For Stacey Carver Jr., crossing the stage for commencement at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore was a long time coming in his own words.
When the senior biology major arrived at UMES as a transfer, he was in a different place from when he set foot on the campus as a high school student participating in the summer geoscience bridge program internship in 2018.
During that summer, Carver was not only immersed in his internship at UMES but was also involved in an apprenticeship in Morehouse College’s scientific literacy program, ahead of attending the Atlanta, Ga. school with a focus on microbiology.
But after a while at Morehouse, Carver sought a change in not only the environment but also in a focus on environmental science and ecology.
“In my sophomore year, right before COVID-19, I began looking at other alternatives and decided to transfer and to come back closer to home,” the Randallstown, MD native said. “I had been through a lot of stressful situations and when I was looking at schools, UMES actually came up and I saw that it was in the country, they have a good environmental science program and I had been here before in my final year of high school in the summer for the geoscience program.
“So, that also helped in my perception of the school as well as charting out my future.”
For Carver, attending a Historically Black College and University was something that was influenced by not only his mother, a Hampton University graduate, and his father who pledged Omega Psi Phi in college at Rutgers University, but others also in his orbit.
“In my life, I’ve always been around very ambitious and proud people of color and I wanted to carry that experience into my college years,” he said. “I just wanted to be around other intelligent black people and I wanted to see other intelligent black people and to be molded by them.”
Once he arrived at UMES, he was a different student when he first began his undergraduate journey.
He was no longer the freshman who worked slowly to meet people. He was more familiar with the students and faculty members who are still present from his internship and was able to be more ambitious.
Carver started by joining the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation program that focused on STEM workforce needs. From that, he became an LSAMP research intern while also collecting work experiences that included practicums with the National Park Service, the University of Maryland’s Summer Opportunities in Agricultural and the Environment: Strategic Work in Applied Geosciences (SOARE: SWAG) program, and a role as a goat caretaker for UMES’s Pre-vet club.
As a result of these experiences, Carver had a greater interest in not only pursuing a public sector job but having a career working with animals as a behavioral ecologist.
“I really want to work with the USDA and help them with some of the research they’ve done in the shore program,” he said. “I had always considered government work, but I was sort of trying to figure out if I want to work with animals, where do I start and where do I go.
“When they told me about the (Department of Agriculture), I was like ok yeah, this is definitely what I want to do. I can travel around, I can go see different places, see different animals and I thought that would be a good experience.”
As Carver applies to graduate schools in addition to seeking post-undergrad employment, he wants to let future graduates know that the path to success is all about finding opportunities and taking advantage of them.
“It’s about being proactive and really going for what you really want,” he said. “When an opportunity comes up you need to take it, that you need to present yourself well when you’re going for that opportunity.”
