Botany student chosen for prestigious environmental fellowship
Naomi Fraga, a doctoral student in the Botany Program at Claremont Graduate University, has been chosen as a Switzer Environmental Fellow by the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation.
The prestigious academic fellowship recognizes the achievements of outstanding environmental leaders. It comes with a $15,000 award.
Fraga is conducting her doctoral research on a group of closely related species in the genus Mimulus, commonly called monkey flowers. She hopes to provide a better understanding of species limits, evolutionary relationships, and reproductive biology of the flowers. She is broadly interested in conservation of biodiversity.
In addition to her full time status as a doctoral student, Fraga also serves as a conservation botanist at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, where she manages the field studies program and works with federal, state, and local agencies to conduct botanical research that affects management decisions on public lands.
The Switzer fellowships are merit based and highly competitive. The foundation evaluates applicants based on demonstration of environmental problem solving, critical analysis and communication skills, relevant work and volunteer experience, necessary scientific or technical background for their field of study, career goals, and the potential of the candidate to initiate and effect positive environmental change.
One of Fraga’s career goals is to teach urban high school students about botany or the natural history of California. She said too many urban youth have no connection to the world of nature.
“I am a product of that environment, and being able to come out of that and work in the environmental field – become knowledgeable about the natural world – that has been an important experience to me,” she said.
Fraga is one of 21 students to receive the Switzer Environmental Fellowship this year. Other winners are from Yale University, Harvard University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Boston University, Brown University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California, Davis, University of California, San Diego, University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, Santa Barbara, and University of California, Berkeley.
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