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Most students wouldn’t consider eleven straight hours of birding to be their comfort zone, but Pierre Beaurang isn’t most students. Pierre, a wildlife and fisheries biology major from Northern California, has loved birds for his entire life, and knew from a young age that he wanted to study them. “I mostly applied to universities that had a wildlife and fisheries biology program or something very similar,” Pierre explained. “I came and toured ����̽̽ and while I was very impressed with the quality of the academic facilities, it was really the academic programs that drew me here.” 

The Wildlife and Fisheries Biology (WFB) program in the Rubenstein School emphasizes the role of science to understand the natural world and solve pressing conservation issues. The program has no shortage of opportunities for students to get involved with research and lab work, and Pierre took ample advantage of those opportunities. “I came in very focused, thinking, ‘I’m just going to ignore everything that doesn’t have two wings and feathers,’” Pierre said. His experience as a lab technician at the Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory (colloquially referred to as the Rube Lab) on the Burlington Waterfront and his work assisting graduate students and postdoctoral associates took him on a nearly-exhaustive tour of the local fauna’s taxonomy. “I’ve been able to work with birds and fish and bugs and trees, and while I still think I want to focus on birds, it’s been really nice to get the full perspective. That’s one of the strengths of the Rubenstein School: being able to study and get familiar with every piece of the ecosystem.” 

Lake Champlain and its rivers and tributaries are the perfect environment for a budding wildlife and fisheries biologist to learn the ropes. Pierre earned a laboratory technician role at the Rube Lab, where he worked on several different projects—understanding that each project he helped with would give him new skills that would benefit him in his career. “Something I didn’t anticipate needing was boat experience: working on a boat, taking samples on a boat. That’s been a huge boon in my post-grad job search. That’s a great example of the transferrable skills you gain from lab and research work.”  

Pierre got very familiar with benthic invertebrates in his early days at the Rube Lab. Benthic invertebrates, bottom-dwelling macroinvertebrates (animals without a backbone, large enough to see with the naked eye), can be found on the bottom of lakes and are crucial indicators of watershed health and biodiversity. “I would go through the dichotomous key and piece together what I found inside the benthic invertebrates and figure out how that affects the fish and what they’re eating,” Pierre explained. “I consider them very important because they’re part of the general ecosystem and they’re a primary source of food for a lot of bottom-dwelling fish.” The WFB curriculum encourages and fosters this kind of big-picture understanding of ecosystems in a dynamic learning environment. 

The work of identifying and organizing different species drudged up from the floor of Lake Champlain prepared Pierre for another research opportunity closer to his biggest passion: birds. Pierre had gained experience in insect identification on a different research project, and that experience primed him to assist with a graduate student’s research. “Because I had bug experience, I was able to help Liza, who needed someone to assist in looking at terrestrial invertebrates. She was studying them to see how they are developing in maple sugaring forests and to see if the birds that use those forests have appropriate food resources,” Pierre explained. Thanks to his willingness to say yes to opportunities that weren’t perfectly aligned with his highest passion, Pierre built relationships and demonstrated his research prowess, which earned him an opportunity in his preferred field.  

Pierre believes much of his success and his ability to take full advantage of the opportunities available to him can be attributed to his strong relationships with professors. Pierre was a first-year in the fall of 2020, and like many members of the class of 2024, he felt distant from his coursework and professors during remote learning. “It was very difficult then to make meaningful connections with my professors,” he recollects. But he didn’t let that setback slow him down for long—by the second semester of his sophomore year, Pierre was getting into higher-level classes and finding professors that had experience he was interested in. “I got my job at the Rube Lab because of Ariana Chiapella,” he said. “She teaches conservation biology, which I’m currently TA’ing for, and she threw my name into the Rube Lab pool for consideration.” He credits Professor Chiapella with getting him work on two post-doctoral projects at the Rube Lab. Pierre’s path demonstrates the importance of building strong relationships with faculty and how willing and eager Rubenstein School professors are to help and mentor students. "Pierre is a bright student whose passion was clear from the first week I had him in class," said Ariana Chiapella. "He has since been an incredible asset as an undergraduate teaching assistant for Field Methods and Conservation Biology. He is organized, enthusiastic, takes initiative, and I know he'll go on to do great things!"

Unsurprisingly, Pierre’s strongest piece of advice for fellow students is to get to know your professors. “If you can find a person who believes in you, who wants to help you, that’s hugely important. It can be difficult to find, but it can be done.” He attributes the strength of his relationships to small class sizes and the hallmark hands-on learning opportunities in the Rubenstein School. “When you’re out in the woods with your herpetology professor or your forestry professor there’s a certain level of connection you build that you cannot get in a classroom,” Pierre explained. “I recommend the Rubenstein School specifically because of all the field experience and small classes.” 

Looking back on his time at ����̽̽, with graduation looming, Pierre said that the summer ornithology course he took is his favorite ����̽̽ memory. But, with a high level of self-awareness, he noted that “birding is where I excel, it’s what I love to do, which is sort of a double-edged sword because while it was fun and I had a blast, it was my comfort zone.” Pierre understood that the important, forging moments in one’s educational journey don’t happen in the comfort zone. 

all photos courtesy of Pierre Beaurang