UMAINE • March 16, 2023
Amanda Ives has always been outdoorsy. When she got to UMaine, the wildlife ecology major called her. Though most of her UMaine experience has been virtual due to the pandemic, Ives says that the department always made an effort to make classes interactive with safe outdoors meetups. She had an opportunity to visit Fields Pond Audubon Nature Center through class her freshman year. She was enamored. When Ives saw the open Davis Intern position in March 2022, she applied and was hired. Throughout her spring 2022 semester, Ives would stop by once or twice a week to work on small jobs, helping out with a youth birding club, supplying the gift shop and the like. As soon as the summer started, her educational and research duties were in full swing, as she monitored loon nests, took water samples of the pond and led summer camp programs, which were the “highlight of [her] summer.”