Environmental science and studies major Sydney Bosley received this year's Excellence in Undergraduate Research award, an annual honor that recognizes an undergraduate student's outstanding achievement and initiative in conducting original research.
Bosley has been involved in research since her Freshman year, when she joined Dr. Jessica Vogt's Lab for Urban Forestry in the Anthropocene, known as LUFA, after answering an open call for interested students in Fall 2021. She quickly became an enthusiastic junior researcher and received her first Undergraduate Research Assistantship Program grant, or URAP, the following year. The project – which involved an inventory and analysis of urban tree planting and maintenance in Northwest Indiana – would shape Bosley's research for the next several years and lead to an original senior thesis on community urban forestry. Bosley would eventually receive multiple URAP grants in addition to an Undergraduate Summer Research Program award, or USRP, in 2024.
The award allowed her to complete work on a more than 15-month research project investigating the survival of new parkway trees planted by the city of Chicago under a metropolitan initiative known as “Our Roots." Bosley collected data on over 1,200 street trees in 36 census tracts throughout the city, demonstrating that community-based tree plantings had higher rates of survival than non-community plantings. She has since presented her findings at multiple academic and professional venues, including events at the Association for American Geographers, the Urban Forestry Advisory Board of Chicago, and the Chicago Tree Equity Working Group, a coalition of individuals and organizations committed to tree health and equity in the city.
Bosley plans on submitting her thesis research with Dr. Vogt to a scholarly journal this summer to share her findings with an even larger audience. The College wishes her the best of luck and a deep congratulations on her research success!