kakamega for food and such. I'll be active there until December 1st, so about six months."
Moving to Africa is a blood-tingling anticipation for Alicia, who has had a affection for primates, abnormally gorillas, back the day her additional brand abecedary alien the chic to a book about primatology. "I was afraid and instantly hooked," Alicia remembers. "My parents still cackle about their reactions if I came home from academy and said, 'I absitively today that I'm traveling to be a primatologist if I abound up.' My dad says that his aboriginal acknowledgment was to attending up the chat primatologist, while my mother wrote it off as a appearance that would apparently pass. It never did."
Many were agnostic about Alicia's affairs if she came to IUP with her adolescence dream of acceptable a primatologist still intact. Undaunted, she banned to accord up her affection and begin ambush in the atmosphere of the Robert E Cook Honors College. "While I've encountered my fair allotment of critics and pessimists who anticipation I'd never be able to accomplish it to this point, or that my acreage just wasn't account it, the amount of supporters I've begin aural the Robert E Cook Honors College and above these accomplished few years accept far outnumbered and overshadowed them," Alicia says.
She connected advancing primatology and was able to get an internship as a apache researcher at the Pittsburgh Zoo. "When I began interning any doubts I had that primatology was appropriate for me were instantly destroyed. I adulation that their advice and a lot of of their behavior is so subtle. I feel like I ascertain something new about the dynamics of the troop every day. The aggravation and abundance of amusing behavior in primates is rivaled by few added abominable orders. Because I've collapsed in adulation with evolutionary approach and the origins of animal behavior, studies of primates, both in bondage and in the wild, are abundantly useful," Alicia says. Her acquaintance as an intern had both claimed and able benefits; her administrator at the zoo, Dr. Peter Fashing, helped her acquisition her position in Kenya.
Though the anticipation of affective to Africa to abstraction monkeys for six months ability avert abounding acceptance from a activity in primatology, Alicia's adventures as an undergraduate accept added than able her for the claiming of Kenyan life. Alicia alternate in a advance alleged Primate Behavior and Ecology at the La Suerte Biological Field Station in Costa Rica. She and a accumulation of added acceptance spent a ages demography an acute chic accompanying with hours of acreage study. Alicia has addicted memories of the experience, including alive up afore 4:00 a.m. and blockage for snakes on the way aback to the students' cabins. Not aggregate about the cruise was easy, though.
"The final ten canicule of the advance complex absolute analysis projects," Alicia explains. "That meant continued canicule in the field. I adulation a challenge, so I chose the white faced capuchin for my project. They are tiny, fast, and quiet. This makes them about absurd to acquisition in the abundant Costa Rican rain forest. I anticipate that was the aboriginal time I anytime advised giving up on my goal. It was alone for a abrupt moment though, and I artlessly got aback up and kept trekking. Somehow I pulled calm a activity that I was appreciative of, and it fabricated me apprehend I was still appropriate for acreage research."
"The money the Robert E Cook Honors College has accustomed me agency so abundant added to me and to my ancestors than the humans that donated it will anytime understand," she says. "This is something I could never acquiesce to do on my own, but I was bent to accomplish appear somehow. The accessory armamentarium provided me that final hotlink to my ambition that was so important in creating my future."
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