Loading

Women’s Volleyball Student-Athlete Bednar Plants Future in Nature

By: Assistant Director of Athletic Communications Mary vonKronenberger

BEREA, Ohio – Being able to participate in collegiate athletics is something so many kids dream about. For Baldwin Wallace University women’s volleyball student-athlete Maddie Bednar (Chagrin Falls/Kenston), pairing that with coursework opportunities inside and outside of the classroom means a lot more.

Plant physiologist and biology, botany, and agriculture professor, Dr. Natalie M. Barratt of BW, took Bednar and fellow teammate Ivy Earl (Howell, Mich.) under her wing when she offered the two students a research project opportunity. Bednar and Dr. Barratt’s relationship then grew over time.

Through working in biology at BW and taking botany class, Bednar said, “It was Dr. Barratt that helped develop my love of botany and plants, and it fostered my desire to work with plants in the future.” It was after that research project and class that Dr. Barratt saw Bednar’s love of plants grow and told her to apply for a summer internship at Holden Arboretum in Kirtland.

Holden Arboretum photo courtesy of Erik Drost '11

Bednar spends her days as an intern doing a mix of lab and field work. She goes out into the arboretum, a living collection of trees, and collects samples of mostly conifers, which is a group of trees that bear cones and needle-like or scale-like leaves, by clipping off branches. She then goes in the next day to process all the samples.

Early on, while working at the arboretum, Bednar had the opportunity to work alongside Dr. Randy Long, a postdoctoral scholar who was doing a research project on conifers. Dr. Long is now currently a professor at Lewis and Clark University in Portland, Oregon but continuing his research from afar, and Bednar is luckily still able to work with him collecting and weighing samples and performing data analytics.

Dr. Long's research involves him going to six other arboretums across the United States and bringing them back to Holden to be processed and analyzed. Bednar helps Dr. Long by not only collecting and reviewing her own samples but helping him to analyze his very large array of information.

“When you get an opportunity to do research with someone, you do it,” stated Bednar.

Not only is the relationship with Dr. Barratt and Dr. Long important to Bednar, but so is the relationship with her teammate, Earl. When talking about her favorite memory during her college career, Bednar expresses that it’s the research project with Earl for Dr. Barratt.

“I had never done research up until that point, so being able to do that with a teammate and classmate, who I have known for a while, was really fun,” Bednar said of the experience. The two student-athletes spent a lot of time in the lab together, studying data and investing a lot of thought into the information. Dr. Barratt would also come in and review their findings and give advice, and Bednar found it was a very enjoyable process.

Bednar has had a lot of meaningful experiences through her connections at BW, and she has also been very successful in her studies. Bednar is a two-time Academic All-Ohio Athletic Conference honoree, a Dean’s List student, Jacket Scholar, and carries a 3.860 grade point average while competing all four years of her career.

When asked how Bednar balances being a student, athlete, and intern, among other opportunities, she said, “I’ve been a student-athlete for a very long time. I’ve learned how to balance practice, games, and work. What I’ve found is that having all these things at once gives me a schedule, keeps me focused, and is very natural for me.”

Bednar started playing volleyball at a very young age. She started competing in club volleyball at age 12 and continued it throughout high school. Getting recruited at the age of 18 wasn’t something Bednar saw for herself, but after visiting BW and enjoying everything about the campus and academic programs, Bednar felt BW was where she wanted to be.

Education doesn’t end at BW for Bednar. She wants to continue learning and has started to look at graduate programs for botany and plant biology. “My career ambitions are to do research,” Bednar expressed. “A master’s degree will help further those ambitions, and I want to continue to get experience in a lot of different areas.”

While Bednar looks to her future after graduation next spring, she continues to do research at the arboretum, and is currently the lab assistant at BW with Dr. Barratt and will continue to do more research with her next semester.