Samantha Franks
2005 Honours Bachelor of Science in Zoology, University of Toronto
I was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, but consider myself a native of Ottawa, having moved to the beautiful capital of Canada at a young age. I attended secondary school at Lisgar Collegiate Institute, which celebrated its 160th anniversary in 2004. I left Lisgar with a treasure box of memories of fun, friendship, wackiness, travel, musicality, and memorable teachers, but most importantly, an excellent secondary education which prepared me for entry into that Canadian post-secondary institution known for its excellence in research, but also its undergraduate competition, its huge classes, and its anonymity - the University of Toronto. I entered the melting pot of first-year undergraduates populating the general study area of Life Sciences, and graduated in 2005 with an Honour's Bachelor of Science in Zoology.
In September 2006, I started as a M.Sc. student at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver BC. As far as I've seen, BC lives up to what is proudly proclaimed on the provincial licence plate - Beautiful British Columbia. Though I sometimes long for the 5 feet of snow and -25C weather of Ottawa winters, crocusses and snowdrops in February is an enjoyable experience.
In my spare time, I am a pianist and a choral-singer, and formerly a clarinetist. I was an alto in the Hart House Singers, a 110-member non-auditioned choir at U of T, and acted as a librarian and executive secretary of the committee in charge of the administrative side of the choir. We sang a varied repertoire with the Singers, including Fauré's Requiem, Britten's Ceremony of Carols, Spanish carols, traditional Zimbabwean songs, Beethoven's Mass in C Major, and Mozart's Vesperae Solennes de Confessore. In Vancouver, I have been a member of the SFU Choir, the Pacific Singers, and the VCC Willan Choir.
I love travel, adventure, the outdoors, nature, and camping, and have explored parks, forests, grasslands, tundra, and desert in Canada, the U.S, and Latin America. This love of the outdoors was encouraged by a lengthy participation in the Girl Guides of Canada as a girl and a leader. I am currently a Guider with the 15th Vancouver Guides. I am also a keen birder, and while I work on shorebirds, I have tried to take every opportunity to work on and study other species in North America, Latin America, and Europe.
See my CV (September 2010) [PDF]
