Growing up in Brazil, Camilla Vargas spent her holidays and school breaks reveling in the fresh air and sunshine at her family”s coffee farm. Her family moved to Minnesota when she was eight years old but they continued to spend time at the Brazilian farm, where she rode horses and saw cows being milked.

This connection to nature, along with her concern for the Amazon rainforests, motivated Vargas to study conservation when she came to college. She spent two years at the UW-Madison taking biology classes but was undecided about a major.

“I wanted something hands-on, something practical and applied, where you learn how to solve a problem,” she recalls.

During a summer program in Costa Rica, Vargas took an agro-ecology class and visited small, local farms. “I realized that conservation problems arise from the fact that we have to feed a huge population with limited land,” she explains. “I want to conserve forests, which are often developed for farmland, so I decided to study ways to improve agricultural practices and work with farmers.”

After returning from Costa Rica, Vargas began researching agricultural fields of study. An advisor at the College steered her to the agronomy department, where professor Bill Tracy suggested an introductory agronomy course, Hands-on Biology.

Vargas liked the class so much that she transferred into the College to pursue an agronomy degree.

“CALS has been really good to me. I got a couple of scholarships and I have a lot of contact with advisors and others in my department. You get a lot of personal attention in agronomy.”

Another study abroad experience, this time in Trinidad, and a summer doing fieldwork for Tracy cemented Vargas” decision to work with farmers on sustainable agricultural systems. She graduated in 2003 and is considering the Peace Corps. She hopes to go to graduate school eventually to study plant breeding or agro-ecology.