My passion and commitment to land stewardship led me to a degree in Natural Resources-Conservation.I’m specifically interested in studying ecological restoration and the role that native plants can play inrestoration projects.I received my Bachelor of Science from Oregon State University’s College of Forestry, inConservation of Natural Resources from the Cascades campus in lovely Bend Oregon in 2017.Shortly after graduating from Oregon State, I worked as a landscape horticulturist for a smallcompany that specializes in native plant landscaping. Here I was able to use my skills in plantidentification to help design, organize and maintain domestic and business landscapes aroundCentral Oregon.During my senior year internship at OSU Cascades I created native plant inventories byconducting plot samples to aid in the landscaping and rehabilitation of the new OSU-Cascadescampus. Multiple times a week for about 5 months I conducted fixed radius plot samplesaround Central Oregon, which included some wild urban areas, mostly undisturbed areas in thenational forest, recently disturbed areas, and areas affected by wildfires. I would tally thenumber of native plant species within that plot and collect samples of plants that I couldn’tidentify, press them and then identify them later. This is what helped me to create a database ofthe types of native plants and the amount that we would need for each plant to regenerate thespace that was disrupted while the new campus was built. Working with Winter Creek Nursery,we then planted thousands of plants around the new campus and I was in charge of inoculatingand watering them while they established roots in their new home.