Author: Mary-Theresa Kivel

Graduate Student Spotlight: Kat Zelak

Kat Zelak is currently in her second year of the ACEL Master’s program where she serves as a Graduate Teaching Associate and President of the Graduate Student Association.

Kat’s Master’s Thesis involves looking at the various influences that zoo educators have when selecting programming.

Kat Zelak was born in Burlington, Vermont where she lived until her family moved 300 miles east to Rochester, New York when Kat was four.  Here Kat lived with her parents and her younger brother on a three-acre lot of mostly wooded swamp on the edge of a wetland.  Kat took full advantage of growing up so close to a wetland and spent a great deal of her childhood chasing deer trails and wading in the wetland to find snapping turtles with her brother. Kat was given the freedom to explore as a child, which helped instill a sense of independence.  Kat credits her parents with helping to nurture her inquisitive nature. Her mother was especially supportive of her quest for knowledge and love of animals.  If Kat found a baby bird, her mother would encourage her to identify which type of bird it was and how she could care for it. These early experiences helped Kat to realize that she wanted to help animals in her future.

Kat attended high school in Rochester, New York where she was involved with robotics as well as the marketing and communication team.  As a high school junior, she earned her Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest achievement in Girl Scouts. For her Gold Award project, Kat started a summer camp, which focused on robotics and alternative energy. This summer program was so successful that the program ended up expanding and is still going strong today. In addition to these achievements, Kat was also involved with ice hockey as both a player and a referee.  As a referee, she was able to referee for the girl’s national game, which was played in Rochester.  Kat also found time to run varsity and worked as a state official. Kat’s high school experiences reflect a wide range of interests and a willingness to tackle large projects and take on leadership roles.

Kat’s love of animals and nature is was evident from an early age- shown here as a tree princess at age three.

After high school, Kat enrolled in Cornell University as an Animal Science major. Kat’s early experiences and her love of animals led her to believe that she wanted to become a veterinarian.  This is the path that she pursued for the first few years at Cornell until she realized that she was increasingly filling her calendar with activities that would “look good for vet school” not because they were these were experiences she would enjoy.  She realized that while she was passionate about animals, she was not passionate about the prospect of becoming a veterinarian. Kat stayed in Animal Sciences but began to explore other courses and look for other career paths.  She found that she enjoyed her major more once it was no longer a competition. Her wide interests led her to take on additional majors in Natural Resources and Biology.

Kat was able to participate in several research opportunities at Cornell including a summer at the Shoals Marine Laboratory in Maine studying defensive responses in moon snails and some time at a coagulation lab at the vet school working on different blood disorders. One of her favorite research projects was for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology where she spent a summer in the remote Northern Territory of Australia studying the impact of fire ecology. Locals were battling an invasive and combustible species of grass.  In an effort to determine if controlled burns or natural burns were the best option, Kat and her group looked at the impact that controlled burns had on the local bird populations as well as the ecological impacts of frequent wildlife disruption. This research kept Kat in the remote Australian outback for four months where the she cooked on a camp stove and the remote location limited her e-mail contact to one time a week. While Kat enjoyed her research experiences, she found she was more interested in talking and sharing about the research.  This helpful insight led Kat to explore ways to combine her love of animals with non-formal and outreach education.

Kat was involved with ice hockey as both a player and a referee.

After graduation from Cornell, Kat took a position working at a songbird rehabilitation center in Burlington, Wisconsin.  In this position, Kat worked to rehabilitate as many as 130 birds at a time, a marked increase from the number of birds she would rehabilitate in the wetland as a child. While Kat enjoyed this work, it did not contain the outreach and education portion she was looking for. This led her to accept a position back in New York at the Seneca Park Zoo, a place she had volunteered and interned while she was in high school.  She was hired as a Part-time Educator, but quickly moved up to Assistant Outreach Coordinator and then Outreach Coordinator.  In this role, she was the educator for any outreach program, school, festival, troop, or class that was scheduled with the zoo.  She enjoyed this work and liked the balance between program management and education itself.  After a year in the Seneca Park Zoo, Kat moved cross-country and began working as an Education Specialist for the Los Angeles Zoo.  The L.A. Zoo was a much larger zoo than the Seneca Park Zoo and Kat was able to see how regional differences, zoo size, and politics can change the programs and educational outreach offered at a zoo.

After graduation, Kat plans to spend a month touring the national parks, shown here with boyfriend Alejandro. 

After working in Los Angeles for a year, Kat decided she would like to go to graduate school and was interested in both Cornell and Ohio State. She liked the large size and flexibility at both schools as well as the high level of community involvement and research.  Much to Ohio State’s benefit, Kat selected Ohio State where she is in the second year of our Master’s program.  For her Master’s Thesis, Kat is taking some of her experiences working at different zoos and looking at the various influences that zoo educators have when selecting programing and presenting information to guests. She is looking at the five large zoos in Ohio: Akron, Toledo, Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati.  She has already finished a survey of zoo educators and will follow up with focus groups.  Her hope is that the information gathered from this research project can be used to improve training practices.  Kat is busy finishing this work this semester and hopes to defend her project in April.

After graduation in May, Kat plans to take the opportunity to travel cross-country exploring our county’s national parks.  Kat will end her month of national park hopping in Los Angeles where she is working at a summer camp until August.  After that, she will start job-hunting for a position in non-formal environmental education.  Ideally, Kat would like to be at a zoo, but could also be at a nature center or similar environment where she could combine program management, curriculum development, and community outreach.  Until then, Kat can be found most days in the graduate student office in 109 Ag Admin working on her thesis.  Kat is also the 2017-2018 President of the ACEL Graduate Student Association, where she has made great strides in building community among all ACEL graduate students. If you have a strong effort to build community among all graduate students, she is interested in working to improve GSA events, any ideas or suggestions can be sent to zelak (.1).

Graduate Student Spotlight: Aaron Fowler

Aaron Fowler is a Program Assistant for OSU Extension Greene County where he teaches SNAP-Ed

Aaron Fowler is a student in our online Master’s program and is also a Program Assistant for OSU Extension Greene County. A native of Greene County, Aaron grew up in Fairborn, Ohio where he was first introduced to 4-H when he was 16. Aaron joined 4-H in high school and credits the program for helping to “break him out of his shell.” Although Aaron participated in other activities such as ROTC and Marching Band, he feels that the 4-H is unique in its ability to provide each person with an individual voice and find that person’s unique talents. Aaron found that 4-H helped him to see leadership as something that can be grown and nurtured instead of a characteristic that some people are born with.  He says that 4-H gave him a sense of purpose and impact as well as an ability to see that what he had to offer was valuable and not just a repeat of what someone else had to offer. His positive experiences with 4-H have helped shaped his career decisions and are helping to direct Master’s project as well.

Aaron earned his undergraduate degree from Wright State University where he majored in Psychology.  After college, he went to work for a local mental health organization where he worked with clients in group home settings. While he enjoyed this experience, he found that he was limited in the ways in that he could help clients and so the impact was not always as good as it could have been.  One way Aaron saw that he made a difference was when clients came to Aaron to talk through their troubles. He could see that these mini- therapy sessions were beneficial and that many times his clients just needed someone to talk to.  While this was rewarding, he was sometimes frustrated with a system that he wished was “a little bit different.”  Aaron was still involved in 4-H as an advisor and found that he enjoyed this type of a role which led him to consider a career in Extension. Aaron’s first job made him an advocate for mental health, something he also hopes to incorporate in his Master’s project.

Aaron Fowler at the Greene County Fair

Aaron now works with SNAP-Ed where he enjoys the “immediate impact” he sees in his clients through education.  While Aaron teaches SNAP-Ed to a wide range of ages from preschool to senior citizens, he primarily works with students in alternative high schools. He uses the Extension program, “My Plate” to teach low-income families how to eat healthy on a limited budget. Eating healthy does not have to be something that breaks your budget.  Aaron is inspired by Roger Rennekamp’s description of the SNAP-Ed program:  if SNAP benefits are the fish, then SNAP-Ed is like teaching people how to fish.

Aaron distributing awards at the Greene County Fair

For his Master’s project, Aaron hopes to combine his passion for 4-H with his advocacy for those with mental illness. He would like to see 4-H become the activity that youth with disability and mental health disorders come to as their source for development outside of school.  For this, he draws inspiration from Temple Grandin who credits 4-H and having the ability to work with animals from a young age in helping inspire her in her work.  Aaron is just finishing his first semester in the program, so he is still not quite sure how he is going to combine these ideas in his project, but this is the direction he would like to take. In addition to his academics, Aaron serves as the online representative for the Graduate Student Association.  This role is still developing, but Aaron as an online student himself, Aaron would like to find ways to keep the students in the online program involved with the Graduate Student Association. This may be through Zoom lunches or other distance opportunities.  Watch for more information on this as the semester progresses.  The one constant is that he is looking to make sure that everyone feels like they are part of the group.  If you are an online student and have ideas for Aaron, please feel free to e-mail (fowler.440).  When not busy with his graduate studies, Aaron enjoys spending time with his family.  He is lucky that brother Ryan, sister Emma, and mom Karla are also located in Greene County and they are able to get together often.

Graduate Student Spotlight: Fally Masambuka

Fally with daughter Emma (left) and sister Linga (right).

Fally Masambuka is the social chair for the Graduate Student Association (GSA) so you may receive e-mails from her detailing various events and happenings that all ACEL graduate students are welcome to attend.  In an effort to get to know each other a bit more, Fally has offered to be the first student to be highlighted in this Graduate Student Spotlight.

Fally was born in Zomba, Malawi and raised in the capital city of Lilongwe where she completed her elementary and secondary education. Lilongwe is located in the central plains region of Malawi and features a humid subtropical climate. Lilongwe has a short wet season that runs from December to March and a dry season the rest of the year. Lilongwe has a population similar to that of Columbus at just over a million people.

Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, has a subtropical climate and is known for tilapia chambo, a delicacy found only in Lake Malawi.

Fally completed her undergraduate degree at Bunda College of Agriculture which is now known as Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR).  After completing her undergraduate degree at Bunda, Fally traveled to the United States where she earned her Master’s degree in Agricultural Communication at Purdue University in 2013.  After earning her MS, Fally returned to Malawi where she worked for the Ministry of Agriculture in the Department of Extension Services as the chief Agricultural Communications officer.  In 2016, Fally joined the graduate program here at OSU where she is completing her PhD in International Development.  Fally is hoping to conduct her doctoral research in Malawi where she will look at how Agricultural Communication can be used promotes farmer’s participation in agricultural programs.  She is specifically interested in understanding which voices are being heard and which voices are not.

Fally is here in Columbus with her husband Emmanuel, and her four-year-old daughter Emma but still misses her family back in Malawi.  It is difficult to be so far away from family and Fally recently had to miss the wedding of one of her sisters.  She keeps in touch with the family through WhatsApp and her daughter especially misses playing with Fally’s youngest sister, Linga, who is seven years old.  Aside from family, Fally misses the access to local and indigenous foods in Malawi.  One specialty is dried pumpkin leaves. Malawi is also famous for a type of tilapia know as tilapia chambo which is only found in Malawi.

Fally with husband Emmanuel

Fally can be found in the Graduate Student office in 109 Agricultural Administration building and is the Social Chair of the Graduate Student Association.  She would like as many ACEL graduate students as possible to participate in GSA events and is open to any suggestions you might have.