Welcome to 'Ear to Earth'

Ear to Earth is a new blog I’ve started as a means of tracking my journey through life in graduate school. In order to gauge personal growth as well as expansion of knowledge and skill set, I think it’s important to briefly explain my background and the life experiences that have led me to where I am now.

Towards the end of my third year studying Environmental Science at UMass Amherst, I came across an article in Science titled, “The whole-soil carbon flux in response to warming“ (Hicks Pries, Castanha, Porras & Torn, 2017). I had just joined the Keiluweit Biogeochemistry Group in January 2018 which required that I familiarize myself with literature on terrestrial carbon cycling. The lead author of this particular article, Dr. Caitlin Hicks Pries (CHP), is now a faculty member in the Biological Sciences department at Dartmouth College and a graduate advisor for the doctorate program, Ecology, Evolution, Ecosystems, and Society (EEES).

Come Summer 2018, I traveled to the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) with Dr. Marco Keiluweit and spent the field season working alongside PhD student Carolyn Anderson. I was awestruck by the number of ecology experts, graduate students, and technicians who were all working on a variety of different research projects, from plant-pollinator interactions to fungal symbioses. As I started to consider going to graduate school more seriously, I remembered the Hicks Pries Group and EEES. I submitted a successful application to the doctorate program in the winter of 2018 and made my first visit during a recruitment weekend in February 2019.

After graduating from UMass in May 2019, I began working for the Hicks Pries Group as a lab technician, a position offered to me by CHP for the sake of early initiation to the lab’s ongoing projects before I took on the added responsibilities of grad school. The rest of my story will be chronicled in future blog posts. Thank you for reading!

- Geni G.