Karen Kraus
Minor in Environmental Science (B.S. Biology)
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences,
Saint Louis University

Lead Fuels Tech, Pocatello Field Station, Idaho
Bureau of Land Management 

What is your job like?  "I work for the Bureau of Land Management (where) I am the Lead Fuels Tech at the Pocatello Field Station. I help conduct surveys of the local vegetation to determine if it is outside of the normal stocking levels due to the absence of fire from the ecosystem for the past 100 years. I spend my days doing a wide variety of jobs from climbing the mountains to do line intercept collections, to climbing on roofs to download smoke data from monitors. I use GPS and GIS technology almost daily, as well as skills I learned in Dave's Field Techniques class. I work closely with the local fire ecologist to determine where future projects should be located, though most of our work recently has been focused on the Wildland Urban Interface.

What's the most exciting part of your job? When Fire season is in full swing I do my part and join a twenty person hand crew made up of Forest Service, BLM and IDL personnel and fight the blazes. Prior to my job with the BLM I worked for the Forest Service as a fuels crew member and fire fighter." 

Any advice for current undergraduates? "Don't stop dreaming."