Drive Baby, Drive is a collection of five short stories exploring kindness. Kindness is the greatest thing that can be asked of someone, and in each of these stories the characters attempt to rise to the challenge. From helping a high school basketball rival to creeping blind through a dark cellar in order to help a family escape a monster, these characters actively choose to be kind, even when it has the potential to ruin their lives or even kill them. The bravery behind these actions, and the kind of people that make them, fascinate me, and throughout this collection I examine who they are and what makes them choose the paths they do. For some, kindness is an instinct. For others, it’s an active, difficult choice that they make anyway.

Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba (referred to as "krill" hereafter), are vital to the Antarctic pelagic ecosystem. They serve as primary consumers of phytoplankton, a key food source for apex predators such as blue whales, and play a significant role in carbon sequestration in the Southern Ocean. Additionally, krill are economically important, as they are the target of the largest fishery in the Southern Ocean. However, the Antarctic Peninsula (AP), one of the fastest warming regions in the world, is experiencing substantial changes in its pelagic ecosystem. The impact of this warming on krill population dynamics and reproductive success remains unclear. To address this, we analyzed historical krill population data from the AP (January 1999–2011, Palmer Antarctica Long Term Ecological Research) to examine interannual variability in the timing and duration of the spawning season and to identify environmental drivers. We also developed a pregnancy index to quickly assess the sexual development stage of female krill in the field. Our findings showed that both the timing of spawning initiation and the spawning season duration varied annually. Linear mixed-effects models indicated that neither could be directly explained by environmental conditions at the time of sampling. It is likely that oceanographic and climatological conditions in the months preceding the spawning season may significantly influence the reproductive output of mature female krill. These factors will be incorporated into future models, with results shared with the SCAR Krill Expert Group to enhance krill fishery management.

My artistic practice explores sound as a tool for embodiment, grounding, and healing. In a world that prioritizes verbal expression, I investigate how sound can help individuals reconnect with their bodies and emotions. Many struggle to express themselves through language due to trauma, neurodivergence, or personal preference. My work examines how sound-based interventions can offer an inclusive, accessible way to process emotions and foster connection. Through immersive soundscapes and interactive experiences, I create spaces for sensory engagement and self-understanding. Sound bypasses words; it resonates physically as vibration and rhythm, encouraging deep listening and presence. This aligns with my social work studies, where I explore nonverbal therapeutic methods. As part of this project, I am developing an interactive website where people can share 10–30 second recordings of sounds that bring them joy, peace, or safety. These recordings will be featured in a physical installation, where participants can listen through headphones and experience a direct connection to strangers’ soundscapes. This installation will require approximately three square feet of wall space for interaction. By bridging art and social work, I highlight sound’s therapeutic potential in mental health and community care. Through deep listening—both externally and internally—we can cultivate self-awareness, regulate emotions, and strengthen communal bonds. This project aims to humanize those around us by sharing personal soundscapes, fostering connection beyond words.

NOTE: Attendees are invited to experience the installation anytime between 3:30-5pm.

I am a student of restoration ecology grieving the death of my father and I want to share the stories of my experience. I’ve spent the past three years and seven months grieving his death. Through poetry and storytelling, I will express how I’ve begun to process and heal. Dad’s death changed my life and how I move through this world. The immense impact of grief has motivated me to share my story and include my community in my journey. By following my inclinations to take walks in nature like Dad and I once did, intentionally spending time with him, feeling my emotions, and writing about these intertwined experiences, I began to process and heal on my own. In the past couple years, my journey has morphed as I’ve started to bring grief with me into the professional and academic spaces I occupy. When I attended the National Wilderness Workshop, I took the terrifying first step in sharing my grief story in a professional setting. Through this experience and many others, I have learned that being open and honest about about my grief experience fosters community. My vulnerability in sharing has led me to: realize that professional settings can be safe spaces for grief, and that sharing my grief experience build connections and relationships, and creates further space to process and heal. I think that talking about grief can inspire the creation of safe spaces where more people can grieve. By collectively cultivating this space, communities can expand their capacities to hold grief together.

Topic Warning: Parent Death

During the 16^th century, prisons as we know them did not exist in Spain nor in most of Western Europe. Jails, as a temporary place to hold criminals before their trial, did exist but were quickly filling up with a wave of new criminals and debtors. This system of jails was poorly organized and poorly understood until Tomás Cerdán de Tallada wrote his treatise Visita de la carcel, which was the first in Spain to analyze the system of jails as a whole, and one of the first to offer criticisms of the system. Core to Cerdán’s understanding are his personal experiences working as an advocate for the poor in Valencia and his insistence that jails must be a fair system for all, including the poor. Cerdán’s contribution was significant in his time as it was widely circulated and helped many to form an understanding of penitentiary law in 16^th century Spain. This paper analyzes the original text of Cerdán’s 1572 treatise in relation to its historical context and Cerdán’s personal biography.

Over one hundred thousand lives were lost in the United States during 2022 from drug overdoses (CDC, 2023). While previous studies examine socioeconomic and macroeconomic relationships, I have not found extensions to estimate a relationship between media influence and overdoses. I investigated the potential relationship by including a Google search trend index (a measure of relative state-level popularity of web searches) for trap music as a proxy for media influence of trap music. Trap music is a new mainstream subgenre of hip-hop which portrays a romanticized view of illicit substance sale and abuse. My logic is younger demographics are more likely to listen and be influenced by the subgenre, meaning high interest in the subgenre would be correlated with overdose rates for younger demographics. Employing a fixed effects model (and controlling for macroeconomic and socioeconomic variables) across 40 states from 2013-2023, I find a one standard deviation increase in Google search intensity (13.7 points) being associated with a 1.98 increase in drug overdose deaths per 100,000 for those aged 15-34 years, statistically significant at the 5 percent error level. Those aged 35-54 reflected no measurable relationship. Interestingly, I found no relationship between the number of opioid treatment program facilities and overdose. My findings suggest media trends are associated with overdose deaths in addition to socioeconomic and macroeconomic trends for young demographics.

From it’s conception the Christian Church from its was given was the task to preach the message of salvation to all people. Henry H. Spalding (1803 – 1874) was a Presbyterian missionary to the Nez Perce nation from 1836 – 1847 during American Westward Expansion which witnessed the active encroachment of several indigenous tribes and their lands from the United States and its people. Henry Spalding and his wife, Eliza Spalding, left the United States for a season to live among the Nez Perce in attempt to preach the gospel of Jesus. In twenty pages this research will consider the goals and methods of the Spalding mission and will consider how the Nez Perce perceived Spalding, his methodology, and the message he preached. Primary source documents as well as guidance from secondary source authors will be utilized in coming to the conclusions about Spalding’s work and its results. Spalding claimed to have a heart for reaching those without the gospel, but the conduct of his ministry among the Nez Perce was terrible, witnessing abuses of power. The conclusion of this research criticizes Spalding’s ministry for the atrocities it committed and how the ministry harmed the Nez Perce nation. The Spalding mission had the wrong goals. Yet this paper also defends the virtue of mission work and offers a different methodology that does not entail the trappings of the cultural assimilation that Spalding’s mission promoted.

Pay-what-you-want (PWYW) is an economic model popularized in 2007 where rather than goods/services having a fixed price decided by the producer, the consumer themselves decides the price they pay as an individual. Classical economic theory evaluates consumers through the lens of them behaving as “rational agents”. Within this perspective, consumers would be expected to choose to pay nothing in order to maximize their consumer surplus and therefore utility. The empirical successes of PWYW models suggest that there are additional behavioral elements involved in utility maximization, where consumers are paying more than the required price.

My research project is an evaluation of existing uses of PWYW alongside peer-reviewed research into economic theory about willingness to pay. PWYW offers theoretically perfect price discrimination, whereas a fixed-price model will always contain uncaptured surplus. This makes it an intriguing opportunity for producers while also being more equitable for consumers. When profitable, PWYW is Pareto-improving compared to a traditional fixed-price model.

My presentation serves to showcase why consumers are willing to pay more than required and discuss potential markets where PWYW would be most effective. As the world becomes more and more digitized, PWYW models may have a key part to play in businesses who provide nonrival goods/services (“club goods”).

Guayabera

Creative Writing

In Guayabera, I plan to evoke emotions of grief and sadness, encouraging the readers to dive into their own personal experiences when interacting with this story. Such as the feeling of not knowing where to go anymore after your world has been damaged or even destroyed. My inspiration came from the series Kissed by an Angel written by Elizabeth Chandler; when I read Chandler’s work it resonated with me for reasons that I could not could not understand. I was too young to fully comprehend and identify the true emotions and the movement of the story. Now with more experience I can understand why it continues to be an aspirational text for my work.

In Guayabera, Amelia is learning how to live her life after the loss of her boyfriend.

Contemporary society has vastly reduced art to a commodity: produced, marketed, consumed, and discarded within the confines of the Western capitalist structure. Rather than serving as a medium for radical thought or genuine self-expression, much of modern art is shaped by profit motives and designed to appeal to mass audiences rather than challenge them. Galleries, museums, and the mainstream creative industries prioritize marketability over authenticity, reinforcing a system where art is not created for its intrinsic value, but for its ability to generate revenue. In response, a resistance brews.

Missoula’s punk subculture directly defies this commodification, embracing a raw, unfiltered approach to creativity that values expression over commercial success. Punks reject the idea that art should conform to popular culture, instead fostering an ethos of do-it-yourself (DIY) production, where music, fashion, and visual art serve as platforms for protest rather than passive entertainment. Through hand-printed zines, garage shows, and repurposed thrifted clothing, Missoula’s punks create an artistic landscape that is deliberately anti-commercial, prioritizing community over consumption.

This resistance is more than aesthetic, the resistance is a direct challenge to a system that stifles diversity and discourages individuality. By rejecting the commodification of creativity, Missoula punks redefine what it means to be an artist, proving that art does not have to appeal to the popular market to hold power. Instead, it can be a tool for rebellion, a voice for the marginalized, and a space for true self-expression outside capitalist expectations.

Wearisome Women is a collection of short stories that follow women with minimally intertwining lives in West Texas. This collection explores themes of autonomy, religion, family, platonic and romantic relationships, mental health, death, and the general complexities of womanhood. In this collection I intend to explore the borders of time in short fiction, and I plan to have each story take place in the span of only one day, in the present moment.

The first story, The Anatomy of a Perfect Woman, takes readers along a typical day with an unnamed narrator living in the throws of a domineering, religiously repressive relationship where she takes on the role of a traditional, Christian wife and mother. Her sarcastic tone and sardonic energy carries the narrative and pulls the story along. Readers watch as she fairly quickly slips into insanity as the day carries on—until ultimately the night ends and her identity is revealed with in a quite literally backstabbing way.

The collection continues with God’s Fruit which also takes place in the span of one single day. The narrator experiences death, self discovery, love and longing as she navigates her role in the after life and all of the ways she has disparaged herself through her life.

Henry Kissinger’s actions during the late 1970s had significant consequences for U.S.-Argentine relations at a pivotal moment in Argentine history. Despite Jimmy Carter’s 1976 election victory and his administration’s commitment to prioritizing human rights, Kissinger, no longer holding an official role in the United States government, maintained contact with Argentine officials, potentially violating the Logan Act and undermining Carter’s efforts. This paper examines a key 1976 meeting between Kissinger and Argentine Foreign Minister César Guzzetti and a 1978 discussion with President Jorge Videla to assess how Kissinger’s rhetoric and diplomacy may have signaled subtle approval of Argentina’s repressive tactics. Utilizing declassified documents, such as diplomatic cables and reports from U.S. officials, this study evaluates the extent to which Kissinger’s actions complicated Carter’s human rights agenda by seeking answers to the following questions: In what ways did Henry Kissinger’s actions contradict the goals of Jimmy Carter’s human rights policy? And how could the legacy of these strategies have harmful consequences on future political tactics?Ultimately, this research highlights the broader tension between conservative hegemonic behavior and emerging human rights priorities, illustrating how Kissinger’s extrajudicial diplomacy set a precedent for future political actors engaging in unofficial negotiations.

Lost & Found is a coming-of-age memoir centered around the first-person narrator Amber’s relationship with her dog Buddy. Months after six-year-old Amber and her family go through the loss of her maternal grandmother her parents surprise Amber and her two younger siblings by gifting them a puppy on Christmas Day. Amber struggles through her faltering belief in religion being raised Catholic, and witnessing cracks form in the foundation she once considered solid. She encounters the joys and pains of growing up as Buddy offers all the unwavering love and support he can muster as an eight-pound miniature poodle mix. He is an intelligent dog who never loses his spark even as he ages. Buddy bullies her for treats and diligently keeps guard while she naps. Amber gets confirmed in the Catholic church, cementing her uncertainty of the faith she was raised with. After fourteen years together, Buddy passes away in Amber’s arms a few short months after she moves away from home to go to college. This brings the realization that Buddy was her protector more than she ever was his. Dreams of Buddy bring Amber solace as she works to finish getting her degree with him no longer by her side. Life can be difficult, scary, fun, and confusing, but Buddy creates a sense of emotional stability that no human or religion offers. His life is so closely intertwined with Amber’s that through her relationship with him, she can examine her relationship with herself.

Title: No evidence for warming effects on tallgrass prairie plant extirpation in Kalamazoo Michigan

Author list: Emily Horner, Meredith Zettlemoyer

Abstract:

More and more species face extinction as our climate warms. Understanding how climate change influences local extinctions may help us comprehend and predict global extinctions. Ultimately, local extinction originates from declines in vital rates such as survival, growth, and reproduction. One way to examine how warming affects local extinctions is to compare responses between locally extinct (or “extirpated”) versus still present (or “extant”) species. In this comparative framework, more negative effects of warming on extirpated species’ vital rates would suggest a role of warming in their local extinction. Extirpated species could also have generally lower vital rates than the more successful extant species regardless of warming. We used an experimental heating array to compare extant and reintroduced locally extinct tallgrass prairie species’ vital rates under ambient vs. warmed (+3°C) conditions. Warming does not affect the vital rates of these tallgrass prairie plants, suggesting that warming is not a major reason that these species went locally extinct in Kalamazoo County, Michigan. We detect general differences in performance between locally extinct vs. extant species. Specifically, small extirpated species have higher survival and are more likely to produce flowers than small extant species. Meanwhile, taller extant species have higher survival and are more likely to produce flowers than tall extirpated species. However, we found that locally extinct and extant species have no general differences in flower or seed production. This result suggests that extirpated species might invest more resources early in life and points to a key difference between extirpated and extant species that contributes to our limited understanding of the population dynamics of local extinction.

My capstone examines Netflix’s strategic evolution and place in the market, with a specific emphasis on technological innovation and business development strategies. As the highly competitive, volatile streaming industry, Netflix will have to continue to differentiate itself to expand its market reach. The study will explore how Netflix leverages data and AI based decision-making models, content diversification, and global expansion to maintain its leadership in the industry.

My project employs a framework molded around strategic analysis, integrating SWOT analysis, Porter’s Five Forces, and market trend evaluations. My research includes case studies, industry reports, and financial performance assessments to evaluate Netflix’s strategies.

My recent most findings show that Netflix’s business development efforts focus on content diversification, global expansion, and revenue model innovation. Region specific original content helps Netflix strengthen its global appeal; partnerships with telecom providers and licensing deals with studios, distributors, and production companies help expand its market share. The company’s transition into advertising supported tiers, live sporting events, and gaming content further differentiate its entertainment service. On the technological front, Netflix’s AI driven recommendations and cloud infrastructure enhance user engagement and retention. Although, challenges with rising content acquisition costs and increased competition will test the company’s success long-term.

Overall, Netflix’s approach is a model for companies navigating technological disruption and global expansion. The company demonstrates how innovation and strategic business development drive sustained growth.

The thread of life is believed to predetermine each individual’s fate at birth, its chord ties these poems together.Yield the Ghost is a collection that examines mortality, lineage, and spirituality. A loose narrative begins before a traumatic birth, follows the speaker’s experience working in death care, and ends with the unknown. Her relationship with a bedridden mother is explored through an always evolving perception of loss. In the funeral industry, every movement is behind closed doors out of respect for the living. However, this stigmatization enhances fear of death. The included poems address a repressed intimacy with grief, aiming to illuminate that which separates the living and the lost. They divulge stories belonging to the deceased, told from their perspectives and the author’s own. At its core, the collection is about experiencing the world with gratitude despite loss and a burdened childhood. Yield the Ghost derives inspiration from the couplet and is tethered by an always present question of faith and destiny.

Bodies of Water follows a group of young people growing up in the fictional Alaskan town of Aldyr’s Bay. The three short stories, told through the points of view of three siblings — Cove, Lake, and River Kagan — explore survivors’ guilt, community, and loyalty (or the lack thereof), while also addressing mental health, addiction, and grief. One story takes place on the last day of spring under the looming realization that it is the first season in three years where no one has died. The other two stories navigate deaths of the past and the grief and guilt the characters harbor.

Overall, the characters show that someone can love a place while haunted by the people and events that have happened there and that the world, like water, does not stop flowing in the face of grief. These topics are explored through the interpersonal connections and conflicts between the youth of the town and interwoven histories of the physical landscape. I have long sought to find a way to write for those growing up in small towns where everyone knows everyone and history is only a blessing if one can escape the death grip it often has. Bodies of Water is my answer.

Elk (Cervus canadensis) require adequate forage to fulfill their seasonal nutritional requirements. Elk undergo their highest nutritional demands during summer to support critical life functions such as late gestation, lactation, and juvenile growth. During this period, variations in plant phenology significantly influence the quality and quantity of forage on the landscape. Recent literature has concentrated on late summer due to it's limiting nature. Yet, growing evidence suggests that both early and late summer forage often fail to meet the nutritional demands of lactating and reproducing female elk. Further, there is limited knowledge surrounding the intra-seasonal dynamics of elk diet composition during summer. To address this, we utilized data from two elk populations in Montana (Noxon and Blackfoot study areas) to examine how phenology and availability drove changes in elk diet composition between early and late summer. We determined diet composition using DNA metabarcoding of fecal samples, then used Principal Component Analyses (PCA) to examine the changes in elk diet over time. Our results indicate that late summer diets had less variability than early summer diets in both study areas. In the Noxon study area, elk diets varied intra-seasonally and were mostly driven by changes in forage phenology. Conversely, elk diets in the Blackfoot study area did not change significantly between early and late summer due to influences related to both phenology and availability. Our findings work to enhance the understanding of elk forage utilization throughout the entire course of summer, providing background to inform habitat management approaches during a critical season for elk.

Videocassette Records is a novella spanning roughly 50 pages focusing on interpersonal familial and congenial relationships. This novella will be a spiritual bildungsroman, exploring themes of identity, love, and loss as Michael returns home from his first year of college to find everything in his childhood home blissfully untouched. His return to familiarity is a welcome one, as the stark change that was college was not the liberation everyone promised. Finding an old stack of cassettes in the garage, Michael will get to see his mother’s childhood--the friends she loved and loves still, and how she coped with the loss of her childhood. Through her memories and Michael’s experience the reader negotiates the ups and downs of growing older, the work of maintaining relationships, and the process of letting people go. Videocassette Records seeks to shed light on the work to maintain the ever important bonds between family and friends, and how, sometimes, we are more a reflection of our parents than we know.

Extended reality (XR) in geospatial data visualizations presents exciting opportunities to enhance existing analysis and visualization tools. The goal is to help academics deliver immersive experiences that promote a deeper understanding of their subjects. This project is being developed using Unreal Engine and various related emerging tools and APIs. As a solo developer, I am creating environments using satellite map data and building digital assets with LiDAR scans and Gaussian Splatting, then geo-referencing them onto a virtual twin of the Earth. The next step in this research involves streaming real-time data to drive environmental simulations.

Experiencing XR first-hand can feel remarkably real, allowing participants to stand anywhere on the planet within these XR digital twins. This experience can have a profound physiological impact.

A memorable anecdote illustrates this: while playing an XR game, I found myself atop a fortress platform when I was suddenly charged at by an object from the corner of my eye. This startled me, causing me to stumble back, almost falling off the ledge. My heart rate skyrocketed, and I instinctively engaged my muscles to jump away—a very real response to a virtual scenario. This ability to create realistic experiences in virtual form can significantly enhance scientific capabilities, enabling data to be experienced rather than just viewed.

The focus of this project is to analyze and examine the process of child culture acquisition and engagement. Both are being examined through participant observation during a children’s Lunar New Year event at Missoula public library. The author examines the participation, ease of access and focus on children's activities observed at the event and compares them to child language acquisition, as a means of examining culture shock. With more time the author would like to interview organizers of the event, and examine immersion language learning practices in Missoula, especially with young people, but both fell outside of the scope of this work. The author readily argues that children, as previously implied, access foreign, and otherwise non-mainstream cultures with more ease than adults in a similar manner to the process of infant language development. These aforementioned statements all lend themselves to the question, can children acclimate to other cultures more quickly than adults? In the process of research the author believes that this is likely. In addition the author argues that analysis of child education has merit insofar as the audience believes in the value of education. If making children more able to accept other individuals and cultures is plausible through similar events, then there could be numerous benefits including a reduction of discrimination, by allowing young individuals to lessen their concept of ‘the other’, greater understanding of historical records via easier access to and understanding of other cultures, and greater social cohesion. Nonetheless, the author believes child education should be a priority for all members of society.

During the Second World War, agricultural labor shortages led to a series of policy agreements between the Mexican and U.S. governments, colloquially known as the Bracero Program. During its 22-year duration, the U.S. government issued 5 million employment contracts to Mexican citizens across 24 U.S. states. While much of the scholarship on the Bracero program focuses on the Southwest, this paper examines the experiences of Mexican guest workers in Montana, an underexplored, although significant region in Bracero history. This paper seeks to analyze the working experiences of Montana's Bracero guest workers and what those experiences reveal about broader trends in labor migration, cultural adaptation, and Montana's economic conditions. The paper examines Oral Histories from the Bracero History Archive, a memoir, and newspapers to construct a thematic narrative about the Braceros in Montana. The narrative uses secondary sources to provide context for migratory history before the Bracero program started. Montana had Mexican agricultural migrant workers in the early 1900s, but when the Great Depression hit the United States, increased xenophobia led to the repatriation of many Mexicans. However, the urgent need for agricultural workers during World War Ⅱ created a unique relationship between the Braceros and their Montanan employers. This history carries deep relevance today as anti-immigrant rhetoric, ongoing mass deportation, and other forms of state violence criminalize, dehumanize, and decontextualize Mexican work-related migration in the United States.

Social media is a daily presence in most everyone’s lives. TikTok is an app used by millions every day. Users post content, like videos, comment, share, and more. This research focuses on the culture and subcultures found on TikTok. Studying how a user's algorithm is formed, how users interact with each other, the language used, and attempting to see how TikTok impacts the real world. I created a TikTok account and scroll for ten minutes every session (using a timer to track this.) I use a voice recorder to dictate what videos are on my feed, the comments, the like counts, the viewers and more. At the end of every session I immediately take notes of everything I saw. I predict that I will find that there is a distinct culture on TikTok. From previous knowledge, I know that the language used on the app changes constantly based on what is trending or popular. New phrases are coined and then used by users. Sometimes these phrases even make their way into the vocabulary of users in the real world. Because of TikTok’s large user base, TikTok has a direct impact on the world outside of the app. I believe it is important to fundamentally understand the way the app works, how the users think, and how the culture of TikTok changes in order to understand its impact on society outside of the app.

Olivia’s Autumn is a nine-song rock opera featuring a rock band, string quartet, and alto saxophone. I composed this piece to fulfill the capstone requirement for my music composition degree. The story follows Ezra and Olivia, two characters whose friendship begins in school and is sparked by a shared love of music and creativity. As their bond deepens, the arrival of autumn mirrors the shifting seasons of their relationship. Eventually Ezra’s ambitions to leave their home take root, bringing cold winds that slowly cause their friendship to wither and eventually autumn gives into the coldness of winter leaving Olivia all alone. The goal of this rock opera is to entertain and provide a professional production for attendants while also providing a learning experience for the students involved. It will be performed on March 10th at 7:30 PM in the Music Building. The performance for UMCUR will include a live performed excerpt of the piece or a professionally filmed and edited concert video will be premiered.

Music is magic. Transportive. It weaves into life, becoming an integral part of my narrative. After coming up empty in my search for a story that made music as powerful as I believe, I shifted to writing my own. Redwoods, a young adult novel, attempts to realize that goal. The trees had long been the guardians of the forest, bestowing the gift of music magic on those they chose, but the redwoods have gone silent. Their growing silence has caused most to become fearful, speculating on the possible meanings behind the eerie quiet. Rue is the last to receive a gift of magical music, one that she doesn’t understand how to wield. She struggles with the weight of expectations, feeling othered and alone. Her identity is called into question when she sees a Redwood that has turned brown at the edge of the forest. She must trust herself and others as she embarks on a journey to alert the kingdom and investigate the origins of the potential disease. This is a story about breaking down walls and being vulnerable, finding confidence and courage, and breaking societal norms. What does it look like to pursue what one believes right and just in a world filled with judgement and bystanders?

In the western United States, wildfires are increasing in frequency, intensity, and size due to climate change and historical land management practices. These environmental events have reshaped forested landscapes, affecting stream ecosystems and riparian zones. High-intensity wildfires can increase sediment and nutrient loading, reduce riparian canopy cover, and alter in-stream habitat, leading to changes in macroinvertebrate community composition. While the immediate (1-10 years) wildfire effects on macroinvertebrates are fairly well documented, decadal (10+ years) responses remain understudied. This research gap limits our understanding of post-fire trajectory and stream ecosystem resilience. To address this knowledge gap, we can identify how wildfires alter macroinvertebrate (aquatic insects) community trajectories. I investigated the effects of high-intensity wildfires on macroinvertebrate communities in southwest Montana using a Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) design and a time-since-fire approach. Using long-term macroinvertebrate data from the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, I examined how functional feeding groups and life history traits may impact community composition 1–20 years post-fire. As fire increases sunlight and nutrients in streams, I expect increased algal production and a shift in functional feeding groups favoring those groups that primarily consume algae, like collectors and grazers. In addition, I predict that the post-wildfire macroinvertebrate community will favor individuals with more than one generation per year because they tend to have faster population growth rates and could spread more rapidly. Overall, there was a lot of variation in macroinvertebrate community composition changes across streams within both burned and unburned sites.