We’re a week out from having my Summer Panda Intern join us over here so I thought I’d introduce you all to her since you’ll be seeing posts about pandas from her!  I’m absolutely thrilled to have her on board and know that she’ll get such a great experience (I know my own internship with the Smithsonian at the Chengdu Panda Center was one of the highlights of my post-undergraduate studies).

Arina graduated from Portland State University in August 2011 as a McNair scholar with a B.S. in Organismal Biology and a minor in Psychology. During her tenure at PSU, she worked closely with Dr. Deborah Duffield on a few projects analyzing the predator-prey relationships between California sea lions and threatened salmonid species in the Willamette River. She actually heard about our internship through my advisor at the Oregon Zoo, David Shepherdson, and she has been a research associate at OZ since June of 2011. Throughout this time, she have been involved in a number of projects and behavioral studies. She is currently the behavioral analyst in the Program Animal Welfare Study, a national research project aimed at determining the stress levels of animals used in education programs in zoos throughout the United States.  She also conducted an original research project to determine whether access to the new Red Ape Reserve exhibit decreased the amount of stereotypic activity shown in the apes and to what extent the new enclosure increased particular species-specific behaviors. Her research interests include behavioral ecology of endangered mammals (specifically mating strategies and predator-prey relationships), conservation of biodiversity, and reducing stereotypy and negative behaviors in captive animals.

As you can tell, Arina is super qualified and will make such a good addition to our team!  We’re so fortunate to have the Oregon Zoo to draw on as a partner so that we can provide international research opportunities to such out-standing students.

Currently, our programs can’t afford to pay stipends to students so they must pay out of pocket to have this type of once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If you’d like to give an undergraduate or graduate student the opportunity to get trained in international conservation biology, please donate to PDXWildlife’s Internship program by going to the Internship Page or clicking the button below.  We hope to keep providing these invaluable research experiences to deserving students and the program could use your help to make even more opportunities available!

Once again, welcome Arina!  See you in a week

-Meg