On my first blog, I mentioned how I appreciated support and fun from my colleagues to me, here at Sam Noble Museum, and how this Fulbright experience could change my outlook in life, especially at work, back to Mindanao, southern Philippines. I was very excited to think about working back at home, and I still am, in spite of the recent incident...

Being here for four months now at the Siler Lab is not all fun: I am learning many exciting and new things at work. I managed to make very good progress on the things I needed to get done (writing papers and learning new skillsets). It is a great experience for me to be able to do all these things, and that my...

The prestigious Fulbright program sponsors a series of Enrichment Seminars to Fulbright scholars in the United States, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. I was selected as one of the 75 participants from 44 different countries to the first of the four series of seminars at St. Petersburg and Tampa Bay Area in Florida last...

Upon researching what “Boomer Sooner” actually means, my mind wondered how boomers and sooners have actually made their way settling in and after, during the “Land Run of 1889.” This was the period when settlers could claim 160 acres of public land by way of a race, to claim that land. A boomer is a settler during that time who believed that...

A former undergraduate professor said those words to my classmates and I while we talked about being a student, and our “anxieties” after graduation. He said to us “Well, you are all unique in your own ways, some get high grades, some don’t, but it doesn’t really matter anyway. When you leave from this university, you will need to find yourself on...

Tess’s interest in herpetology was sparked when she was previously awarded with a fellowship from the Philippine Commission on Higher Education to the University of Kansas to complete her dissertation work on the phylogeography and conservation of the Philippine slender toads (genus Ansonia). In 2014, Tess was awarded a Fulbright Advanced Research Fellowship sponsored by Dr. Cameron Siler. Tess arrived in the...