Where are you from?
I am from Ashton, IL and I grew up on a farm with livestock including farrow to finish swine farm and cow/calf operation. 

Where do you live?
I live in Ashton, IL in the country. 

Where are you from?
I was born in Chicago, IL and then moved to Oak Park, IL in 3rd grade.

Obtaining my B.S. in NRES/resource ecology from the University of Illinois has helped me tremendously in every professional position I have held. NRES taught me many skills that I use daily, including dendrology, soil science, chemistry, GIS, and plant biology. During my time as a consulting forester, I have inventoried and electronically mapped over 40,000 trees. As Urban Forester for the City of Park Ridge, I was able to protect mature trees from new construction by applying the City’s strict building code regulations.

Our last days in Malawi were spent at a safari camp inside of Liwonde National Park. I think it’s safe to say that none of us have ever experienced a camping trip like this before. For starters, it was in a Malawian national park. Secondly, there were no borders protecting us from wild animals and we were sleeping in elevated tents. Thankfully those tents were elevated because otherwise we would’ve been trampled by WILD ELEPHANTS. Yas, in the middle of the night and into the morning there were wild African elephants roaming through our campsite 20 feet away from us!

When I started graduate school, I knew I wanted to do research internationally. I’m particularly drawn to agriculture, because the intersection of food and culture is consequential to our human experience. Throughout history, agriculture has defined societies and it is immensely gratifying for me to witness the cultural traces of its impact in communities across the world. My story is a tribute to the challenging realities of cross-cultural research, but also to how international exposure is a place for growth and richness.

My name is Jamie Fisher and I am a transfer student in the Food Science and Human Nutrition program. I first got interested in the food science world when I joined an internship class in high school. I did not know what kind of career I wanted to go into until the day I got the opportunity to shadow a scientist at a flavor company called FONA International. I have been hired back as an intern every summer I’ve been in college and I haven’t looked back. I first learned about the different departments a flavor company had to offer, from analytical chemistry to research and innovation.

During the fall 2019 semester, I joined the CCI program, which is a special program created by faculty at the career center and designed specifically for international students. I got to know various resources about job searching and learned job-related policies for international students. The CCI program connected me with alumni who already work in the industry and they came back to share with us their experiences in job searching. It was an unforgettable experience you can’t find elsewhere.

The knowledge I gained during my undergraduate time in Crop Sciences allowed me to pursue a career in data science. As a data scientist at the John Deere Technology Innovation Center at the University of Illinois Research Park, my team encounters a variety of data in the company. This could include machine data, social media data, and crop data. Because we are in the agriculture industry, domain knowledge is an important factor for the company’s success.

I transferred into the University of Illinois from community college and I’m a proud first-generation graduate. My HDFS degree has greatly prepared me for a career in Pediatric related medicine and research. The coursework, at least from my experience, laid a strong, flexible foundation for broad knowledge regarding all the different aspects of human development of children and adolescents through a global perspective.

My time as an undergraduate student in the Crop Sciences has helped guide me to seek opportunities in which I never considered before. I come from a suburban background with absolutely zero knowledge about agriculture and now I am about to pursue a Master’s degree in Agronomy and study weed science. The knowledge I gained in my coursework was incredibly helpful in preparing me for my future and lead me to work as a Research Assistant for a weed ecology lab throughout my undergraduate career.