Meg Sczyrba of Portland, Oregon, who is an AIP (advanced Inquiry Program) student in Miami's Biology Department, will earn a Master of Arts next month. After a 30-year career as a lawyer and financial services regulatory compliance officer, she pondered her next steps. "I wasn’t sure what form that might take until news broke that Cecil the Lion had been lured out of his sanctuary home and killed (Killing Cecil the Lion, 2021)," she writes in her final capstone course e-portfolio. "As I read the flurry of news articles that followed, my passion for wildlife conservation ignited."

"I started this program to learn about wildlife conservation, but I am graduating with so much more. I have mastered empathy and inquiry ... I’ve also learned how to motivate conservation action through social marketing..."

"Each piece of the puzzle allowed me to solidify the focus of my graduate work (internally dubbed a “master plan”) to encourage environmental stewardship, primarily by founding the non-profit, Wildlife at Heart." And through this journey, she found her conservation voice." Read more