David L. Boren Fellowship, Taiwan (2022-2023)
In the fall of 2022, I received a Fellowship from the David L. Boren Awards (Defense Language and National Security Education Office) to study Mandarin in Taiwan while I continued my dissertation research. As a student at National Chengchi University's Chinese Language Center, I took three seasonal courses in traditional Mandarin (spanning Intermediate Level 2 to High Level 1, 15 hours per week), and raised my Oral Proficiency Interview score to a 2+. I presented in Mandarin on the biodiversity of Taiwan, using hex maps I generated in R/rStudio and qGIS with community science observation data from iNaturalist, and also translated and re-presented a talk I gave on my dissertation research for the American Ornithological Society (2019) in Mandarin. I wrote essays on greenwashing and collective action for environmental protection in Mandarin, and completed lessons on recycling and sustainability, among others. I also attended the 2022 Yushan Forum: Asian Dialogue for Innovation and Progress, hosted by the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation. While working on my language study and dissertation research, I had opportunities to travel throughout Taiwan to visit preserves, national parks, and biodiversity hotspots.
Virtual Student Federal Service Internship, Equatorial Guinea (2020-2021)
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I worked virtually with foreign service officers at the U.S. Embassy in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea to develop resources for the identification and deterrence of venomous snakes from the Embassy grounds. The distributional ecology of Central African snakes is poorly known, but I collated information on their distributions from three field guides, as well as their behavior, habitat preferences, diet, and the availability of antivenin for more than 80 species of Central African snake. I also collaborated with Dr. Jessica McLaughlin to illustrate the most common and dangerous of these snakes, creating Spanish and English fact sheets to be used by Embassy staff and the general public. To view all of the snake fact sheets, visit our Open Science Framework Collaboration.