Abigail Burns

In my undergraduate career, I received a psychology/sociology degree. Afterwards I worked teaching people with schizophrenia how to live in the community independently. The work was meaningful, and I enjoyed helping people, but my passions were elsewhere. Two years later, I started an internship working for Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuge. There I became certified as a wildlife firefighter type II, prescribe burned over 10,000 acres, banded saw-whet owls, belted and radio tracked crawfish frogs, and aged white-tailed deer. It was an awesome experience. Then, I moved onto working for the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center on a research project doing avian point-count surveys. I had to learn 120 bird species by their song. It was quite a learning experience. These positions pushed me to pursue my master's in Environmental Science, so I could enjoy a career in this field.