My Education in Primatology
B.S., Primate Behavior & Ecology & B.A., Anthropology in June 2023. M.S., Primate Behavior in June 2025
I remember searching for what seemed like months, trying to find a school that was right for me. I planned to major in zoology and attend Oregon State University because that was the best major for me to work with primates. I just happened to come across Central Washington University and saw that they have a primate major. I immediately knew this was the school for me. I packed my bags and flew from New Jersey to Washington state. I had never been to Washington before and had just flown there the day before classes began. That’s how committed I was and still am to not only my career in primatology, but also my whole life.
I completed my undergraduate degree in Primate Behavior with a double major in anthropology in 2 years; luckily, most of my credits transferred from my community college back home. The course catalog was a dream come true all by itself! I learned so much about primates and the sad truth of the factors that are affecting each species’ population. One of my favorite classes was Primate Conservation, and I learned about ethnoprimatology, that was when I knew that conservation was for me, and I wanted to study the interactions between humans and non-human primates and find ways to help them coexist. My undergraduate studies opened endless doors for me; just having professors who have traveled the world researching primates and have published 50+ papers was inspiring enough. I had two opportunities to experience fieldwork firsthand. I attended field schools in Uganda and Costa Rica, where I not only fell in love with being in the field but also love connecting with other students who shared similar interests.
My graduate studies were spent working on my thesis, and my first year involved developing the key components of my study (i.e., location, species, and hypothesis). I really wanted to focus on orangutans in Indonesia, but that plan did not work. My second plan was to focus on ethnoprimatology, and I knew macaques were the best species to study. I really wanted to travel abroad, but once again, nothing worked out. I ended up researching the wild rhesus macaques in Florida. I was excited but also sad because I really wanted to do something abroad, but everything worked out great because I ended up staying in Florida and having the opportunity to be an intern at Zoo Tampa, and I became a keeper for primates. Everything worked out how it was supposed to be.
Thesis Proposal Presentation in March 2024
In my second year, I collected data in the field, organized my results, completed my paper, and presented my thesis defense.