Dr. Cathy Jachowski

PHD FELLOW ALUMNI   |   Global Change Center

Assistant Professor at Clemson University in Forestry & Environmental Conservation

VT Alumni August 2016, VT Fish & Wildlife Conservation

Advisor: Dr. William Hopkins

Google Scholar  •  cjachow@clemson.edu   •  Clemson Profile

Cathy was a fellow in the Interfaces of Global Change interdisciplinary graduate education program and graduated with a Ph.D. in Fisheries and Wildlife Conservation in May 2016. She has served as an Assistant Professor of Wildlife Ecology in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation at Clemson University since August 2016. Her interests include population ecology in freshwater systems, host-parasite dynamics, conservation physiology, and animal behavior. She is interested in understanding how wildlife respond to broad scale environmental alterations at both the individual and population level.

Cathy’s Ph.D. research was focused on a long lived and fully aquatic salamander, the hellbender, that has declined across much of its range for unclear reasons. She investigated how land use influenced host density, physiology and exposure to parasites, and how these factors might interact to influence hellbender survival and reproduction.

Cathy earned a B.S. in environmental science from Georgetown College in her home state of Kentucky, and a M.S. in Fisheries and Wildlife Science from the University of Missouri. In addition to involvement in research on animal movements, resource selection, disease, monitoring and contaminant exposure, Cathy spent several years teaching informal outdoor science classes for the public and worked as a resource staff scientist with the Missouri Department of Conservation. She is particularly passionate about bridging boundaries between academia, management, and the public to uncover real-world solutions for human-wildlife co-existence.