It’s been nearly four years since I made the leap to move on my own all the way from my family in central Illinois to the remote southernmost tip of Texas, just a few miles from the Mexico border. As a young nineteen year-old I was not absolutely confident in my decision but decided to push forward and follow my dreams to live in a […]

My first semester at college was tough. I remember getting sick and having no one really care much about it. What a lonely realization to have at age 18. I lived in the dorm and despite my dramatic recollection of the initial transition, I did start to make friends. This growing list of new partnerships consisted mostly of fellow students, mostly my basketball teammates at

Thank you, Professor Joe Hummer. It’s been about 20 years since I first met Professor Hummer as a naïve nature lover at Penn State DuBois. He was a Wildlife Professor within the Wildlife Technology Program. I consider him one of my mentors in herpetology. He was the first person to introduce me to working with turtles, as well as many other species. He had a

Thank you, Steve, It’s been nine years since Steve started theTurtleRoom (tTR). I remember our conversations leading up to that. We just wanted to be a part of something bigger than ourselves – a place where we could use our skills, talents and growing knowledge to help turtles and tortoises. We weren’t biologists or zoologists, but surely there had to be something we could do.