Building Networks + Experience

ESU Provides an Environment to Uncover Passion and Purpose

On the path to a career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Kyle Whipple (BS 20-Biology) has already worn many different hats — architecture student, biology major, lab tech, sea turtle rescuer. Through it all, Emporia State University remains a vital part of his academic and professional ecosystem. After graduating from high school in Lawrence, KS, Whipple enrolled at a state school where he discovered that 500-student classes and an architecture degree were not for him. Neither was a job that kept him at a desk behind a computer. “I’m more of an active person,” says Whipple.

Instead, Whipple followed his curious nature to ESU and decided to major in biology. Whipple immediately noticed the ESU difference. His largest class had about 80 students in it, though most had 15 to 20. Whipple enjoyed the personal feeling on campus and in the classroom.

“The professors get to know everybody,” he says. “They knew who I was, and they knew how I was doing.”

The small campus also provided big opportunities for handson experience. With the herpetology class, Whipple had the chance to study the local reptiles and amphibians during a spring break trip to Oklahoma and Arkansas. He also spent lots of time doing fieldwork in the Kansas foothills and at Chase County Fishing Lake. “I got interested in conservation and wanting to work as a steward of the land,” he says.

Whipple worked as a technician for his advisor, Bill Jensen, professor of biological sciences, conducting rope drags to flush grassland birds out of the nest to monitor changes in population. For his senior research project, he focused on the foraging and nesting habits of the dickcissel, a migratory bird common to the Midwest. As Whipple started his job search, he realized how tremendous the value of learning-by-doing is for a new