Rebecca Hardman

Hi! My name is Becky Hardman and this is my PhD research. I started my love for amphibians early in life as a Navy brat living on a base in Puerto Rico catching coqui frogs. Afterwards I lived in central New York and Boston until I moved to the southeastern United States for my first job as a field technician in 2006. I lived in the woods of North Alabama surveying for reptiles and amphibians. I learned so much and was also able to see my first hellbender! I went on to get my MS at Western Carolina University looking at distributions of Green Salamanders and made a decision to go to veterinary school at the University of Tennessee. I recently received my DVM and am moving forward with my dissertation research. It may seem I have been hopping around degree programs for quite some time but I have a goal. I am interested in understanding disease in wildlife populations and I wanted to have perspectives both from ecology and clinical medicine. As we move forward in conservation it will be important for people to enter a "one health" approach to problems. When the fields of medicine, conservation, and population biology work together, we may be able to tackle complex issues such as public health and wildlife disease. Despite these plans I still try to live out a balanced life. The rest of it is filled with trail running, dogs, and an occasional pint of good beer!

August 2016