Lena Samsonenko's journey to Cornell started with a packet of birdseed.

The passion of this natural resources senior is the outdoors, especially birds. After she became serious about birding at 13, she attended young birder camps and conferences on full scholarships and won national prizes for birding. She laughs when she recalls receiving a seed packet sponsored by Cornell's Laboratory of Ornithology. She remembers thinking, "Wow! There is a university out there that's all about birds?" In high school, she discovered there was much more to Cornell than ornithology, and she has done her best to take advantage of that variety during her four years here.

Samsonenko describes Cornell as her "dream school," not only because of the renowned ornithology program but also because of the local birding community, including the Cornell Student Birding Club and the Cayuga Bird Club. She regularly volunteers her time to teach students at local schools about what it means to be a scientist and to observe the natural world. She also has taught at Tom Brown's Wilderness Survival School, the University of Connecticut and Promised Land State Park in Pennsylvania. An avid outdoor enthusiast, Samsonenko includes primitive survival skills, tracking, "botanizing and sauntering" as favorite activities. She also is a wildlife artist.

Having emigrated with her family from Tajikistan at age 5, Samsonenko is fluent in Russian. And now also in Spanish, a language she has taken every term. She has traveled to Panama to give nature tours in the Darién rainforest and to Costa Rica for a semester with the Organization for Tropical Studies. This summer she is headed to Venezuela to study birds and ethnobiology among indigenous cultures.

With an exceptional 3.9968 GPA, Samsonenko is a Udall Scholar, a Hughes Scholar, a Cornell Biodiversity Research Scholar and a recipient of the Lillian Stoner Ornithological Award.

Samsonenko plans to go to graduate school for a Ph.D., perhaps in ethno-ornithology, to study how indigenous peoples view birds in their culture, and she hopes to become a university professor. But after the summer, she is first headed home to her much-missed family in Vernon, Conn. Samsonenko says she feels like she is missing out on time she wants to spend with her 12-year-old sister. She plans to work, apply for such scholarships as the Fulbright, volunteer at a museum preparing bird specimens and give presentations in the school system, where her mother works, about natural history and studying abroad.

If there is one piece of advice she would give students anywhere in the world, it would be to "get out, get out of your country for a while -- you'll never regret a second of it."

Graduate student Hannah Rogers is a writer intern at the Cornell News Service.