Name: Ele Clark
Year: Senior
Hometown: Orlando, Fla.
Major: Interdisciplinary Social Sciences
Her Campus (HC): What are you involved with at FSU and in the Tallahassee community?
Ele Clark (EC): I am involved with FSU women’s water polo and the HOPE program through Downtown Community Church where I’ve served as a mentor for two-and-a-half years. Through the HOPE program we serve youth on the south side of Tallahassee educationally, spiritually, and emotionally. Being a mentor has been one of the most challenging and rewarding things of my college career.
HC: How have you gotten involved in your major?
EC: With my major being in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences with a concentration in Law and Society, my course load is all over the place. My friends would laugh that I was taking economics and underwater archaeology at the same time, but that’s why I really love my major! I feel like I’ve built it personalized to me.
HC: How has this track changed your college career?
EC: What really changed my life was breaking my knee last fall. I was really struggling to stay motivated because just getting to class was more exhausting than I ever imagined. My underwater archaeology professor Dr. Jessi Halligan saw my potential through my temporary disability and promised to write me a letter of recommendation for the FSU Academic Diving program if I was cleared to scuba dive by my physical therapist. It was then that I worked my butt off, got scuba certified and began the Academic Diving course which led me to do research with Dr. Halligan on submerged Paleoindian sites and later into my current internship at Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC).
HC: What experience at FSU has been the most memorable for you?
EC: It’s hard to pick one thing, but the academic diving course has been my most memorable class at FSU. Chris Peters threw us over in the FSU Marine Lab basin on the second day and I thought I was going to be eaten by a bull shark. I really learned how to work with people who think nothing like I do (since primarily people in the class were marine bio grad students or biology majors) and faced the challenge of ultimate teamwork underwater where you literally can’t talk to one another. I feel so lucky to have encountered these opportunities and work with the most amazing professors on their research here at FSU.
HC: What do you plan on doing after graduation?
EC: My dream is to continue working with FWC or possibly something in the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s amazing how much law and society play a role not only in government jobs but in how the state utilizes resources based on peoples’ opinions and behaviors with Florida’s natural resources. I love what I get to do in making a difference for people living in Florida.
All imagess are courtesy of Ele Clark.