Illinois Wesleyan University alumna Anna Groves of Naperville, Ill., class of 2011, has received a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. Groves is currently a graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in plant biology at Michigan State University.  An environmental studies major at Illinois Wesleyan, Groves is now a graduate student at Michigan State’s Brudvig lab in plant biology. The lab’s central research uses basic ecological concepts to inform restoration practices, while using restoration as a system to learn more about ecology.

“I’m broadly interested in why restoration projects don’t always turn out the way we want them to,” said Groves. “If we can’t rebuild an ecosystem, then we don’t know enough about its ecology.”

More specifically, Groves’ research questions consider whether the establishment phase of a restoration (clearing existing vegetation and then seeding a prairie, for example) or the later ongoing management (burning or manual brush removal in the prairie) has a greater impact on restoration outcomes.

“Both are known to be important, but sorting out the effects of each and the interaction between the two will have important implications for land managers with limited resources,” said Groves.

As an undergraduate at Illinois Wesleyan, Groves conducted a research project analyzing population levels of red-tailed hawks and American kestrels and their relation to latitude using five years of winter raptor survey data. R. Given Harper, George C. and Ella Beach Lewis Endowed Chair of Biology at IWU, served as her undergraduate research advisor. Groves was named the outstanding student in environmental studies in 2011.