Kalysha Clark

You are looking at the new Stormwater Outreach Coordinator for the Piedmont Triad Regional Council!

This is a position through AmeriCorps and is called Project GEOS (Growing Environmental Opportunities through Service). For those who don't know, AmeriCorps is similar to the Peace Corps, but it's for service in the United States. I will serve from March 30th until January 30th, 2016 and will complete 1700 hours.

The Piedmont Triad Regional Council (PTRC) is a voluntary association of local governments that are authorized to make and implement joint regional decisions, provide management, planning and technical services to local governments, bring together local elected officials and give them an opportunity to form working relationships and more. PTRC operates in Alamance, Caswell, Davidson, Davie, Forsyth, Guilford, Montgomery, Randolph, Rockingham, Stokes, Surry and Yadkin counties in North Carolina.

As the Stormwater Outreach Coordinator, my responsibilities fall into three categories: environmental education, conservation volunteer program development, and disaster preparedness.

In short, here are some things I can expect to do while serving at the PTRC.

• Create outreach materials such as blogs, newsletters, flyers, brochures and programs to expand participation on environmental education events.
• Provide outreach for PTRC at local fairs and festivals
• Assist in providing hands-on environmental education activities
• Establish a volunteer policy for Stormwater Smart
• Recruit, train and lead volunteers during conservation activities such as water quality monitoring, storm drain marking, rain garden building, litter removal, etc.
• Assist in development of a disaster preparedness program

I'm famous! Well, sort of. I got my 15 seconds of fame because I was featured in my school's newspaper, The Technician. The feature talks about my summer research in Arizona working with cliff chipmunks, as well as my involvement with a club on campus, Roots and Shoots!



If you want to check out it, click here.

Today was my last day of classes for the semester. That's crazy. I just have to make it through three exams and then I am done until January!

This semester was very busy, but I had some awesome opportunities.

I got to present my summer research at the State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium. This was my first ever professional poster presentation.

Perfect Gift for Dog-Lovers! 
Are you looking for a gift for the dog-lover in your life?  You've come to the right place. These handcrafted, personalized clay ornaments are perfect for all those dog-parents out there.

They measure 3.5 inches across. Ornaments come with red, ivory, or green raffia to hang on your tree, but you could easily replace it with an ornament hook. 

Ornaments are all white in color, but text color can be: black, gold,  royal blue, dark green, red, or purple. 

Please put the name you'd like and the desired text color in the message to the seller! 

Each ornament is $8 with $3 for shipping, with discounts for multiple items! 

And if you weren't already convinced, money from the sales of these ornaments will help pay for my dog Axel's heartworm treatment.

Thanks! 

My university, North Carolina State University, won a contest with Cosmopolitan Magazine which gave us the opportunity to have a party bus filled with male models to shuttle students to the closest polling location.

I and a friend decided we would check out the event, grab a free t-shirt and take our picture with a hot male model. Because let's be honest, free stuff is a college student's best friend.

Some people, mainly the right-wing conservatives, aren't exactly happy about Cosmo's effort to Get Out the Vote. Take a look at this. The rest of my post will be in response to that article. That's me in the photo (in the center) flanked by my friend Jason (on the left) and a super hot male model (on the right).

There exist many people in these great United States who are shallow, unintellectual, and easily influenced by whatever is socially acceptable. And it’s precisely these people who will turn out to vote for the promise of a neon “Voting is Sexy” t-shirt.

I suppose that my want for free t-shirt is definitely an indication of my shallow, unintellectual and easily-influenced nature. Except it's not. Anyone who knows me would describe me as the opposite of those things. I could take a second to mention that I graduated in the top five percent of my class in high school and that I am attending on of the top 100 universities in the United States with a GPA good enough to allow me to graduate with honors. But it's not just that.

In a perfect world, the masses would be politically engaged, watch candidate debates, spend time over scotch and cigars discussing the issues du jour and then head to the polls to make a careful and rational decision on who should represent their interests.

So just because I showed up to take my picture with a hot model means that I didn't do those things? Incorrect. I actually did watch the candidate debates and spent extensive time online doing research on the candidates and their platforms because there's a lot at stake for this election: women's reproductive rights, clean air and water, education, and more. Trust me when I say that I did what you imagine individuals would in a perfect world (save for the scotch and cigar because I'm not really into alcohol or smoking. Besides, I wouldn't want to impair my judgement before I went to the polls!).

To the former, I’m not sure the intelligentsia are the ones flocking to snap a pic with a buff model holding a “CosmoVotes” sign

Except they are! Which is exactly why my friend Jason and I were there.

Those already polically engaged in college are likely in some way, shape, or form, tangentially involved in a campus political club

Wrong. We can't all be involved in as many clubs as we'd like. Some of us have to work multiple part-time jobs to pay our way through school while also juggling full-time schoolwork AND clubs that are relevant to our careers. So just because I'm not in the College Democrats Club at my school doesn't mean I'm not politically engaged in college.

Also at issue here is the nexus of “feminism” and a Cosmo-style GOTV push. “What kind of message does it send to young women when they’re bribed to vote by hot men?!” the right posits. “How hypocritical is the left that the cry feminism and then use sexuality to lure votes!?”

I think you have the wrong definition is feminism. At its roots, feminism is about equality among the sexes. In a world where women are frequently sexualized to sell items and ideas (see here as just one example), it's rare to see men being sexualized. And in our case, at least everyone kept their clothes on and it was for a worthy cause.

At the end of the day, I’m not opposed to having a party bus full of hot male models accompany me to the polls to make my careful and rationally decided ballot choices. Sounds like a great time. 

If you're not opposed to the event, then why did you feel the need to call out and tear down its attendants? It was a great time. I got a free t-shirt, a photo with a sexy male model and voted for candidates that I wanted to vote for based on my own research and decisions.

I've made it halfway through the semester! Woo!

One thing I'm doing a lot of this semester is working on projects! I thought I would take just a minute to talk about some of the ones I'm working on.

For my conservation biology class, I am a part of two group projects. One studies wildlife presence on golf courses and compares the rates at which wildlife are captured on camera traps across three different landscape types - rural, exurban, and suburban. The second project is a conservation controversies discussion. Our controversy is the Red Wolf Recovery Program, which is currently under review by the US Fish and Wildlife Program. Our discussion plans to approach the topic from a couple different stakeholder perspectives and ultimately try to answer whether we should continue or cancel the program.

I am also involved in a group project for my human-animal interactions course that will research elephant-human conflict and look at a couple ways to solve mitigate those conflicts.

In addition, I am continuing to work on my independent research project that started over the summer, which focuses on perceptual range in cliff chipmunks. I plan to present my research at the State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research & Creativity Symposium at the end of November!

Lastly, I was just given an awesome opportunity to start working with The Nature Conservancy (very exciting!!!) on a project that looks at how municipal governments talk about climate change. I'm super excited to get the opportunity to not only gain more research experience, but also get to expand my professional network.

With all that said, I'm super busy. But who isn't? I just take it one day at a time.

Wow, it's hard to believe I'm already a senior in college. My final year has come and I hit the ground running. In the first month of senior year, I've already had an exam, quizzes, group projects and more. I'm also interning with a nonprofit this semester called AniMall, which is a nonprofit retail store with a mission to save the lives of homeless animals.

I got a dog this year as well. It's been a long road and he's not perfect, but thanks to some help from the local German Shepherd Rescue, we've been able to make a lot of great changes.

The turtle dogs found five turtles in 2 hours. On average, one person will spend 4 hours and find only one!

I also plan to present a research poster at the State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium using the side project I worked on over the summer.