Academic Biography
University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, July 2010 – May 2016 PhD of Environmental Sciences in Hydrology Dissertation Title: Influences of climate change on water availability in complex terrain: Understanding earth processes and their relation to social action. NSF Graduate Research Fellow, Hydrologic Sciences, Earth Sciences Division Social-Ecological Resilience NSF-IGERT Member, Northern Rockies Team Major Advisor: Dr. Timothy E. Link Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO, Class of 2009 B.A. in Geology, Magna cum laude, with Distinctions Outstanding Student Award in Geology, Presidential Award for Community Involvement Major Advisor: Dr. Christine Smith Siddoway Conserve School, Land o’ Lakes, WI, Class of 2005Environmentally focused College Preparatory School
Academic Distinctions, Senior Capstone Research: Campus Groundwater Analysis
Our home-built wooden catamaran, Calumet Dreams.
A little about how I got to where I am today…
I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin in the heart of rural America. By the start of middle school my parents got the itch to leave our WI home and go for a life-changing family sailing adventure from WI to the Caribbean and back. The sailing trip changed my life and instilled within me a strong sense of self-confidence and a desire to explore the unknown. I returned from the trip, and after year back in my hometown of Billion, WI, I felt the need to get out again. I was lucky to find a brand-new environmentally-focused, outdoor-based small boarding school in WI’s Northwoods called Conserve School. This unique high school experience grew within me a love for the sciences, while also a strong appreciation for the natural world, and our place, as humanity, within it. I took these passions, and many more related to my love for outdoor adventure, into account as I decided on my next steps for life. The mountains and deserts of the West called to me and I found myself on a bus and off to Colorado College, ready to start the next chapter and the next adventure in life. Through the amazing geology programs at Colorado College I grew a love for strong communities filled with big thinkers. This spurred the desire to pursue a career in academia, and with several summers of research experience and a year of full-on teaching experience as a geology paraprofessional, I found confidence (and the funding) to pursue a PhD focused on these integrated questions at the overlap of society and the natural world.
Coring into the past on the next “home-built catamaran.” Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Woods Hole, MA. Summer, 2008
Zion Klos, Ph.D. 