Jess is a rising junior at Colgate who is joining AdkAction for the summer as an Adirondack Pollinator Project intern. Being introduced to the Adirondack region through her position as a Colgate Outdoor Education Leader and subsequent recreation in the park, Jess was motivated to apply for the AdkAction Internship, excited to work towards a more sustainable future both from an ecological and community perspective.
At Colgate, Jess is pursuing an undergraduate degree in both Biology and Environmental Studies, holding special interests in conversation and developmental biology. She is passionate about sustainability, environmental justice, and advancing health and wellness. In class, she has researched topics including but not limited to the impacts of agricultural runoff on macroinvertebrate diversity, the ecological and human-biology-based environmental externalities of the US meat industry, pleiotropic regulation of molecular signaling pathways, and successful environmental risk assessment and communication across communities.
Outside of classes, Jess works as an Outdoor Education Leader, leading and teaching recreational activities near Colgate as well as in the Adirondacks for other Colgate students; this position has allowed her to explore some of the Adirondacks and understand human interaction with the environment. She is also a Shaw Wellness Institute Ambassador, where she plans and orchestrates programming and presentations to improve well-being on Colgate’s campus; she has focus areas as a Morgan’s Message ambassador, promoting good mental health for athletes, and a OneLove ambassador, advocating for safe relationships, in addition to focusing on nutrition, food insecurity, and food waste on campus as well as reproductive health and justice. A member of Gamma Phi Beta sorority, she also raises money and works at events to support Girls on the Run, a non-profit organization that helps strong young girls gain confidence through athletics.
While much of her time in the Adirondacks has been spent doing various types of skiing and other winter activities, she is excited to explore the area in the summer through hiking, swimming, and running, and she is eager to connect with the surrounding communities. Through integrating herself in the region, she is looking forward to seeing work that AdkAction does for the community in action in addition to being more productive at integrating community and conservation efforts in her role as the APP intern. This summer, she will do fieldwork at the capped landfill site in Indian Lake where preliminary research regarding which native plant species are the most ecologically compatible and will promote the most vibrant community of pollinators as possible. In addition to this work, she will be conducting adjacent, independent research for Colgate Field Institute.
In 2025 AdkAction is combining our Tom Boothe Internship with the Upstate Institute Fellowship, in partnership with Colgate University. A variety of recreational opportunities are also made available through the Tom Boothe Adirondack Internship, such as guided paddling/biking/hiking excursions, visits to cultural sites in the Adirondacks, meetings with local leaders, and tours of AdkAction project sites.
