Derek McFarland

Undergraduate Fellow

"I want to go into veterinary medicine. And that's what's so great about this place. It's opening my mind to so many different career paths, because veterinary medicine isn't the only thing you can do. Now I can think about, Ooh, I want to go into maybe veterinary research and do some sort of ecological studies.”

Was there anything that you didn't expect about this?

“What I did expect was to be hiking through the woods. I didn't expect it to be such a community. I knew that we were going to be in groups and I thought those were the only people I was really going to have contact with. But it's interesting that the groups are interconnected. Not only through their research topics, but through the people and the relationships that you form."

Are there specific events that you think builds the community or is it just people here?

“I would say... the carpool! In carpool it's always so mixed up that I get to always sit next to someone new. I'm meeting them in a very personal and close space. It's really cool that way.”

Derek worked with Solny Adasteinsson's Tick & Wildlife Ecology team during summer 2018. Learn more about their prescribed fire and tick-borne disease ecology research here.