In addition to winning scholarships and a poster competition, Tammy Parece of Blacksburg, Va., a geography doctoral candidate in the geospatial and environmental analysis program, has co-authored a number of published works.

Parece is one of six doctoral students nationwide who received a 2013 United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation scholarship for outstanding students studying geospatial sciences or a related field. She also received the Freedom First Credit Union scholarship from the Cabell Brand Center for Global Poverty and Resource Sustainability Studies in Salem, Va. The center’s scholarship program encourages young people to accept the challenges of diminishing poverty, promoting the environment, and advancing peace and justice.

Parece’s poster “Virginia’s K-12 Students See Their World From a New Perspective” won first place in the Virginia Tech Engagement Showcase Graduate Poster Competition. The poster provided detailed information on the outreach efforts of the Geographic Society at Virginia Tech and illustrated the benefits gained by students in the geography department as well as the community.

In 2012, Parece co-authored a chapter on water use and conservation with Tamin Younos, a retired Virginia Tech geography professor and president of the Cabell Brand Center, for “21st Century Geography: A Reference Handbook.” In 2013, Parece and her thesis advisor, Professor Emeritus Lawrence Grossman, published the article “Reducing Carbon Footprint of Water Consumption: A Case Study of Water Conservation at a University Campus” for the “Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, Volume 25.” She is also the lead author on two recent journal articles.

“My motivation throughout my graduate studies and research is to support sustainable systems in both social and physical environments and to engage multiple partners at the university with private citizens,” Parece said.

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