Accolades:

• Alumni Postgraduate Scholarship Winner 2004

About Katie

Name:
Katie Painter, Class of 2000

I just read:
Cry, the Beloved Country

My favorite CD:
"Esperanza" by Manu Chao

A Class everyone should take at St. Mary's:
I liked Ecology and Diversity of Maryland Plants with Bill Williams, but not everyone will take that. I think that all college students worldwide should take at least an intermediate level foreign language course, and everybody at SMCM should take sailing. Obviously.

Favorite spot on campus:
I used to be on the crew team, and my favorite place to be was out on the river in the morning, rowing with the team, and watching the sun rise on a nice chilly morning with the water as still as glass.

You'd be more likely to see me on:
"The Discovery Channel," though I'd have to get cable first, in order to be able to watch myself.

During a semester abroad in Ecuador, Katie Painter developed an interest in tropical ecology and Latin American culture. When she returned to college, she focused her St. Mary's Project on local agriculture, through a study of barn owl population and habitat in St. Mary's County. She visited farms and conducted interviews with many local farmers on changes in their land use practices over the years. Over the summer, she worked with Professors Bill Williams and Holly Gorton as a research assistant in the Snowy Mountains in Wyoming, helping with their study of red algae. The work was funded by a SMCM faculty development grant, and its outcomes were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and later, in the online version of Scientific American, with Katie in the accompanying photograph.

The combination of these experiences and her preparation as a double major in biology and International Languages and Cultures (Spanish) influenced her decision to apply to the Peace Corps after graduation.

"As a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, I spent two years living in a one-room wooden house on a hillside in southeastern Paraguay. My house had a cement floor and a leaky roof and no plumbing, and the greatest sunset view imaginable. I loved it. I painted it yellow. I put up a bamboo fence and planted a garden."

"My best friend, Yrene, lived next door. She was 41 years old and spoke only Guarani, the indigenous language spoken by over 90% of Paraguayans. On the first afternoon I spent with Yrene, she taught me how to plow a field with two oxen. In the weeks and months that followed, I had to learn all the other things that make a Paraguayan woman "ivaleiterei," worthwhile. She taught me to kill and cook a chicken, pick cotton, prepare and serve a proper maté tea, even how to butcher a pig. She seemed to never stop moving."

Working officially as an agroforestry extension volunteer, Katie was assigned to the small rural community of Misiones'i to implement agroforestry and soil conservation practices with the local farmers. "At first it seemed an impossible task; I knew about ten sentences of Guarani and had never planted anything more than a garden. These men and women lived in houses with dirt floors, they had families of twelve, their first priorities were getting food on the table and harvesting a hectare or so of cotton that often represented their entire cash income for the year. Environmental concerns, even the quality of their own soil, were, if anything, an afterthought."

But weeks turned into months, and successful projects began to develop. Katie was able to interest farmers in trying techniques appropriate to their family situation and plot of land. Sustainable agriculture was possible through a variety of means: no-till planting, green manures, citrus tree grafting, and soil conservation through the use of contour erosion barriers. Family projects grew into hectares with results that farmers could see: richer soil and reduced weed growth after a year of planting green manures; cash income from the sale of seeds and from broom straw, a new cash crop, along with orange and mango trees.

"I felt an amazing sense of accomplishment in overcoming the many obstacles facing a young, female, foreign professional working in a resource-poor community." With the help of the SMCM postgraduate scholarship, Katie's now at the University of Florida's School of Natural Resources and the Environment working on a master's degree in Interdisciplinary Ecology and Tropical Conservation and Development. She chose UF for its specific course offerings and also for the opportunity to work as a graduate assistant for Dr. Robert Buschbacher on an agroforestry project in Bahia, Brazil. The opportunity will afford her the chance to learn Portuguese and gain more experience in Latin America working on sustainable agriculture and environmental conservation.