Senior Shira Berkelhammer ‘22 had her heart set on a smaller college but one with big research opportunities. She came all the way from Seattle to attend ̽̽ where she found what she was looking for—accessibility to faculty and their research. Proximity to Lake Champlain and the university’s lakefront laboratory sealed the deal.
A high school AP biology class with a focus on fish first inspired Shira’s interest. A school trip to Belize with Ecology Project International, snorkeling lessons, and a day dissecting English sole on a Washington State vessel set Shira on course for a future in fisheries.
In the ̽̽ Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, she found faculty who brought their excitement for research into the classroom. Shira majored in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology with a concentration in Fisheries Biology. She minored in Statistics at the recommendation of her AP biology teacher.
“I’m not overly fond of math but knew stats would be helpful in the research world,” said Shira, who dove right in.
Shira credits her first-year advisor and research mentor Professor Ellen Marsden as most influencing her pathway at ̽̽.
“As a woman in the STEM fields, it is important to have a really great role model as a source of advice and inspiration,” said Shira. “Ellen is a great scientist and teacher, and she has been an amazing mentor. The best class I took was Ichthyology with Ellen; it was all about fish!”
After getting her feet wet in a ̽̽ biology laboratory, Shira connected with her Rubenstein School faculty advisor Professor Jason Stockwell, director of the waterfront Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory. He opened the door to a research opportunity with graduate student Mia McReynolds at the lakefront lab.
The fall of her junior year, Shira began working with data from Jason and Ellen’s five-year lake trout survey on Lake Champlain. She assessed forage, or prey, fish abundance and distribution from by-catches, or forage fish incidentally caught in trawl nets during the lake trout survey. She used the coding language R and cleaned and analyzed the dataset, ran statistical tests, and displayed results in graphs and figures.
Her independent project led to academic credits and a poster at the 2021 ̽̽ annual Student Research Conference. Her data analysis revealed that the alewife—a forage fish—and lake trout can be sampled effectively together in spring using five small trawls per site. Results from Shira’s analysis informed the lab’s 2021 survey design.
Over the summer, Shira continued to work at the lab as a technician and assisted graduate students with their research. She helped conduct survey trawls on the lake, dissected fish, and collected data.
“The community at the lab has uplifted my experience,” said Shira. “Being surrounded by other people who are just as passionate about fish has increased my interest and kept me asking questions.”
With guidance from Mia and postdoctoral associate Ben Marcy-Quay, Shira conducted a senior year independent project for credit. This time, she studied burbot, a freshwater cod, to look at the genetics of the species throughout the lake. Once the genetic analysis of the fin clips from the fish comes back from another laboratory, Shira will start coding and data analysis.
“We haven’t looked at the genome of burbot in Lake Champlain before,” said Shira, who will once again present a poster of her findings at the ̽̽ Student Research Conference. “I’m really excited to see if burbot from across the entire lake show any genetic differences.”
After graduation in May, Shira will work at a resort area in Maine which will allow her time to write a paper related to the burbot study with Ellen and Jason for publication in a scientific journal. She then hopes to gain work experience in fisheries before considering graduate school.
Look for Shira and her poster titled “Genetic Differentiation of Burbot (Lota lota) in a Fragmented Lake” at the on April 21.