From EOU to Ecuador: Gaining the Experience to Take the Next Step

From EOU to Ecuador: Gaining the Experience to Take the Next Step

Nearly every new college graduate faces a Catch-22: To get the job, you need experience. But to get experience, someone has to give you a chance first.

For Eastern Oregon University graduate Hailey Rogan, that chance eventually took her all the way to Ecuador.

Rogan, ‘25, graduated from EOU with a degree in Environmental and Ecological Biology. She came to Eastern as a soccer player. Birds weren’t part of the plan.

Then she took an ornithology class from EOU Professor Laura Mahrt.

“I recently got into birds because of Laura’s ornithology class,” Rogan said, joking that she has since developed “early-onset bird-watching disease.”

That interest grew into research, fieldwork, and eventually an opportunity to join Marht on a two-week bird-banding expedition at Reserva Las Tangadas, a private reserve near Mindo, Ecuador.

Before leaving, Rogan regularly traveled from Boise to La Grande to work with Marht at EOU’s bird-banding station. She would finish work, make the drive to La Grande, band birds, and return to Boise. The hours paid off.

When Rogan arrived in Ecuador, many of the expedition’s participants had little or no bird-banding experience and needed training. Rogan did not.

She began banding birds on the first day.

“It made it well worth it to drive up to La Grande,” Rogan said, “and not be a beginner when I got to Ecuador.”

For Mahrt, that is precisely why experiences outside the classroom matter.

“Bird banding jobs, you have to have the experience before,” Mahrt said. “And, of course, getting the experience is the hard part.”

Working together week after week also provided something difficult to duplicate in a classroom: individual mentorship.

“Getting first-hand experience with her was very unique,” Rogan said. “I definitely got the personal experience with her.”

When Rogan struggled with a technique, she said, Mahrt was there to help her work through it.

“She was definitely the perfect candidate for me to learn from,” Rogan said.

That experience matters now because Rogan is facing the same transition generations of EOU graduates have faced before her: turning a college education into a career.

She hopes to eventually attend graduate school and has considered a master’s program in raptor biology. Ecuador, combined with three months she previously spent in Costa Rica, has broadened those possibilities.

“Birds have become my main focus,” she said.

For now, however, Rogan wants to get her foot in the door professionally. She hopes to land several seasonal field positions, continue building experience, and then decide what direction graduate school should take her.

She will enter that search with something she didn’t have before: hands-on experience working with birds in Eastern Oregon and the tropics.

The opportunity also illustrates a relationship that didn’t end when Rogan finished her degree. The professor who introduced her to ornithology became the mentor who trained alongside her and eventually traveled with her to Ecuador.

“I owe a lot to EOU and Mahrt specifically,” she said.

For alumni, the details may be different, but the story is familiar. A professor sees potential. A student discovers an interest. Someone opens a door.

For Rogan, that meant driving from Boise to La Grande week after week, learning to handle birds and eventually carrying those skills thousands of miles to Ecuador.

And somewhere along the way, what began as a college class started looking like a career.

Rogan calls Ecuador “a trip of a lifetime.”

She also came home thinking about what might come next.

“If I could open a banding station in the tropics,” she said, “I would.”