While most students were packing for home after finals last spring, Kate Farrell ’07 was packing for the desert.
Kate, along with six other students and Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Danielle Garneau, spent three weeks in the Southwest U.S. deserts, mapping vegetation up desert
bajadas (alluvial plains) and identifying several hundred desert species.
“I learned so much about myself on this trip,” she says. “While I learned a lot about different species and the desert, I also learned about camping and survival.”
This isn’t the first time that Kate, a
biology major and
sports studies and exercise science minor, has taken time out of her summer to explore what she was learning in her biology courses. During the summer of 2005,
she traveled to San Salvador with Associate Professor of Biology Brad Baldwin and his coral reef ecology class. “We snorkeled on coral reef and examined species richness and percent cover of coral,” she says.
“It was a great opportunity to learn more about the characteristics we were learning in class and to do the research first-hand.”
Kate, an Ogdensburg, N.Y. native and graduate of Ogdensburg Free Academy, is completing her senior independent project,
“The Effect of Odors on Exercise Performance,” with Nick Mills ’07 and with the guidance of Dana Professor of Biology David Hornung.
“The purpose of the study is to evaluate the effect of several pleasant and unpleasant odors on exercise performance by
varsity athletes," she says. “Similar studies have been done here at St. Lawrence;
I’m looking at information that hasn’t been considered, and outside variables that can affect performance."
Kate was recently accepted to the New York Chiropractic School and will enroll in fall 2007. “One of my chiropractors, Dr. Lisa Francey, is a 1992 St. Lawrence alumna and went to New York Chiropractic School,” Kate says. “I like alternative healing methods and have had great personal experiences with chiropractic care.
I hope to help people in the manner that my doctors have helped me.”
