Overall, my study away experience was one of the most memorable experiences of my life time. I learned a lot, saw a lot, and made a lot of new friends. I notice as I read some of my classmates final blog posts that many of them wrote a kind of love letter to Wyoming. I…

I woke up this day exhausted and not wanting to leave one of the most comfortable beds I’ve ever slept in at the small campground at the base of the Grand Tetons. The day before I hiked twelve miles through the Tetons, so I wasn’t looking forward to the 6 mile hike at Yellowstone this…

I chose to do an ecology-based independent project. For my question, I asked “Does proximity to large piles of coarse woody debris affect the overall species diversity in regenerating forest by way of light availability, browsing by ungulates, and/or space availability”? I then hypothesized that areas nearer to coarse woody debris will have more diverse…

How do you look into the past? This has been a question that scientists, historians, and everyone in between have been looking to answer since we started keeping time. Many fantastical ideas have been suggested by media, whether it be cloning the dinosaurs and setting them up in a theme park or using a time…

I wasn’t originally supposed to be here. I had initially been signed up to go on a different study abroad program, but as fate would have it, I ended up in Laramie, Wyoming. At first, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had never been west and I had never given much thought to Wyoming…

I am currently sitting on a ridge overlooking one of the many valleys of the Spring Creek Preserve in Wyoming. I can see the camp where we spent the night sleeping out in tents from my perch. The land rolls out before me for miles. I can see the mountains in the distance, rising up…

Hi! My name is Julia Huczko and I am a rising Junior at the University of Pittsburgh. I am majoring in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and hope to obtain a certificate in GIS. After graduation, I plan to pursue my PhD in Ecology and work in field research. Currently, I have been studying Forest Ecology…