I just completed my junior year at William and Mary and everything is
going very smoothly. I had my first semester on Dean’s List
last fall and am on track to make the list again for the spring
semester. Overall my GPA sits at a 3.45. Currently I am one
class shy of completing all of the classes for my Biology major and
have just a little bit more work to finish my Environmental Science
major.
The classes I took last fall were: Genetic
Analysis, Aquatic Ecology, Environmental and Natural Resource
Economics, Elementary Probability and Statistics and this spring I took
Behavioral Response to a Changing Environment, Human Nature,
Microbiology and Physical Geography.
In less than a week I will be traveling to
Newport, Oregon, to participate in a summer REU (Research Experience
for Undergraduates) program sponsored by the national Science
Foundation. This particular program offers six spots for
undergraduates around the country to participate in scientific work,
and I was fortunate to be one of the undergraduates selected. I
will be studying the earbones of multiple Pacific fish and tracking
their life histories and the salinities of the water they lived in
during their life-spans. The program runs from June 12 until the
middle of August.
Next spring and fall I will be completing an
honors project at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and hope
that the findings from that work will be published in a peer reviewed
journal sometime after graduation. Overall, there is a lot more
learning in my future and I look forward to it all! I
hope that you, the Board of Directors and the other scholarship
awardees are all doing well. And thank you, again, for your
support.
June 12, 2006. Jacob Wine. 2004 Awardee
My sophomore year was better than my freshman
year. New doors were opened when I changed my major from Biology
to Wildlife Science in the College of Natural Resources. I am
still in love with the ecology and wildlife part of life, but I’m
going about it via a more direct route.
Which brings me to my next awesome piece of
news. I am now a summer hire park ranger at the Manassas
National Battlefields! My duties
for Resource Management includedata collection for an ongoing deer
exclosure study, fish population assessments, and I get to design and
run my own vernal pool/amphibian study. I also work for
Maintenance helping to maintain trails, building structures for
visitors and helping restore old structures.
I am still a hip member of the mountain bike scene,
The Virginia Tech Freeride Team, and I look forward to a great season
in the outdoors.
I am truly blessed and grateful to have people
like the IWLA in my life. Without your generosity my family and I
would be in a difficult situation.
June 10, 2005. Wilson Osorio. 2005 Awardee
My first year was excellent in terms of
academics and social life. I had a great time and met tons of
wonderful people. I played intramural soccer (outdoor and indoor)
and our team became champions of “The Virginia Tech World
Cup”
In terms of academics, Virginia Tech was a good
fit. The first week or two were somewhat hard since I was not
accustomed to teaching myself most of the material taught in each
class, but managed to get A’s and B’s both semesters.
The only problem that I had my first year was
the fact that Virginia Tech is isolated from the urban world that I am
used to and is located relatively far away from home. In addition
I had planned to double-major in biochemistry and environmental law at
Tech. However, I found that in order to do biochemistry one had
to major in biology and choose the so-called biochemistry
“option”, which is not the same as a major. Last
semester I found that the University of Virginia has a program that
sounds like it was made just for me. This program allows students
to major in Biochemical Engineering with concentrations in
Biotechnology and Environmental Chemistry. For this reason, I
have decided to go to the University of Virginia starting in the fall.
