CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – University of Illinois alumna Josephine (Josie) Chambers, of Champaign, has been named a Marshall Scholar. Each year, about 40 students from the United States are selected as Marshall Scholars to study at a university in the United Kingdom for two years. Chambers is the first U. of I. Marshall Scholar since 2007.
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Chambers intends to pursue master’s degrees in integrated resource management at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, and in conservation leadership at the University of Cambridge, in England.
Chambers, who attended University Laboratory High School in Urbana, graduated summa cum laude from Illinois in May 2010 in integrative biology with minors in anthropology and chemistry. She was a James Scholar in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
She plans a career uniting efforts to develop sustainable and equitable tropical forest-management plans. She is working in a village near Moyabamba, Peru, as a project assistant with Neotropical Primate Conservation, an organization that aims to protect the habitat of the endangered yellow tailed woolly monkey.
At Illinois, she worked on genomic aspects of brain and behavior, performing bee brain dissections and molecular analyses. After her sophomore year, she assisted a doctoral student from Washington State University on a study of the influence of tourism on monkeys in Costa Rica.
In East Africa the following summer, Chambers applied for individual research clearance from the Ugandan government to investigate primate feeding ecology, as part of a broader project led by a U. of I. doctoral candidate in anthropology. There, Chambers worked alongside Ugandans to assist in monitoring the foraging behavior of red colobus monkeys.
Chambers co-founded a campus branch of the organization Roots and Shoots to advocate for environmental justice. She also co-organized a university-sponsored conservation lecture series and developed an environmental education program at Westview Elementary School in Champaign.
Chambers also performed as one of the few non-music majors in the U. of I. Chorale, and performed in the university production of Puccini’s opera “La Boheme.”
She finished in the top 3 percent of more than 3,300 female runners in the Illinois half-marathon held during the last week of classes in May.
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