{"id":390950,"date":"2026-07-29T19:05:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T19:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/390950\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T19:05:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T19:05:37","slug":"where-are-they-now-shana-caro-and-colin-morrison-ut-austin-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/390950\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Are They Now: Shana Caro and Colin Morrison – UT Austin News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The station, made possible through a generous land and financial donation from\u00a0Lorraine \u201cCasey\u201d Stengl, B.A. \u201939<\/a>, has become a cornerstone of field-based science at UT, giving researchers the space to study organisms in their natural environments across Texas ecosystems. To date, 176 students and researchers have received support through the Stengl-Wyer Endowment<\/a>.
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<\/a>We wondered: Where are they now?<\/p>\n

What started as field station research in Texas has evolved into a career in higher education and behavioral science for Shana, now an assistant professor of biology at Adelphi University, where she leads research focused on animal behavior, cognition and evolutionary conflict while mentoring the next generation of biologists. <\/p>\n

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\u201cThis is my dream job,\u201d Shana says. \u201cI get to teach a diverse set of motivated students while I do fascinating research on how birds think and make decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Shana, the opportunity to do research as a Stengl-Wyer scholar was a turning point. \u201cI came in as an evolutionary biologist, but I grew more interested in neurobiology, specifically how decisions are made, not just why they are made,\u201d she says. That curiosity led to some surprising discoveries. \u201cI\u2019ve discovered that birds can be more or less confident in their choices and adjust their decision-making based on how difficult they expect a decision to be \u2014 just like humans.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will always be grateful to the Stengl-Wyer Scholars program for giving me the resources and time to explore new methods and directions in biology,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Colin\u2019s graduate research took him deep into the ecological forces that shape Texas landscapes. He earned a doctorate from the College of Natural Sciences in 2023 and is now a research associate with the Invasive Species Research Lab at Brackenridge Field Laboratory<\/a>, where his work remains centered on ecosystems, species interactions and biodiversity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cAs a research associate in the Department of Integrative Biology, my work focuses on understanding how interactions between plants, insects and their environments shape ecosystems, especially in the face of invasive species challenges,\u201d Colin says. \u201cI study everything from why insects are picky eaters to developing scalable management tools for invasive pests and weeds that affect wildlife habitats across Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Stengl-Wyer Fellowship, he says, made it all possible. \u201cIt gave me the time, resources and intellectual freedom to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven questions while also thinking about their broader impacts. That perspective continues to shape how I practice science and collaborate today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Remarkable individuals like Shana and Colin don\u2019t need much, just the opportunity. The generosity of the Stengl-Wyer family and the collective effort behind the What Starts Here campaign help provide exactly that, and the ripple effects continue to reach far beyond the Forty Acres.<\/p>\n

That network of living laboratories continues to grow across the state.
A recent gift made during the What Starts Here campaign is expanding UT\u2019s reach all the way to West Texas. A 40-acre property near Terlingua and the Christmas Mountains was donated to the Jackson School of Geosciences by an anonymous donor, along with a $1 million endowment for maintenance and support. The property includes a home and a lab building that can serve as a base for field trips, camps and research, and it will join the Texas Field Station Network<\/a>. The region is widely recognized as one of the most geologically significant areas in the state, offering world-class opportunities for hands-on teaching and scientific discovery.<\/p>\n

\"imageThe West Texas property joins a network that has grown rapidly thanks to transformational philanthropy. In 2023, the Winn Family of Dallas made a $50 million commitment to launch the Texas Field Station Network and build the Hill Country Field Station. In just three years, the network has expanded from two to seven sites, bringing together landowners, conservation organizations and environmental philanthropists around a shared vision: protecting Texas lands and waters for future generations while generating scientific knowledge for the world.
If you would like to support the College of Natural Sciences or other\u00a0Solutions of The Future<\/a>, please consider\u00a0making a gift<\/a>\u00a0as we enter the final weeks of the What Starts Here campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The station, made possible through a generous land and financial donation from\u00a0Lorraine \u201cCasey\u201d Stengl, B.A. \u201939, has become…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[11918,132,134,133,3618,858,2220,25719,11657],"class_list":["post-390950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-alumni","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-college-of-natural-sciences","tag-research","tag-science","tag-statewide-impact","tag-what-starts-here-campaign-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}