Bees are dying, and Cindy Fiser wants to know why. Now the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is helping her look for answers.
Fiser, a fourth-year applied ecology and environmental sciences major in Michigan Tech's School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, has been named a winner of the EPA's Greater Research Opportunities Undergraduate Fellowship. The award provides financial support as well as a summer internship with the EPA at one of three locations.
In Fiser’s case, Colorado will be her home for the next 12 weeks. There, she will get to lead her own research project, a study of bees, focusing on alternative treatments to pesticides and herbicides, such as native predators and grass buffers around areas of agriculture.
“Pesticides and herbicides may harm the environment by potentially contaminating native pollinators or predators and their habitat on site, as well as the surrounding rivers and streams,” Fiser explains She is hoping alternative treatment approaches will help bring back the diminishing bee population.
For the past three years Fiser has worked with Michigan Tech PhD student Colin Phifer as a research field assistant. She traveled with Phifer to Wisconsin and Brazil. Phifer also studies bees, more specifically how “land use change associated with bioenergy feedstocks impacts both birds and native bees.” This work prepared Fiser for her EPA research project.
Graduate Student Mentor
It was Phifer who suggested she apply for the EPA fellowship. “I’m very proud of her,” he says. “I brought the EPA fellowship to her attention and then mentored her in how to begin the application process. But Cindy did all the work: she worked very hard to draft, edit and revise a winning application.”
“Cindy is bright and extremely focused,” Phifer continued. “She’s almost self-taught on insect identification, and she is well prepared for her own project. She has the skills to develop research questions and testable hypotheses, to design a project to test those ideas and to complete the research. I expect her to excel in her EPA position and beyond. I will soon be working for her.”
Fiser spent a semester in Alberta Village near L’anse. The Integrated Field Practicum or “Fall Camp” brings students from various environmental disciplines together to work collecting data and writing a group final research paper. The experience allows students to learn from each other, providing an understanding of other fields of study.
“Cindy is one of those rare undergraduates who possess a level of maturity, confidence and capacity for responsibility and leadership, that one sees only every few years in my position,” says David Flaspohler, professor of forest resources and environmental sciences and Fiser’s advisor. “She is a future leader in ecological and environmental science.”
Environmental Problems, Research Solutions
“I want to get out there and do something,” Fiser says. “This is the first time I get to go to the public with information on the environmental problems we face and find a potential solution. I am excited to head my own project, and hopefully the results will make a positive change.”
Fiser hopes that other students interested in the environment to look into all the opportunities Michigan Tech has for them. “In the Forestry building we are like our own community,” she says. “Professors care about you and how you are doing. They make themselves available.”
Fiser is especially grateful for the hands-on education she has received from Flaspohler and from Kathleen Halvorsen, professor of natural resource policy, and Christopher Webster, professor of forest resources and environmental science, as well as Phifer. She worked for the past two summers with Halvorsen, who is director of the Partnerships in International Research and Education (PIRE) program. She says this experience has provided her with a wealth of useful tools that she can now apply to her research project with the EPA.
Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to more than 7,000 students from 55 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigan’s flagship technological university offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure.
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