About

My name is Melissa Chieffe. I created this blog to follow my semester abroad in South Africa with the Organization for Tropical Studies, but will continue blogging afterwards about conservation issues I am interested in!  I started my journey August 22nd 2013 (arriving in Johannesburg Aug 24) and won't return until the middle of December. As a Biology major and aspiring conservationist, this was the opportunity of a lifetime and I thought I would share my experiences with you! With my love of animals and dream of going to Africa to learn more about them- I knew this program was right for me the moment I read the program description.  I was so eager to observe and research the biodiversity present in South Africa and ended up getting involved in the development of an amazing conservation research project involving using African honey bees as an elephant deterrent.

A little about the program:
I travelled with OTS and took 4 courses: South African Ecosystems and Diversity, Field Research in Savanna Ecology, Conservation and Management of Protected Areas in South Africa, and Duke in South Africa: Special Topics in History. For the majority of the trip we were in Kruger National Park with a mid-semester break in Cape Town. This program employed experiential education techniques to expose us to South Africa's rich biological and cultural diversity through field work and lectures from experts in the field- which inspired my passion for conservation!

A little more about me:

I am a senior at Duke University from Chagrin Falls- a small town outside of Cleveland, OH.  For high school, I went to Laurel School, an independent all girls school in Shaker Heights, OH. As I said before, I am a Biology major and hope to go to graduate school one day. I have been in love with animals  and the outdoors for my entire life. Growing up, my family often preferred to go on camping or hiking vacations, rather than going to the beach.  This resulted in me becoming a certified "Junior Ranger" at every National Park we visited (ranging from Glacier to Haleakala- and most recently, Joshua Tree National Park) and ultimately in my love for adventure. I also grew up constantly having pets in the house and in high school, starting realizing that my dream of working with animals wasn't going away like everyone claimed ("Everyone goes through a phase where they want to be a vet"....).  I even wrote a speech in high school basically about how much I loved animals- and once I started actually working with them, my love only grew. I started out working at a few kennels (professional pooper scooper right here).  Once I got to Duke, I started volunteering at the Duke Lemur Center (DLC) as a Technician Assistant. I was willing to do anything there and ended up staying on the early morning food prep shift for over three years (and plan to go back!). Ever since then, I've been more and more interested in wild animals and started a Field Research Internship at the DLC in May. I collected behavioral data and began my undergraduate thesis research during this internship at the DLC and will continue throughout the fall of 2014. I am now focusing on my independent research project studying seed germination and dispersal by two lemur species.

Link to my twitter: https://twitter.com/mchieffe