Undergraduate Maggie Schaffer has won a statewide competitive scholarship for students pursuing a degree in fisheries or aquatic science.
Schaffer, Class of 2017, is the second APU student in the past three years to win the Molly Ahlgren scholarship, awarded by the Alaska Chapter of the American Fisheries Association. Schaffer will use her $5,000 scholarship to attend the chapter’s annual meeting in November in Homer.
Schaffer, from Irving, Texas, is the second APU undergraduate to earn the Ahlgren prize in the past three years. Applicants are evaluated in part on their work and education experience as well as interest in professional advancement.
The scholarship honors Sitka-based professor and aquatics biologist Molly Ahlgren, who died in 2004 in a boating accident during a local rescue.
Schaffer is a technician working with Assistant Professor Bradley Harris in the University’s Fisheries, Aquatic Science and Technology (FAST) Lab. Harris praised Schaffer’s efforts starting from her freshman year at APU when she worked with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to help prepare and image juvenile salmon scales for aging.
In 2015, Schaffer volunteered with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game on a razor clam survey in Lower Cook Inlet. She also has worked on seabed image analysis for Kodiak area scallop assessments. This project is a cooperative effort between Harris’s lab and ADF&G.
Schaffer’s current FAST Lab project involves helping prepare Pacific halibut tissue for stable isotope-based diet analyses.
More on the Ahlgren prize at http://www.afs-alaska.org/awards-scholarships
