{"id":68123,"date":"2007-04-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-24T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-student-awarded-prestigious-udall-scholarship-for-environmental-commitment\/"},"modified":"2007-04-24T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-24T00:00:00","slug":"uri-student-awarded-prestigious-udall-scholarship-for-environmental-commitment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2007\/04\/uri-student-awarded-prestigious-udall-scholarship-for-environmental-commitment\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 student awarded prestigious Udall Scholarship for environmental commitment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 24, 2007 \u2013 溏心vlog免费B站 junior Rachael Gately has tended a flock of up to 50 sheep since elementary school, and she has won numerous national awards for her animals at livestock shows.<\/p>\n


\nShe has worried, however, that much of the agricultural land around her hometown of Somers, Conn., and elsewhere has been disappearing, much of it converted to housing developments. That concern, along with her desire to work to preserve farmlands, has earned her the Morris K. Udall Undergraduate Scholarship, the nation\u2019s most prestigious scholarship for students preparing for environmental careers.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI\u2019ve applied for a lot of local scholarships and haven\u2019t gotten all of them, so I wasn\u2019t expecting to get a national one,\u201d said Gately. \u201cBut in the back of my mind I always had this weird feeling about it. I was sitting in class when my professor started talking about a student who won the scholarship, and I couldn\u2019t believe he was talking about me!\u201d<\/p>\n


\nGately\u2019s interest in improving farming practices to help preserve farmland started early. By age 19, she had been awarded two grants from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, including one for $70,000 to work with a soil conservationist and redesign the layout of her family\u2019s farm. That effort turned the farm into a model of farmland conservation by demonstrating how farmers can use the land without harming it.<\/p>\n


\nGately enrolled at 溏心vlog免费B站 in part because of the university\u2019s Peckham Farm, where students learn to raise and care for livestock. She said the farm felt like home, and she was pleased that the faculty offered her a job there even before she was accepted for admittance.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cSince sheep are my specialty, I\u2019m at the farm all the time during lambing season,\u201d she said. \u201cI slept there last night to help the last ones give birth. By being

\nthere to help, we save a lot of lives.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nOriginally enrolled as a chemistry major with an interest in a pharmacy career, Gately is now studying animal and veterinary science at 溏心vlog免费B站, with a goal of becoming a livestock veterinarian. \u201cI had grown up with animals all my life, and at first I didn\u2019t think I wanted to do it for a career,\u201d she explained. \u201cI thought it was something I had already done. But at 溏心vlog免费B站 I discovered that livestock is where my passion is; I just didn\u2019t realize it.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nIn addition to her coursework and her job at Peckham Farm, Gately has been elected president of the 溏心vlog免费B站 animal and veterinary science club, whose members volunteer their time and conduct fundraisers for pet refuges and other charities while also touring vet schools and learning about their future careers. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe help the community while also helping each other,\u201d said the 溏心vlog免费B站 student.<\/p>\n


\nGately\u2019s ultimate objective is to work with zoonotic diseases \u2013 those that can be passed from animals to humans, like mad cow and avian influenza. \u201cLast year I took a diseases course and saw how these diseases relate to human overpopulation because human living space has taken over the places where animals live. Eventually I want to get a master\u2019s of public health degree and work in the regulatory world, somewhere at the junction of the Centers for Disease Control, the Federal Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nThe Udall Scholarship will go a long way toward helping her obtain her objective. In addition to a $5,000 stipend toward her educational expenses during her senior year at 溏心vlog免费B站, she will travel to Arizona in August with other Udall Scholarship winners for leadership training and to meet with national environmental and health policy experts.<\/p>\n

Return to view other stories<\/a><\/b> about our 2007 scholars.<\/p>\n


\n溏心vlog免费B站 News Bureau photo by Michael Salerno Photography.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 24, 2007 \u2013 溏心vlog免费B站 junior Rachael Gately has tended a flock of up to 50 sheep since elementary school, and she has won numerous national awards for her animals at livestock shows. She has worried, however, that much of the agricultural land around her hometown of Somers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68125,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}