Beckie’s Background
I grew up in the country in Grand Junction, Colorado, where my family raised cows and sometimes pigs. We had a big corn field, a large garden, and a beautiful green house with ornamentals and vegetables. We always had fresh meats (and sometimes strange animal parts in the refrigerator crisper!) and in the summer fresh fruit and vegetables. Growing up in this environment led to my interest in pursuing a degree related to plants and agriculture.
I earned a B.S. from Middle Tennessee State University, with a major in Plant and Soil Science in the Department of Agri-business and Agri-science and graduated magna cum laude. During my time there, I was fortunate to have a fellowship at the Smithsonian Institute working in the Orchid Collection. I also worked with native and invasive plants as a Biological Science Technician with the National Park Service at Stones River National Battlefield in Murfreesboro, TN.
In 2002, I moved back to Colorado and settled on the Front Range. I began pursuing a M.S. in Rangeland Ecosystem Science from the Department of Natural Resources at CSU. As it turned out, this was not the program for me! I was more interested in plant taxonomy and botany and ended up dropping out of the program. I accepted a job at the Rocky Mountain Research Station with the U.S. Forest Service as a Biological Science Technician, working as a botanist studying the great Hayman Fire burn of 2002 during the summers. In the winters, I focused on database management for a multitude of different research projects.
