NRT aided career, past students say

Brittany Decker, an agronomist, and Jessica Knox, an engineer, collaborated on an erosion project near a stream and agricultural field in Nebraska while in the NRT as master's students. When returning November 9, 2022, to the NRT to speak on a panel about
Brittany Decker, an agronomist, and Jessica Knox, an engineer, collaborated on an erosion project near a stream and agricultural field in Nebraska while in the NRT as master's students. When returning November 9, 2022, to the NRT to speak on a panel about

Five past Nebraska students returned by Zoom on November 9, 2022, telling current students that taking part in the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship boosted their careers.
Brittany Decker and Jessie Knox in field
Brittany Decker, an agronomist, and Jessica Knox, an engineer, collaborated on an erosion project near a stream and agricultural field in Nebraska while in the NRT as master's students. When returning November 9, 2022, to the NRT to speak on a panel about their current work with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, they said such collaborations aided them in landing and carrying out their jobs.

“For my position, my degree was in engineering, and for me to qualify to work as a soil conservationist, on paper, wouldn't have worked if I was not a part of the NRT,” Jessica Knox said.

Knox took part in the interdisciplinary NRT graduate program from August 2018 to May 2020 while earning her master’s degree in agricultural and biological systems engineering. Upon graduating, she took a position with the Natural Resources Conservation Service as a soil conservationist.

“The fact that I was able to have such a wide array of other coursework outside of engineering that was including natural resources helped me get that federal position and, probably also, because it's a National Science Foundation-funded program, the NRT was, on a day-to-day basis, using a lot of the language that I used in my resume,” she said.

She said these “buzzwords” showed federal workers at the NRCS that she was on the same page as them. She recently advanced to a field engineer position at the NRCS office in Valentine.

From Knox’s same NRT cohort, Brittany Decker also graduated in 2020, with an agronomy degree, and became a soil conservationist. Decker said the NRT emphasis on collaborations helped prepare her for her current work.

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More details at: https://nrt.unl.edu/nrt-aided-career-past-students-say