As summer winds to a close, our scholarship award winners are getting ready to head to school. Our 2020 scholarship winners, Lyra Martin and Zane Walker, deferred their first year at university due to the pandemic. Lyra took a heavy load of remotely taught classes at Shasta Community College last year, and is now transferring to UC Santa Cruz, where she will study biology and restoration ecology.
Zane Walker will be starting his studies in botany this fall, at Oregon State University. We recently received a very nice note from Zane, which we share with you here:
Thank you for the email. I greatly appreciate your support. I have enjoyed a superb summer packed full of botany! I was rehired for a summer seasonal position with the Klamath National Forest [KNF]. During my time with KNF, I was able to work on several botany related projects such as the national white bark pine survey, eradicating several radically expanding populations of Isatis tinctoria, and able to record several new populations of rare plants. In addition to working directly with the Forest Service I also have become involved with Jim Shevock and his project to compile a bryoflora of the Marble Mountain Wilderness. Through this project I have been able to collect a number of interesting and new for California mosses! I feel as though this year has prepared and motivated me for attending Oregon State University where I will start my major in botany as well as a part-time lab position on the 19th of this month. Once again, thank you for your support. It means quite a lot to have the full support of local organizations like the Shasta CNPS that hold my same passion for plants! Excited to continue my future in botany.
Ceiba Cummings is our 2021 scholarship award winner and we expect that she too will be attending Oregon State University this fall. She has yet to check in with the Scholarship Committee and seems to be commendably offline at the moment. This is not too surprising as Ceiba had mentioned that she would be going into firefighting immediately after graduating from high school. She will be majoring in ecological engineering.
Shasta Chapter CNPS wishes all three of these outstanding scholars the very best first semesters at their chosen four-year universities. We look forward to regular updates, and perhaps even getting to meet them in person one day when the current situation eases.
~Don Burk, Scholarship Committee Chair
