Margot Brooks ’08 didn’t have a typical summer job in 2007--she drove around St. Lawrence County in search of roadkill.

Brooks, a biology major from South New Berlin, NY, and a Unadilla Valley High School graduate, was a University Fellow, a program that gives students the opportunity to conduct a summer research project in partnership with a member of the St. Lawrence faculty.  Her fellowship aimed to identify “hotspots” where animals are killed by traffic on local roads.

“I had three different routes throughout St. Lawrence County that I drove once per week and recorded all the mammalian roadkill; I wanted to find out if there is a correlation between roadkill aggregations and surrounding landscape features, or even features of the road itself,” she explains.

Brooks visited several liberal arts schools, but found that St. Lawrence was the best fit.  “The campus was beautiful and most important to me, the people were very friendly and helpful,” Brooks says.  “I had visited a handful of schools that were of the same calibre, but the people here were so much more welcoming and friendly.”

Brooks feels that the University is preparing her for the next step in her life and a career in her field of expertise.  The professors, she notes, are outstanding.  But Brooks isn’t attached to St. Lawrence solely because of the academics.  She attends guest lectures, plays intramural basketball, and is involved in the theme houses. This fall, thanks to St. Lawrence’s membership in the International Student Exchange Program (ISEP), she’s studying at the University of Ghana.

After graduating from St. Lawrence, Brooks wants to get involved in conservation work.  Eventually, she plans to enroll in graduate school and earn a degree in conservation biology.