Ella Driscoll

Written By: Rachel Putman

“UAFS has given me the opportunity of a lifetime,” said Ella Driscoll, a Greenwood High School alumna who will graduate with a degree in geoscience next spring.

For Ella, that opportunity has taken her thousands of miles beyond the classroom. This semester, she visited the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, the Petrified Forest and the Grand Teton national parks with her UAFS National Parks geoscience class, studying firsthand the landscapes and natural systems that are helping shape her path toward a career in environmental law.

These are places most people experience once in a lifetime. At UAFS, they’re built into the curriculum.

Going into her freshman year, Ella wanted to stay in her comfort zone. Then she took an Earth Science class on a whim. “I thought it was so fun and interesting, and it challenged me in a way I didn’t expect,” she said. “By the end of Spring semester, I was majoring in Geo Science. It was the best decision I could’ve made.”

That first class gave Ella a new way of looking at her education and her future career.

“Geoscience goes far beyond just rocks,” she said. “I love learning about how everything is intertwined.”

Water, plants, landforms, history and the processes that have shaped the earth all became part of the same story. And each semester, Ella finds an opportunity to step directly into the landscapes where they can be seen.

Last year, on a trip to Colorado, she and her classmates hiked through snow to Dream Lake. “The water was breathtaking, and there was the perfect outlook of a glacial moraine, the path a glacier takes to descend a mountain,” she said. “We can study these places, learn the structures and understand how they formed, yet nothing quite explains a mountain range like standing before the mountain range yourself.”

Ella credits UAFS professor Maurice Testa with helping her discover geoscience and encouraging her to consider environmental law after graduation, a career she talks about with both passion and focus.

Outside of the classroom, Ella says she found her community in the same way she found her major, which is to say, it kind of found her. “It’s insanely easy to meet with a professor, find a study group, and talk to specialized tutors to help you with your courses,” she said with a laugh.

As the only person in her high school friend group to attend UAFS, she met friends in that first Earth Science who also discovered an interest in geoscience. They changed their majors together and have shared classes, field experiences and late-night study sessions.

“It’s so great to find people that make studying a little less daunting, class a little more fun, and the future even more exciting,” Ella said.

Ella came to UAFS expecting to stay close to what she already knew. Instead, she found a future beyond anything she’d imagined.

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• Geoscience