Taylor Beard
Taylor Beard hails from Parker, Colo., where she grew up hearing about town legend Dan Jordan. Today he is coaching Beard on the UAF Rifle Team. It was the rifle scholarship (and Coach Jordan) that influenced her decision to attend UAF. She chose the natural resources degree because, “of all the majors offered here this one interested me most. You can study more things.”
Her goals are to pursue graduate studies in natural resources and then begin a career with an agency.
Beard has been on the dean’s list every semester and she made the first team All-American NCAA rifle championships in 2007. She has worked at El Dorado gold mine in the past and this summer will conduct fish counts for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. She served as an officer in the Resource Management Society.
With the rifle team, Beard has traveled to Germany, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Italy, Puerto Rico, and beyond for competitions. How has she kept her grades up with all the practice time and travel? “I’m a perfectionist,” she said. “I’m hard on myself but I enjoy school.” She served as an officer in the Resource Management Society.
A person of great influence in her life has been Coach Jordan, a SNRAS alumnus.
Charles Caster
Charles Caster grew up in Auburn, Calif. After high school he earned an associate’s degree in automotive technology at Universal Technical Institute in Phoenix. He served in the US Air Force for four years and was stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base. He knew he wanted to complete a four-year degree and he had always been interested in the outdoors so the SNRAS natural resources program is perfect for his needs.
His career goal is to work for a federal or state agency.
Caster is a fixture on the dean’s and chancellor’s lists. He spent one summer in Switzerland and one as a fisheries technician on the Minto Flats and Chatanika River. He loves fishing, hunting, hiking, and backpacking.
His inspiration to be a good student comes from his wife Mirjam. “She gets the credit,” he said. “She is a model of academic success and has a first rate work ethic.” The two met on a UAF Outdoor Adventures trip.
Wohlgemuth has worked as a summer intern for the Division of Forestry, maintaining trails, measuring plots, and tracking invasive weeds. Her student job has been working with soil samples and shrubs from Toolik for Syndonia Bret-Harte. She won the Richard E. Lee endowment scholarship of $3,000. Her career goal is to work for the National Park Service.
In her spare time Wohlgemuth enjoys cross-country skiing, snowboarding, swimming, and hiking. She is an officer in the Resource Management Society and is on the UAF Dance Team.
His goals are to attend graduate school at UAF and then pursue a career in natural hazard mitigation and planning at the community level. As a student he has worked as a museum archeological curator’s assistant, a remote sensing technician in the SNRAS GIS Lab, done freelance GIS work, and interned with the Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.
He credits Assistant Professor Patricia Heiser and Associate Professor Cary de Wit with being his advisors, mentors, and friends, helping him through school, along with Professor Anupma Prakash of the geology department. “They have a great teaching style and are dedicated to helping students learn,” Balazs said.
He has done exchange studies at Iowa State University, Portland State University, and Finnmark University College, Tuscany. In addition to an academic exchange at the university center in Svalbard in the summer of 2009, Balazs studied quaternary stratigraphy and relative sea level history in Svalbard, Norway. Balazs was the UA Geography Program’s first recipient of the prestigious Maxwell Scholar award, the High North Fellowship, the Excellence in GIS Scholarship, the Fred Beeler Memorial Scholarship, and Osher re-entry scholarship. He is a member of the Golden Key International Honor Society and the UAF Geography Club.
He enjoys hiking, rafting, hunting, going to church, and spending time with his fiancee and his dog.
His career goal is to work for a federal or state agency.
Caster is a fixture on the dean’s and chancellor’s lists. He spent one summer in Switzerland and one as a fisheries technician on the Minto Flats and Chatanika River. He loves fishing, hunting, hiking, and backpacking.
His inspiration to be a good student comes from his wife Mirjam. “She gets the credit,” he said. “She is a model of academic success and has a first rate work ethic.” The two met on a UAF Outdoor Adventures trip.
Cassie Wohlgemuth
Born and raised in Anchorage, Cassie Wohlgemuth grew up with an interest in nature and came to SNRAS with a passion for ecosystems and sustainability. She is impressed with the research done by the SNRAS faculty.Wohlgemuth has worked as a summer intern for the Division of Forestry, maintaining trails, measuring plots, and tracking invasive weeds. Her student job has been working with soil samples and shrubs from Toolik for Syndonia Bret-Harte. She won the Richard E. Lee endowment scholarship of $3,000. Her career goal is to work for the National Park Service.
In her spare time Wohlgemuth enjoys cross-country skiing, snowboarding, swimming, and hiking. She is an officer in the Resource Management Society and is on the UAF Dance Team.
Matthew Balazs
Matthew Balazs grew up in Brunswick, Ohio, and attended Capital University for a couple of years. He traveled the world until he felt called to Alaska to study geography.His goals are to attend graduate school at UAF and then pursue a career in natural hazard mitigation and planning at the community level. As a student he has worked as a museum archeological curator’s assistant, a remote sensing technician in the SNRAS GIS Lab, done freelance GIS work, and interned with the Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.
He credits Assistant Professor Patricia Heiser and Associate Professor Cary de Wit with being his advisors, mentors, and friends, helping him through school, along with Professor Anupma Prakash of the geology department. “They have a great teaching style and are dedicated to helping students learn,” Balazs said.
He has done exchange studies at Iowa State University, Portland State University, and Finnmark University College, Tuscany. In addition to an academic exchange at the university center in Svalbard in the summer of 2009, Balazs studied quaternary stratigraphy and relative sea level history in Svalbard, Norway. Balazs was the UA Geography Program’s first recipient of the prestigious Maxwell Scholar award, the High North Fellowship, the Excellence in GIS Scholarship, the Fred Beeler Memorial Scholarship, and Osher re-entry scholarship. He is a member of the Golden Key International Honor Society and the UAF Geography Club.
He enjoys hiking, rafting, hunting, going to church, and spending time with his fiancee and his dog.
1 comment:
Congrats Matt!!
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