Kaitlyn Meadows receives Ecological Society of America Graduate Student Policy Award

by Cindy Landrum, Clemson University
May 14, 2024

Clemson University student Kaitlyn E. Meadows has been named a 2024 Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Award recipient by the Ecological Society of America.

Meadows is a second-year master’s student in the Clemson University Department of Biological Sciences. She is from Maryville, Tennessee.

The award provides graduate students hands-on training and science policy experience including interacting with congressional decision-makers, federal agency officials and ecologists who work in the science and public policy arena.

As an undergraduate student at the University of Tennessee, Meadows studied ecology and evolutionary biology with the intention of attending medical school.

That all changed after her first research experience, which she initially hoped would help in her pursuit of attending medical school. She worked with a graduate student who was researching plant recovery after a devastating 2016 wildfire in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. That fire caused 14 deaths and burned more than 17,900 acres.

“I fell in love with it. I pretty much decided then that I didn’t want to go to medical school anymore. I wanted to pivot and go to grad school and do conservation work,” Meadows said.

Keep reading: https://news.clemson.edu/kaitlyn-meadows-receives-ecological-society-of-america-graduate-student-policy-award/

Read the ESA release: https://ecologicalsocietyofamerica.org/blog/2024/02/28/esa-2024-graduate-student-policy-award-cohort-named/