How UMAC has pushed me to gain leadership and science communication Skills

Student Spotlight - Anna Foster

Team lead of the Lancaster Lagomorphs reflects on her experience in the University Mammal Challenge.

Figure 1: Anna and teammate Bethany out on a mammal survey. PC: Anna Foster

I’m Anna a first year Ecology and Conservation student and lead of Lancaster Lagomorphs competing in the university mammal challenge!

When I first found out about UMAC I wasn’t entirely sure what it would involve but wanted the opportunity to get involved in a conservation project outside of my course. After gathering my team and looking into all the different projects we could get involved in as part of the challenge I was drawn to the options new to 2024 – mostly revolving around engagement.

Since starting at university, I’ve joined both the Student Newspaper and Radio and make social media content for the university. I’ve become increasingly passionate about journalism, communication, and media and have begun to look into Science Communication as a potential career. UMAC seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to create connections between my love of nature and communication.

Figure 2: Team members Dylan and Sorrel counting molehills whilst on a survey. PC: Anna Foster

It’s been quite the learning curve for me to organise my team. I often tend to shy away from leadership roles as I find them too stressful, but as part of my role in Lancaster Lagomorphs I’ve really pushed myself to take responsibility of my team from organising mammal ID training, to working out when we can meet to do surveys each week, making sure our data is submitted, running our Instagram (@lancasterlagomorphs), creating graphics for it, and organising engagement and fundraising events. Sometimes I’m sure my teammates find my long texts to our group chat quite annoying!

The highlight of mammal challenge so far has been our Mammal Mayhem radio show on Bailrigg FM, which I organised and hosted as a member of the radio society. It was a great opportunity to talk about the work we were doing as part of UMAC as well as the mammal society itself. It was great to introduce my teammates to the world of radio, some of them were quite nervous before we went live but after we got on air, we had a great time nerding out about our favourite mammals! We spoke about rabbits and hares from which we got our name Lancaster Lagomorphs, as well as Otters (a personal favourite of mine) and Beavers. Our show was such a success that I convinced two of my teammates to join student radio. We’ll also be back for another episode of Mammal Mayhem on the 26th of April at 8PM to celebrate National Mammal Week. You’ll be able to listen live at https://bailriggfm.co.uk/.

Figure 3: Sorrel, Dylan, Bethany and Anna in the radio station about to go live for Mammal Mayhem. PC: Rowen Brigden

This month we’re going to be busy as ever with a steps challenge fundraiser. Bethany, Sorrel and I are taking on the challenge of walking a total of 900,000 steps over the month of April and we’ve made good progress so far! It’d been great to keep active and get outdoors over the spring holiday. We’ve also hit our fundraising goal of £100 but want to raise as much money as possible. You can donate and find out more about our fundraiser on our GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/9d0c7e4f.

Figure 4: Anna on a walk down Lancaster canal as part of her step challenge! PC: Anna Foster

It's great to see our hard work pay off as a team, coming 3rd in January and February and 2nd in March! I’m incredibly proud of the work Lancaster Lagomorphs have achieved. I’ve gained so much from taking part in the university mammal challenge and am looking forward to the last 2 months of the challenge.