Aubree Andres, 2017, Undeclared

Aubree Andres ’17

I worked at the Mpala Research Centre outside of Nanyuki, Kenya for six weeks with Professor Dan Rubenstein. For this project, I went out with my research partners every day to collect data in the field. We were looking for a legacy of a holistic grazing system (cows would graze intensely for two-week periods of time on small plots of land during the rainy season) on the land where local goats and sheep were grazing during the dry season. Some days we would be weighing the goats and sheep to track their growth, and other days we would be running vegetation diversity/biomass transects to examine the plant life found in areas that were used for holistic grazing and in areas that were not used. Over the course of six weeks, I was able to fully take over the data collection part of this project, which is a skill and responsibility that I never would have learned had I not worked with PEI. If I do choose to major in EEB at Princeton, I would love to continue with this research for a junior paper and senior thesis topic.