Meet Caitlin

Hi, my name is Caitlin Richards but my friends call me 

 Caity… not Caitie, Kaity, or Kaiti or any of the other ways to spell it.  I’m not 

 bitter about people always spelling my name wrong… ok maybe a little.  I’m a senior majoring in Biology, Environmental Health and Safety, and minoring in Chemistry.   I’m a Scorpio, and my birthday is November 4^th which means every four years the country gives me a president for my birthday…. It’s usually not a very good present.

I like being outside so I enjoy most outside activities; my favorite reasons to be outside are to ski, swim, read under a tree, ride my bike,  hike, cook, and camp.  I have a pretty severe obsession with owls and pretty much anything that has an owl on it, as of this minute I have an owl lunchbox, an owl patch on my backpack, the lock screen on my tablet is an owl, my USB is an owl, and my wallet is an owl with a mustache.  Unfortunately I know that owning an owl as a pet is cruel and unnatural but If I could have any animal as a pet I would have a saw-whet owl, pictured below.  They are about the size of a robin and can fit in your hand.  It would be my dream to have a saw-whet nest in my yard and while it lives in the wild it would let me pet it and I would feed it treats and we would be friends.

 I’m also pretty involved in the environmental justice movement and dedicate a lot of my time to organizations such as the Student Environmental Alliance, Take Back the Tap, and Divest CMU.  I am pretty knowledgeable about a lot of environmental issues but I always love to learn more and talk about it.  I think that one of the most important things about conservation is education, that is why I have developed many programs on things ranging from the basics of reduce, reuse, and recycle  to broad topics like fossil fuels, to specific things like Michigan beach conservation in a specific Michigan county.   I don’t know what I am going to do after college, maybe join a cult and worship a rock with a face, maybe go to grad school, maybe get off the grid and live in the woods and become friends with all the forest animals; I guess time will only tell.

 -Caity