Meet Erin West the MAC Team Supervisor - Nature and Culture

This is the first post in a special series being done by Pestec's Health Related Services Manager Erin West. In this series Erin West will share her educational background and perspective and the positive benefit it has brought to her roles at Pestec, an innovative reduced-risk pest management company.

 

Later blogs will discuss Erin's role as the manager of our Mosquito Abatement Courier Team, her connection with Pestec's founder Luis Agurto Sr.'s One Tree One Forest project, and other synchronous bio-friendly pest management "by-projects." Please say hello to Erin West...

 

 

Nature and Culture

 

In 2007 I graduated from the University of California, Davis with a degree in nature and culture.  The Nature and Culture program was a part of the humanities department at UCD and was the first of its kind in the country. Interweaving the natural sciences, humanities and the social sciences, the program allowed me to study in a variety of disciplines and departments. I chose an emphasis heavy in the biological and environmental sciences with courses such as conservation ecology, California flora and fauna and wildlife biology. The beauty of the Nature and Culture is in the diversity of courses which comprise the program.

 

To most, looking at the Nature and Culture program might not seem like much. My graduating class was under 20, and the entire program itself had no more than 100 students. However, like we all have been told before, size doesn’t matter. In fact the small size of the program allowed for an unheard of teacher to student ratio of 5 to 1. In any public university, including UC Davis, it is not uncommon to be in a sea of hundreds of students while a single professor atttempts to explain, along with half a dozen teaching assistants, such complicated subjects as organic chemistry or multivariable calculus. While large courses were inevitable with most larger programs the Nature and Culture program purposely kept their class size small which lead to more engaging and focused discussions.

 

I feel privileged to have been a part of the Nature and Culture program, especially since as of June of this year it has been discontinued. As state funding for California’s universities has dramatically declined, schools have reduced financial aid, hiked up tuition fees and cut valuable programs such as the Nature and Culture major. Hopefully one day the program will return to UC Davis and another lucky group of students will experience the uniqueness that was embraced by many and remembered by all.

 

 

By Erin West

 

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CATEGORY: Human Health