As a requirement of graduating from the Schreyer Honors College, honors students at Penn State University must complete a research thesis related to their undergraduate major. As I was currently working at the University as an Entomology lab tech, I decided to tie my thesis to the geography of pollinator conservation in a project entitled The influence of field soil conditions on plant productivity and native bee visitation.

Under the guidance of the Center of Pollinator Research and the Department of Geography, I completed the project over the course of one field season in upstate New York and central Pennsylvania collecting field soil, growing plants in a greenhouse, and studying pollinator visitation rates. It found that Phosphorus content and pH level were proven to statistically influence vistitation rates of native bee populations in the trial plant species. It also highlighted land masses in New York where soil characteristics were suitable for pollinator plantings that could aid in the restoration of declining native bee populations.

The project was funded through the Apis Valentes Research Award; a program that annually provides awards of up to $5,000 for five selected undergraduate and graduate students to pursue research, extension, education, and outreach projects focusing on pollinator biology and health. A Penn State news article was written about the grant along with a reference to some of the projects that the grant had funded, including my own.

In 2019, I presented my preliminary findings in the poster exhibition of the 2019 International Association for Landscape Ecology- North America Annual Meeting in Fort Collins, Colorado. This was my first academic conference and it was a honor to meet and learn from the continent's brightest landscape ecologists in workshops and seminars. I later presented the same poster at a small Penn State- College of Agricultural Sciences Graduate & Undergraduate Research Symposium.