CSC senior succeeds at range convention

Drieling placed fourth among at least 30 contestants in the public speaking contest and also landed a job with the U.S. Forest Service beginning a few days after she graduates from CSC in May.

A graduate of Oakland-Craig High School in northeast Nebraska, Drieling will be a range management specialist at the Humbolt Toiyabe National Forest in the Sierra Nevada mountains of east central California and west central Nevada. She will live in Bridgeport, Calif.

Drieling said she has learned that the cattle and sheep that are grazed in the region share the vegetation with bighorn sheep and there are “issues” with trout fishermen.

The CSC senior was one of just four students at the convention to be hired by the Forest Service. The other three are completing work on master’s degrees.

Drieling’s topic for the speech contest fit well with her interests and her career choice. It was “Grazing Management on Public Lands.” After the topics were drawn for the speeches, the contestants had 2 ½ hours to prepare their five to seven-minute talks. An assortment of resources was available to them.

Thanks to an introduction made by Dr. Jim O’Rourke, range management professor emeritus at CSC and former president of the Society for Range Management, Drieling had lunch prior to her speech with Jeanette Kaiser, a grazing management specialist at the U.S. Forest Service Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Drieling said she used her conversation with Kaiser and the experiences she had the past two summers while working for the Forest Service at the Black Hills National Forest at Newcastle, Wyo., to build her speech.

Also while she was at the convention, Drieling took the undergraduate range management examination and participated in the plant identification contest. In addition, she served as secretary during the annual business meeting of the student conclave.

Dr. Chuck Butterfield, who teaches most of the range management courses at CSC, is the advisor for the student conclave. Another CSC professor, Dr. Georgia Younglove, whose specialty is livestock production, was the coordinator of the student displays, or poster contest.