Andrea Campos

 🖤Andrea’s Adventures🖤

Start Date: 5/28

Hello, My name is Andrea Campos and I am so excited to be an intern this summer in the Frederick, Howard and Montgomery County Cluster! A fun fact about me is that I have assisted a family friend who is a dairy veterinarian- in three different cow births. I am a recent graduate from Rutgers University with a degree in Entomology. I have some background in Animal Science and urban agriculture and I am so excited to begin my journey interning at the University of Maryland Extension program. My mentor for the Frederick County extension office is Mark Townsend and he has been so much fun to work with this past week- I am blown away by his knowledge and passion for Agronomic and I can’t wait to keep learning from him! My mentor for the Howard County extension office is Nathan Glenn and he is so cool and is so inspiring to see and hear his journey in extension! I cannot wait to go scouting with him and learn together from growers and farmers in Howard County. My mentor for the Montgomery County extension office is Kelly Nichols and I admire her so much- her work with Turf grass and weeds is so interesting and I can not wait to learn more about identification and plant species with her!

My week in this internship varies depending on my mentors' crop scouting schedule and whether or not they have conferences or events coming up! But I will be rotating alongside my co- intern Solomon to the three different offices in this central Maryland cluster. I am so blessed to have this opportunity to learn so much from such inspiring and interesting agricultural agents from various backgrounds. Each day at work - I am further convinced that this is the field in which I want to work in as a career. This past week I had the opportunity to go crop scouting and visit two of the research and education sites- WMREC and CMREC to either help with extension projects going on there or to see what is going on! I also go to do some scouting at the South Mountain Creamery farm as well as some other small farms in southern Frederick county. I got to spend one of my day’s collecting data with my mentor Kelly at the University of Maryland Turf research center and was able to learn how to better identify weeds and determine the status of my mentor’s research after various herbicide sprays. 

Here are some photos from my week! I’m an entomology person so I really wanna get this Insect Id guide for when I am out in the field! I liked this John Deer tractor so I took a photo of it haha! The cute cow on the right is from the CMREC facility and she was so goofy! The weed at the bottom right is ragweed and I am hoping to improve my identification skills.