\u201cSo I actually went to OSU wanting to be a veterinarian, so I thought I would do the animal sciences option of\u00a0BRR<\/a>,\u00a0but I also wasn\u2019t entirely sure that\u2019s what I wanted to do,\u00a0so\u00a0what drew me to the major was just all the different options that I could do.\u00a0It was a way of choosing a major without really having to\u00a0actually choose\u00a0my exact area of specialization…\u00a0I also like the idea of doing\u00a0undergraduate\u00a0research. That was a big part of me choosing OSU. There were other schools I wanted to go to as\u00a0well,\u00a0but they were smaller and\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0have\u00a0the same research opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Question: Can you tell me a bit about your project and what you would like the average person to understand about your research?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOkay, so\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0looking at Oak Savannah habitat<\/a> which is an\u00a0at-risk\u00a0habitat. There used to be a lot of it in the Willamette valley going\u00a0up\u00a0all the way up into Canada.\u00a0And now there is only ~10% of it left in the Willamette valley,\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0not sure about other areas, but\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0a\u00a0very interesting\u00a0habitat\u00a0and part of restoration of that\u00a0habitat is the\u00a0pollinators.\u00a0So\u00a0I\u00a0wanted\u00a0to look at flowering plants that are in oak\u00a0savannah and which\u00a0ones\u00a0pollinators\u00a0like to visit to get pollen and nectar…\u00a0[I was] looking at what plants are in the oak savannah, what pollinators are visiting them, what plants the\u00a0pollinators\u00a0like, and found that pollinators\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0have a lot of choices of what\u00a0plants to visit. It was mostly\u00a0invasive\u00a0plants,\u00a0so it highlights the importance of restoration.\u00a0That\u2019s\u00a0also a\u00a0lot of the reason\u00a0those areas\u00a0haven\u2019t\u00a0been restored as the\u00a0[McDonald\u00a0research<\/a>]\u00a0forest\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0have much funding to do that.\u00a0Which is\u00a0really sad…\u00a0We can\u00a0really only\u00a0restore tiny little pieces at a time and in the meantime while they are restoring one\u00a0piece\u00a0the rest gets worse…\u00a0A lot of it\u00a0[the\u00a0historically oak savannah habitat]\u00a0is\u00a0agriculture\u00a0also\u00a0now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Question: What do the next steps in continuing this work look like? Is this something you are interested in continuing yourself?<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo, probably not because the sites that I chose were fragments of oak\u00a0savannah,\u00a0but\u00a0they\u00a0haven\u2019t\u00a0been\u00a0restored at\u00a0all,\u00a0so they\u00a0are\u00a0very\u00a0full of invasive plants.\u00a0So\u00a0my results\u00a0were\u00a0actually\u00a0[that]\u00a0there was one species of native plant that was there\u00a0that was\u00a0in high abundance that the pollinators liked and all the other ones that pollinators visited\u00a0and that were there in high abundance were invasive. So I think if I were to do this for next steps I would maybe compare the results of this study to a restored oak savannah\u00a0to see what plants, what native plants, are there that maybe have been replanted or are able to grow when\u00a0the invasive plants are removed…\u00a0I was\u00a0only able to\u00a0identify\u00a0most of\u00a0my\u00a0pollinators to the order level, I\u00a0identified\u00a0the bees to genus level,\u00a0but it would be interesting to\u00a0identify\u00a0all of them to the species level. To do a measure of species richness\u00a0for each plant.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Question: Are you looking\u00a0at doing\u00a0graduate school, or schooling beyond BRR?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI do want to do grad school at OSU and am hoping to do something continuing with entomology, either with pollinators or agricultural pest management or conservation pest management but I\u2019m currently planning to work in Corvallis for a few years because there\u2019s not a whole lot of funding opportunities for grad school. So stay here, work, and hopefully apply to grad school in a few years.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Question: Do you think that your experience with this\u00a0pollinator\u00a0project will give you some good background entering graduate school in an\u00a0entomology based\u00a0program?<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYeah I think so because it helped me learn a lot about insect population dynamics and how insects behave in a natural environment, which can also be applied to an agricultural ecosystem, especially when I\u2019m looking at sustainable agriculture which is a main area of interest. I also think that just knowing how to design a research project and write a project proposal, write a grant proposal, and all those things that I had to do for this project are going to be useful in the future for grad school. It\u2019s kind of like mini-grad school. Lower stakes, not quite as much pressure not quite as much work but like it gives you the skills to build upon later.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Question: Do you have any advice for students considering or recently joining the major?<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI would say getting started early in just any research project is\u00a0a good idea. It\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0necessarily need to be the\u00a0one\u00a0that you start with, but what I did\u00a0is\u00a0the College of Agriculture <\/a>has\u00a0branch experimentation\u00a0program\u00a0summer\u00a0internships<\/a>. I did one of those and\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0how I met my current\u00a0mentor,\u00a0when working on a different project, and\u00a0then\u00a0I\u00a0later\u00a0came up with\u00a0this project and asked if she wanted to be\u00a0my mentor for\u00a0it\u00a0and she agreed.\u00a0So\u00a0I think\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0a good thing, is just get started with research early, figure out what things you enjoy about research.\u00a0You might learn that you\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0like\u00a0research\u00a0but\u00a0I think most people\u00a0really enjoy it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BioResource Research Major, Sustainable Ecosystems Option Question:\u00a0So\u00a0Florian, what can you tell me about yourself and what drew you to the major?\u00a0 \u201cSo I actually went to OSU wanting to be a veterinarian, so I thought I would do the animal sciences option of\u00a0BRR,\u00a0but I also wasn\u2019t entirely sure that\u2019s what I wanted to do,\u00a0so\u00a0what drew me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15174,"featured_media":69,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,3],"tags":[19,9,16],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brr-students","category-research","tag-pollinators","tag-sustainable-ecosystems","tag-undergradresearch","has-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/osu-wams-blogs-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs.dir\/8977\/files\/2026\/05\/FlorianResearch-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioresource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioresource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioresource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioresource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioresource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioresource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioresource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/84"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioresource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioresource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioresource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioresource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/osu-wams-blogs-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs.dir\/8977\/files\/2026\/05\/Florian-field-work-768x1024.jpg\")
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