Chelsea Marie Berns recently graduated with the class of 2013 from Iowa State University in ecology and evolutionary biology. Prior to attending ISU, Chelsea Marie Berns received her bachelor of science in zoology at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, Colorado. Chelsea Marie Berns was the recipient of top honors while at Iowa State University, and excelled in the classroom as both a student and an instructor.

Chelsea Marie Berns was awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and received $121,500 while attending ISU. Although the National Science Foundation was an external fellowship, Chelsea Marie Berns also received a Graduate College Fellowship from ISU through the Ecology and Evolution Biology Program worth $20,719. Throughout her time at ISU, Chelsea Marie Berns received grants and fellowships totaling over $150,000. Chelsea Marie Berns also had five of her research papers as well as a chapter in a book published while pursuing her Ph.D.

Chelsea Marie Berns received two awards in 2012 from Iowa State University Graduate College – the Excellence in Research Award and Excellence in Teaching Award. These recognized Chelsea Marie Berns for being in the top 10% of ISU’s graduate college. Chelsea Marie Berns gained additional experience in her field while at ISU serving as a Research Supervisor of Natural Resources, Ecology, and Management in 2007. That same year, Chelsea Marie Berns worked as the Research Assistant to Dr. Dean Adams, and they published their work, “Rates of species diversification and morphological evolution are uncorrelated in plethodontid salamanders” in the Proceedings of the Royal Society London, B. In the years 2008 and 2012, Chelsea Marie Berns served as a Teaching Assistant for the course “Vertebrate Biology,” and later for “Geometric Morphometrics” and “Principles of Biology”. Chelsea Marie Berns also solely created and taught the course “The Ecology of Hummingbirds” and in the summer of 2013, was a lecturer for the online course ‘Evolution’.

Chelsea Marie Berns already possesses exceptional experience in her field and she believes she owes it to Iowa State University and her major advisor, Dr. Dean Adams. Chelsea Marie Berns stated, “I can’t put into words how thankful I am that I chose to get my degree from Iowa State University. They have a leading science program with experienced faculty that helped me gain the knowledge and guidance to succeed as a scientist and educator.”