Biology Personal Statement

My goal in attending graduate school is to prepare for a career in research and teaching as an applied ecologist and conservation biologist. Although I plan on ultimately working as an academic, I want to do research that addresses real-world issues faced by conservation managers and contributes to solving environmental problems. More and more scientists are recognizing that effective environmental problem-solving of this kind depends on a broad interdisciplinary perspective and training that includes not only a strong science background but a basic understanding of social and economic issues. I am applying to the Environmental Studies department specifically because your program will allow me to get outstanding training in ecological research …show more content…
I was funded in Cambridge by a Churchill
Scholarship, which is awarded to ten graduates in math and science from top research universities each year. My master's thesis explored the history of ideas about the integration of human use and conservation goals in designing natural reserves, as well as looking at patterns of recent reserve creation in developing countries. My results showed that while the idea of Integrated Conservation and Development projects is receiving increasing attention, the vast majority of reserves that have recently been founded in the developing world are still legally designated to exclude human use completely.
I was able to gain substantial research and field experience in ecology during my undergraduate years. As a sophomore, I spent a summer as a student in the field program at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab, completing courses in Field Ecology and
Restoration Ecology. As part of these courses, I carried out independent field research projects. One of these projects looked at differences in plant community structure between ski runs and areas with a high frequency of avalanches, disturbances which have some similar characteristics in that they tend to remove woody vegetation and …show more content…
My experience working with Dr. XXX's lab group included interacting closely with post-docs and graduate students for a summer, gave me a great sense of what graduate school is like, and reinforced my interests in pursuing a PhD.
Although I have had a diverse set of experiences in ecology, the interests I most want to pursue in graduate school grew out of a term project I carried out during my last year at
Arizona and my senior honor's thesis, working with Dr. XXX. The project was a literature review on the ecology of biological invasions, exploring how current ideas from community ecology can help explain invasions, and how some of the gaps in our understanding of community dynamics make it hard to predict when invasions will happen. I was especially struck by the lack of experimental studies which rigorously test for, and explore the mechanisms of, competitive interactions between native and invasive species, even though this is the dominant hypothesis for how introduced species negatively affect native communities. My thesis studied a specific invasive plant, xxx, which we hypothesized might outcompete native plants because of allelopathic effects

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