March featured student mentor—Sandra Bilbo
Our National Marine Educators Association (NMEA) monthly mentor for March is Sandra Bilbo, Director’s Assistant at the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. Sandra has worked in the field of informal education for over 11 years and has been in her current position since 2016. Sandra says that the job she was hired to do has morphed into a position that better suits her interests and skills. She was initially hired to be an Administrative Assistant, and she learned so many skills and tricks of the trade to really keep an organization running. Fortunately, she has a boss (the "director") who knows her passion is for marine education, so over the years she's helped Sandra find opportunities to work with various staff and colleagues in the region. She supports Sandra’s involvement in NMEA and her regional chapter, SAME (Southern Association of Marine Educators). In addition to the administrative duties Sandra was hired on to do (grants, editing reports, finance and procurement, organizing and planning, communications with staff, being on-site IT, etc.), she also assists science staff in the field (driving and operating boats, kayaking, fish sampling, water quality testing, vegetation monitoring in the marsh and in the upland forests), and she writes and evaluates education programs and assists the outreach staff in all sorts of ways. Sandra is able to do all of those various tasks based on her academic and career journey so far. Sandra states, “In short, ’Director's Assistant’ might be an amorphous job title, but at the end of the day, it's a job where I can apply a variety of skills and interests to support Grand Bay NERR's mission and staff, whether that's administrative, scientific, or educational.”
When asked what she loves most about her job Sandra says,
“It's different every day! Sometimes I'm working at home doing nothing but editing a grant report, and other times I'm in the office getting ready to pull derelict crab traps out of the marsh at low tide in full waders. Sometimes I work on one task that takes me all day, other times something different is happening every hour. The ultimate external motivation for my loving to do all of these things is helping the people I work with. In every job I've had in the past, the thing I love most about the job are my coworkers. It's super cliché sounding, but it's absolutely true. Without a good support system through coworkers (and friends), it's hard to really enjoy what you do.”
Sandra holds a B.S. in Biology, concentration in Marine Biology, with minors in Geology and Related Sciences from the University of South Alabama (USA). She adds “I picked my undergraduate university since it was close to home, but far away enough to have a different experience than what I knew from Kindergarten to senior year. What also helped was that although I was from Mississippi, the University of South Alabama offered in-state tuition since I only lived an hour away. It was the perfect distance for me to stay close to my family, but also learn to become my own best self. And because the campus was close to the Gulf of Mexico, I knew I would be able to learn a lot about my local aquatic, estuarine, and marine ecosystems and have the chance to be in the field.”
Sandra credits her marine science pathway to taking field courses at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama. Her time at DISL set the stage for the rest of her career. She was in the Honors Program (now Honors College) at USA, and she was required to complete an honors thesis. Her project gave her the research experience she needed to really understand how to be a scientist, asking questions and figuring out the best ways to find answers.
During undergrad, Sandra also became PADI Open Water SCUBA certified. She highly recommends SCUBA certification if you go into marine/ocean/aquatic sciences. Everything you learn in classes (biology, zoology, oceanography) can be applied to your experiences underwater. She adds “It's absolutely incredible and will inspire awe for the rest of your life!” Sandra also became SCUBA certified because she wanted to overcome her fear of deep water and not being able to see underwater. Although she hasn’t gone diving much lately, having basic snorkel gear handy for a trip to the closest body of water (with decent visibility) to you is also a good alternative.
Sandra also holds a M.S. in Marine Resource Management, focus in Marine Education and Engagement from Oregon State University. For graduate school, however, Sandra moved across the country to experience something completely different. She states, “It was amazing! Ultimately I was attracted to the Marine Resource Management program at Oregon State University for the combination of natural and social science courses I wanted to take, but the Pacific Northwest is such a beautiful part of the country too. I was close to a city (Portland), an hour and fifteen minutes away from the Pacific Ocean, and about three hours to the Cascade Mountains. If I could relive the two years I spent there, I would. I have so many great academic and personal memories there. Of course, my time at OSU led to becoming involved with NMEA!”
Sandra also listed some of the other trainings that she has found useful.
National Association for Interpretation Certified Interpretive Guide
Reflecting on Practice -Mississippi Master Naturalists
First Aid, CPR, and Wilderness First Aid training
ArcGIS -R (stats)
Museum of Modern Art - "Art & Inquiry" and "Art & Activity" courses
Sandra adds she has been an informal educator for 11 years, but has only been paid to do it for about 8.5 years. She first gained experience at a history museum while she was in undergrad, and absolutely fell in love with it. At that time in her life, she knew she wanted to combine informal education with science. Since she was already a biology major, she kept up with that degree and found experience in other avenues, such as volunteering for education programs (even at Grand Bay NERR in 2011!), or volunteering to do outreach programs for the lab where she worked. During graduate school, she worked at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Now, she continues with informal education work mostly focusing on estuaries.
Advice Sandra would give her younger self includes,
“I would tell myself to really try hard not to compare myself to others. It's almost impossible to do, being young and quite vulnerable in a different setting from high school. But, your journey will be different from everyone else's, so it's important to remember to stick to the goals that are important to you and make friends that will support you along the way. Remember the ‘why’ you are doing what you do, and don't lose sight of that.”
Interested in connecting with Sandra for more information or advice? NMEA Student members are given the opportunity to connect with our student mentors! Email us to find out how to become a student member: students@marine-ed.org.