Holly Redmond has loved animals her whole life, so when her high school in Durango, CO offered a trip to Costa Rica with EPI during her freshman year, she didn’t hesitate to sign up. The eight-day course with her classmates brought her science lessons to life and affirmed her suspicion that she wanted to pursue a career in field research. Ten years later, she vividly remembers the boat ride into Pacuare Reserve–the way one side of the canal featured lush, intact rainforest, while the other side, cleared of all native vegetation, served as a grazing ground for domestic cattle. That dichotomy mirrored the images presented in her school textbooks, and firmly established the connection between classroom learning and the real world.
One year later, Holly found herself in Belize with another group of classmates, monitoring manatees, measuring water quality, and identifying species of seagrass. The real-world research component of EPI courses was the draw for her, especially her interactions with graduate students studying dolphins. At the end of her experience she thought to herself, “I should study this forever.” She got one more chance to engage with in-depth, hands-on research during her senior year, when she joined a school from Louisiana on an EPI course in the Galapagos. Conducting giant tortoise research and engaging with knowledgeable instructors cemented her desire to work in conservation biology, ecology, or another related field. Seven years after her last course, I got a chance to catch up with Holly and hear how her EPI-inspired career path has progressed.
The real-world research component of EPI courses was the draw for her, especially her interactions with graduate students studying dolphins. At the end of her experience she thought to herself, “I should study this forever.”
Since her high school experiences with EPI, Holly has fully embraced wildlife field research. She completed her bachelor’s degree in conservation biology and ecology at Montana State University (MSU), snagging lab and field jobs thanks in part to the research skills she gained on her EPI courses. Few young college students could put skills like “leatherback sea turtle monitoring” or “lionfish dissection” on their resume, so her relative wealth of experience stood out to potential employers. After graduating from MSU in 2021, she monitored prairie dog populations in South Dakota and recorded bee population diversity, adding work with terrestrial species to her growing list of wildlife research experience.
Now a graduate student at Southern Illinois University, Holly researches white-tailed deer, tracking their movements via GPS collar to determine how their immune function might be related to their behavior. Her research has the potential to influence decisions in the fields of agriculture and wildlife management and could propel her to a number of careers in consulting, academia, or research. Even though her field work spans a seemingly unrelated variety of species, from bees to tortoises to deer, Holly’s story is tied together by her formative experiences learning scientific skills in the natural world with EPI, and we could not be prouder to call her an alumna.
Want to learn more about where your EPI experiences can take you? Have an alumni success story you’d like to share? Reach out to Sarah Wood, EPI’s Alumni Coordinator: sarah@ecology.org
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