Each year the College of the Environment provides faculty-student research grants to provide faculty and their students an opportunity to conduct research that would not have been otherwise possible. Helen Poulos, adjunct assistant professor of environmental studies, and environmental studies & earth and environmental sciences major Ally Detre ‘22 launched a faculty-student research collaboration during the 2020-21 academic year working on a dataset documenting native woody plant recovery in the Big Bend Region of the Rio Grande. Ally received a COE summer fellowship in 2021 that allowed her to gain first-hand knowledge of the area with a trip to Big Bend National Park to resurvey a stretch of the river that experienced recent native riparian plant recovery and to work as a GIS technician for the Science and Resources Management division of Big Bend National Park.