A year and a half after participating in the Freshwater@UW Summer Opportunities Program, Hope Dzik still raves about the experience and how it changed her career path to water science.
In fact, Dzik is presenting her research from the summer of 2024 as part of her senior capstone project at Michigan State University where she is majoring Environmental Plant Biology. Not only that but she encouraged her roommate and members of the Michigan State Plant Biology club to apply to the program in 2026.
When Dzik graduates in May, she plans to take a gap year before applying to graduate schools to further study water.
“I’m at a point in my college career where I know I want to work in water but still have no idea what I want to specialize in,” she says. “What I do know is that I loved living in Wisconsin, and UW would be my top pick for grad school.”
Dzik says she hadn’t conducted field work at Michigan State prior to joining the Freshwater@UW cohort. She was nervous and excited to travel to Wisconsin to study bighead and silver carp, invasive species that can harm Wisconsin’s native fish populations.
“My experience with meeting other cohort members, grad students, professors, and many others involved in the program was one of the best parts of my summer,” Dzik says. “I made so many professional connections and met future environmental scientists from around the country.”
She worked with faculty and staff from the Upham Woods Outdoor Learning Center and the UW-Madison Biotechnology Center. Her research involved identifying how to best collect river samples from the Upham Woods campus, determining the most efficient way to extract DNA from carp, and refining techniques to analyze the DNA samples. The complete protocol is being used for teaching high school groups who participate in field trips at Upham Woods.
Dzik says that without the opportunity to conduct summer research at UW-Madison and to participate in the professional development activities that are part of the program, she wouldn’t be considering graduate school or have the skills or knowledge to achieve her future career goals.
“This program is essential to training undergraduates and piquing their interest in the research and protection of not only Wisconsin’s waters, but freshwater across the country,” she says.
Funding for the Freshwater@UW Summer Research Opportunities Program is provided by the Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Sea Grant, the UW Water Resources Institute and Water@UW-Madison. This is the fifth year of the program.
Written by Heidi Jeter, Freshwater Collaborative