Maryville College graduate Kaitlin Koster had barely settled back into her Hendersonville, Tennessee, hometown when the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) called her with an offer to spend the next year as an ecology assistant working out of the Sonoran Desert Network’s Desert Research Learning Center in Tucson, Arizona.
Graduating on May 3 with a bachelor of science in biology brought with it some emotional turmoil for Koster, who found her two most influential professors in the MC Division of Natural Sciences afterward and shed more than a few tears in saying goodbye. The feeling, said Dr. Dave Unger, associate professor of biology at MC, is very mutual.
“Kaitlin is among the top 0.5% of all students with whom I have ever worked. She is brilliant, mature, capable, trustworthy and endlessly curious,” Unger said. “The National Park Service could not ask for a more exceptional young scientist than [Kaitlin] Koster. I am so excited to see where life takes her; she has an amazing adventure ahead of her.”…