We are delighted to announce that Sidnee Everhart C'21 has been chosen as our fourth Undergraduate Fellow. Sidnee joins George Burruss C'22, Lillian Fulgham C'21 and Angus Pritchard C'22 as our team of Herbarium Fellows this academic year. The Fellowship program is supported by an endowment established by the family of Ashley Block, C’13, in her memory. We are excited about the expertise in GIS and invasive plants that Sidnee brings to the program.
Sydnee describes her interest and journey in becoming a fellow:
I took my first hike on the McDowell, VA game lands amidst Mourning warblers and pink lady slippers at the ripe old age of two weeks in my dad’s backpack and grew up caked in the red clay of the Yadkin Valley, NC some sixty yards from a cow pasture. An only child, my parents met mending a horse fence and raised me with a spirit of rugged independence that respected plants as the primary life support for heterotrophs like us. My life before Sewanee was filled with an especially outdoorsy Girl Scout troop, volunteerism, every science camp or club I could find, and internships at Wake Forest’s plant physiology lab and Reynolda Gardens. To no surprise, I declared my biology major to my family in the seventh grade and will graduate with it Easter 2021 along with an English degree and education minor to assist me as an environmental educator. My ecological involvement at Sewanee includes a Survey of Unwanted Invasive Plants in Abbo’s Alley, environmental education at Camp Capers (Episcopal Diocese of West Texas), work in the Landscape Analysis Lab, and with the Environmental Residents. I am excited to dedicate my education, English, and GIS technician backgrounds to the betterment of Herbarium communications and original research, especially GIS work on the Sassafras and Sinking Pond projects.