Kaitlin Ramspeck

A chance meeting turned into an opportunity for 2018 graduate, Kaitlin Ramspeck, to travel halfway around the world and lead a research project.

Kaitlin Ramspeck is a 21-year-old Georgia native who had set her sights on coming to the University of North Georgia (UNG) from her days as a dual enrollment student attending North Forsyth High School in Cumming.

"I didn't apply to any other universities because I loved everything about UNG," said Ramspeck. "I started out taking college courses at the Cumming Campus as a high school student. I visited the Dahlonega Campus and fell in love with the campus, the town, everything."

It also helped, Ramspeck said, that UNG had a stellar biology program, her chosen major. It's a decision that paid off in ways beyond her dreams. She travelled outside the country to do research projects, twice. The first was with a small group of UNG students who trekked to the Costa Rican tropical cloud forests for 10 days as part of a study abroad program to work on her first project, titled "Foraging Dynamics of Leafcutter Ants."

Ramspeck was among a group of students that participated in the Faculty Undergraduate Summer Engagement (FUSE) program at UNG in 2017. FUSE pairs faculty and students together in full-time research projects for six weeks. Teams then present to other FUSE faculty and peers and receive critical feedback on their findings.

She was one of two student-led teams whose proposal, titled "A study of the differences of soil invertebrate activity between organic and non-organic tea plantations in Taiwan," took her to an area of the world she had never visited.

Ramspeck's research project was to study whether organic farming practices could improve soil properties in a former conventionally managed tea planation. The project took place at the Fenghuang tea plantation, located in central Taiwan and owned by the National Taiwan University.

It was an opportunity that was only possible through fate, said Ramspeck. While working on a project with Dr. Justin Ellis, director of the Environmental Leadership Center at UNG, and his wife, Dr. Ching-Yu Huang (also a UNG biology professor), a door opened that allowed Ramspeck to do a research project half a world away.

"Dr. Huang is Taiwanese, and she was looking into research opportunities there," said Ramspeck. "She referred me to colleagues in Taiwan to collaborate with my project. I wouldn't have been able to go there without their help."

Ramspeck submitted an abstract of her findings to the Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) and presented it at the annual conference in October. She also presented her final report at the Annual Research Conference (ARC) held at UNG in March 2018.