Tierra Seca Club Members Receive Team and Individual Honors at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Society for Range Management

SRM_OK_meeting.png

Ten undergraduates from the Tierra Seca Club participated in the Undergraduate Range Management Exam (URME) at the 66th Annual Society for Range Management Meeting in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on February 4, 2013. The University of Arizona?s URME Team placed 4th overall among 24 competing schools from across North America.  Ms. Kelsey Hawkes was the top finisher from the University of Arizona placing 5th individually among 219 URME contestants. The URME Team is coached by Dr. Larry Howery and team members are Keith Arnold, Erin Boyd, Beth Freniere, Kelsey Hawkes, Megan Hurrell, J. C. McDonald, Andrew Ramirez, Alanna Riggs, Stephen Tham, and Eric Wagner (see photo).  Scoring in the top 10% of all URME students automatically qualifies URME contestants to apply for Certified Professional of Range Management (CPRM) status. Hawkes (top 2%) and Riggs (top 6%) both met this stringent criterion.   The purpose of the SRM-sanctioned CPRM program is ?To certify individuals who have the professional credentials required to plan and implement sound management of rangelands as a means of improving the standards of professional expertise used in managing public and private rangelands.? 

Tierra Seca is the University of Arizona Student Chapter of the International Society for Range Management (SRM). Dr. Mitch McClaran serves as Tierra Seca student advisor. Students raised funds for their travel through contracted data entry and fieldwork for the Pima National Resource Conservation District, through t-shirt sales, processing and scanning samples on a mule deer diet quality study at the V Bar V Ranch, and by assisting the AZ Section of the SRM with their Summer 2012 meeting. They also received donations from the School of Natural Resources and the Environment (SNRE), the College of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences (CALES) Alumni Association, and from the Phil Ogden Endowment. Additionally, the students received donations at the Research Insights for Semiarid Ecosystems (RISE) Symposium in 2012, as well as from a variety of private individuals.

Congratulations to these folks for their hard work and dedication to SRM and for the many contributions of Tierra Seca to SRM and SNRE.

Photo: (L-R) ? Andrew Ramirez, Kelsey Hawkes, Erin Boyd, Gary Frasier (SRM President), Eric Wagner, Stephen Tham, Keith Arnold, J. C. McDonald, Megan Hurrell, Alanna Riggs, and Beth Freniere. Hawkes, Boyd, Arnold, Riggs, and Freniere are returning members from the 2012 URME Team which also received team and individual awards in Spokane, WA.