Research Fellowships

Boyd EvisonBoyd Evison Graduate Research Fellowship Awards


2009 CALL/APPLICATION
Deadline is February 13, 2008


In 2005, Grand Teton National Park and the Grand Teton Natural History Association collaborated to initiate a new graduate research fellowship in memory of Boyd Evison, who died in October 2002. Evison retired in 1994 from an exemplary 42-year career with the National Park Service in which he rose from a park ranger and resource manager to superintendent and regional director in parks from Alaska to the Rocky Mountain Region. After retiring from government service, he became executive director of the park’s primary interpretive and educational partner, the Grand Teton Natural History Association (GTNHA).

The NHA launched the Evison Fellowship to encourage scientific and conservation-related research in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, providing up to $10,000 in support for a graduate study leading to completion of a master’s or Ph.D. degree in the biosciences, geosciences, or social sciences. The association invites invited interested candidates to submit proposals, which are evaluated by a technical panel of three Ph.D. scientists outside Grand Teton National Park who submit a short list of finalists; the final decision on the grant is made by a committee of NHA representatives and the park’s chief of science and resource management.

Previous award winners and their projects include:

Executive director Jan Lynch awarded the inaugural Evison Fellowship, in spring 2005, to Florence Gardipee, a master’s degree candidate at the University of Montana. Gardipee’s research planned to test the feasibility of non-invasive fecal sampling for genetic and parasite studies in the Yellowstone and Jackson bison herds.

In 2006, the NHA granted a second fellowship to Ericka Pilcher, a graduate student at Colorado State University. Pilcher planned to identify natural sounds heard by Grand Teton park visitors in various locations, evaluate visitors’ reactions to natural and human-caused sounds, and develop indicators to set standards for managing soundscapes in the park. The 2007 award went to Lyman Persico, a Ph.D. student in hydrology at the University of New Mexico, whose research focuses on long-term variability of beaver effects on streams in Yellowstone and Grand Teton. In 2008, Emiline Ostlund of the University of Wyoming received the award to study pronghorn passage.

Gardipee and Pilcher completed their theses in 2007, and Pilcher was subsequently hired as an acoustic technician for the NPS Natural Sounds Program. Persico’s study was still underway in 2008. In the autumn of 2008, Ostlund and photographer Joe Riis journeyed along the 90-mile migratory path of pronghorn that summer in Grand Teton NP and winter in the upper Green River basin of Wyoming—a sojourn that will be documented in narrative form by the creative writing student.

In keeping with Mr. Evison’s wishes, the Grand Teton Association particularly encourages research to document the almost intangible and disappearing aspects of Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, the John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Memorial Parkway, and surrounding public or private GYE lands, including less well-known or charismatic ecosystem elements as natural soundscapes; air; water; plants; fish; insects; amphibians; fungi; snails; bacteria; geologic or other processes; and social science related to public understanding of natural resources and their use or management.