By Ronica Stromberg
As Maddy Vasquez listened to awards being called out at the School of Natural Resources spring banquet last year, she thought about how cool the Graduate Student Meritorious Award was for a master's student.
"I was like, 'Wow, I would really like to win that someday. I hope I do enough to warrant that award.' And then I got that this year," she said.
The award notification came as a surprise, arriving by email while she was talking with her research partner, Ava Britton, and one of their advisors, Mark Vrtiska. She told them she thought she might have won the master's award, and they confirmed that they, and all of her labmates, already knew that.
"I started tearing up," she said. "I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh,' and then I started running around in a circle."
The whirlwind experience didn’t end there, as she was able to invite her parents to the spring banquet and see their joy when the award was announced. She also saw Britton, her best friend in college, win a surprise award, the Joe Gabig Memorial Award. It's an award given by the Nebraska Chapter of The Wildlife Society, normally at a banquet in February or March. This year, though, the chapter moved to a fall banquet and asked the School of Natural Resources to announce the award for them.
"That one was a complete surprise, and I'm like, 'Oh my god, we won awards together!' It was such a magical moment," she said.
The two have been working together under the guidance of Vrtiska and Chris Chizinski, professors in wildlife management. They have been studying the results of the two-tier duck hunting regulation that Nebraska and South Dakota recently implemented. In the original duck hunting regulation, Tier I, hunters could harvest six ducks a day but the ducks had to be of a specified species or sex. In Tier II, hunters can harvest three ducks a day without species or sex restrictions.
Read more about Maddy at https://snr.unl.edu/aboutus/what/newstory.aspx?fid=1341