Meet Karly Soldner, a 20-year-old Environmental Science major hailing from Lancaster, PA and a proud member of the Class of 2017. She’s had all sorts of adventures adjusting to her new urban surroundings during her time here at Drexel. After switching from Biology to Environmental Science, she spent class time outside learning about the world she enjoyed exploring so much as a kid and realized all of her bug and rock collecting paid off. She’s also learned more about the Philadelphia area, helping her really feel at home in the city. In fact, urban exploring has become a new hobby of hers, something Philly can always provide. She takes every opportunity to enjoy Philly’s endless list of things to do whenever she’s not taking photographs or playing music as a member of the Drexel Pep Band.
On co-op, she works at the Academy of Natural Sciences as a curatorial assistant for the vertebrate zoology department. When new materials come into the vertebrate paleontology, herpetology, and mammalogy collections, she prepares them for cataloging by identifying them, repairing them if they’re damaged, and assigning each worthy specimen a catalog number. This is one of the most crucial parts of her job because if the specimens lose their associated data they are basically worthless to researchers and scientists that visit the collections for their research. Her favorite part of co-op is meeting these scientists and learning about their projects. Since she wants to work in research, this has provided a great opportunity for her to network with the scientists and witness their work. These scientists come from all over and do a variety of fascinating projects, which has inspired Karly to pursue graduate school after graduation in a natural science field.
Recently, Karly and her friend and colleague Vaughn Shirey started a club on campus called the Drexel Naturalists’ Association (DNA for short). They are a professional networking group for students pursuing careers in the natural sciences as well as a group of nature lovers who want to learn and explore the world around us. The goal of DNA is to explore nature while learning about it, encouraging students to slow down and appreciate the science of the natural world. Getting outside of the concrete jungle for a few hours with other passionate students is always exciting and rewarding. One of the rewards is getting to meet students with similar interests and hobbies. It also gives Karly an opportunity to share her knowledge of the environment with students in an informal setting. The Drexel Naturalists’ Association provides her with a unique leadership opportunity as she and Vaughn make the rules and delegate the work between them. She became the Vice President when the club was founded, so there was no previous VP to show her the ropes. Making her own rules has been a really fun experience for her, but it also proves to be a challenge when final decisions have to be made. Being VP has really made her more confident in her decisions, as members generally agree with her opinions on what she thinks is best concerning ideas and plans for the club.
If you are interested in joining DNA and working with Karly, click here.