Evan Parker

he/him
Forest Technician
Forest Biodiversity Team

Evan started working as technician for the Myers Lab in mid-May, about a week before the undergrads arrived for the summer.

I honestly just saw a job posting online. I had been working for a different forest census in Puerto Rico this past January until May, and I'd really enjoyed it. But of course, I'm from Missouri, so I'd been looking for a job that was closer to home. So it kind of was the perfect fit.

I've worked on some other stuff that's more like wildlife-focused, but the thing I really like about a forest census job is you're looking at trees all day, and thinking about trees, and hands-on with trees, identifying them, talking about them… versus a lot of other jobs in ecology where it seems you don't get as much direct interaction with whatever you're working with. I'm motivated by liking trees a lot, so it's pretty nice.

He will be working as a technician in the Myers Lab through November, at which point he will start graduate school for forestry.

I'll be in a forest health lab, so I'll be working essentially on a research project that's trying to find ways to control hemlock woolly adelgids.

Currently, Evan shares an apartment with the three other technicians for the Forest Team — Leonel, Elliott, and Gibby.

Everyone's had a surprised sort of reaction when they hear about it, but I had been living with coworkers for the past year at the station in Puerto Rico. So it's been kind of a standard for me lately. But it's pretty nice, we all commute together, we work together, we go home and hang out together. I think we would've bonded and been friends even if we were just working together, but also having that friendship outside of work brought us together really quickly.