Ross Furbush

11/07/11
Honors 100
Honors Program TA, Roman
Peer Interview
First we talked about what I am interested in. I am interested in getting involved with the
aquarium and zoo community. I also want to uptake as many opportunities for zoological research. I am
primarily interested in organismal biology, preferably macro biology. I also like bird watching and
working outside. We talked about my past experience which includes volunteering at the St. Louis Zoo,
World Bird Sanctuary, and Endangered Wild Canine Center.
Ethan has recently been interested in computer science and computer programming. Ethan has
been taking a lot of Spanish, including throughout high school. Ethan is interested in travelling,
preferably to a Spanish speaking country. Ethan also enjoys sports, being outside, and cooking. He likes
skiing and mountain biking as well.
I found the following abroad for Ethan. http://faculty.washington.edu/petersen/cadiz/Cadiz.htm
This abroad is in Spain and Ethan would love to practice his Spanish. This is designed for taking Spanish
classes. Hopefully Ethan would be able to get out and explore the Spain outdoors on a mountain bike and
possibly some skiing too! There are many abroad opportunities in Spain for Ethan, and we both discussed
how to look for abroad that we might be interested in. There is also an abroad out of the honors program
that goes to Leon, Spain. http://depts.washington.edu/uwhonors/international/leon/. This program is great
because it gives him honors credit and it also is a great opportunity to understand the Spanish language
and culture.
Ethan found a great opportunity to volunteer at the Seattle Aquarium. It requires 100 hours at the tide pool
interactive station, before you can be trained to work with the fish, birds, and marine mammals.
http://www.seattleaquarium.org/page.aspx?pid=830. He also mentioned that the Woodland Park Zoo has
great volunteer programs (http://www.zoo.org/).
Another thing Ethan found for me was a citizen science called COASST Volunteer. COASST is a lab that
works out of UW and they keep track of beached birds that wash up on the Oregon, Washington, and
Alaskan Coast. This would give me good practice at species identification and practice with data
collection. Its easy to get involved especially when there are beaches close to UW that I could monitor.
http://depts.washington.edu/coasst/