Hope Jett

High School Apprentice, Team Skeet

“I put in one earbud and listen to Taylor Swift and count my eggs.”

Hope Jett, rising high school senior at Washington High School, is one of six TERAs (Tyson Environmental Research Apprentices) joining the Tyson research community this summer. Her work with the Skeet Team under the mentorship of graduate student Lauren Johnson is a natural continuation of her experience with the Shaw Institute for Field Training (SIFT) and the Zoo ALIVE (Active Leaders in Volunteer Education) program at the St. Louis Zoo.

“It’s nice to be able to perfect something. It’s fun to look at 500 different mosquito eggs and determine what they are. My research feels like one of those color-by number books where I can sort through a sample and understand the whole picture accurately.”

How does your work at Tyson build on your future research interests?

“I chose mosquito team because it was along those lines of organismal biology or entomology to where it has a relation to bigger animals. I want to major in Animal Science and minor in Pre-Vet at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana because I want to do veterinary medicine in a zoological setting. If I could create my own team at Tyson, I’d study cheetahs. Their absolute speed and anatomy is really cool!”