Erika Bucior
  • environmental studies
  • Class of 2016
  • Webster, N.Y.

Ithaca College Student Erika Bucior Receives Fulbright Award

2016 Apr 11

Ithaca College senior Erika Bucior was awarded a Fulbright to spend the 2016-17 academic year studying an invasive plant species in Trinidad and Tobago.

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. It provides college seniors and recent graduates - chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential - with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchanging ideas and contributing to finding solutions to shared international concerns.

Bucior is majoring in environmental studies, with minors in biology and anthropology. She will be studying the competition between two coastal dune species, the valuable endemic Scaevola plumieri and the invasive Scaevola taccada, growing on the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago.

By examining how these plants interact and compete, Bucior hopes to discover the potential for the native species to be driven to extinction by the newcomer. That could have negative implications for dune stabilization and coastal biodiversity. She will collaborate with the University of the West Indies and with the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International, a group which is responsible for invasive species control and agricultural management on the islands.

"Understanding the physiological and morphological adaptations of these species is critical for predicting plant responses to competition and the ecological consequences of invasion," she wrote in her Fulbright application. "I hope to work closely with this citizen science group and provide my skills in GIS mapping, field sampling and community based communication to encourage coastline conservation throughout the country."

A member of the Beta Beta Beta national biological honor society and Sigma Xi scientific research society, Bucior won an award for her presentation at the Botanical Society of America Annual Meeting. She is currently working as a research technician in the Bauerle lab in Cornell University's Department of Horticulture, and intends to pursue a Ph.D. in plant ecophysiology.