great undergrads

This semester I'm mentoring two great undergrads, both of whom have been mentioned more than once on my blog (here and links within).

One is a UBC student from my first semester of teaching. I've been writing her letters of recommendation for summer research internships and advising her on the application process. Today she came to pick up the last two letters and told me that she is being interviewed for one of the most awesome and competitive programs she applied for (and it's also the most ecology-related).

The other student is one of Sam's students from Another University (AU). Let's call her Marcie. Sam envisioned this multi-layer mentoring scheme for Marcie involving me, Sam, and a scientist from BNHM. I'll field most of the questions she has, but Sam and the other scientist will also be invovled as needed. Marcie will be working on a project using the collections at the museum. I'm excited to work with her on this because it means I'll actually get to work a bit with the collections, too. My research is overwhelmingly field-based, but this is giving me a few ideas for small projects that I could do. You know, if everything else fails or something. Or in my extra time.

The idea is that Marcie and I will write a small natural history type paper for a regional journal based on the data she collects. I'll help her through the writing and submission process. I think Sam will probably be an author on that too. Then we'll probably start on a bigger project that will test some hypotheses about critter ecology. Exciting stuff.