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Miami Palmetto Senior High School rising senior Julia Strasius volunteers at Zoo Miami in the Conservation Teen Scientist Program.
“It’s a way for high school students to learn more about conservation and practice public speaking skills,” Strasius says. “I’ve always loved working with animals and being outdoors. It was a good program for me.”
Strasius has been volunteering at the zoo for two years, even through COVID restrictions.
“We originally were going each month but then changed to more online methods,” she says.
Program administrators would send emails with information on a research project. Strasius says she’d do the online research and submit the information to the program. She’s happy to be back in person at the zoo.
“The zoo is huge, there is always something to see,” she says. “The online projects they were giving us were always different.”
Strasius loves seeing behind the scenes and learning about the animals. She does have a favorite exhibit.
“I definitely like the tree kangaroo the most,” she says. “At the end of the training process, zoo personnel would watch you make presentations about certain animals. I was assigned the tree kangaroo. That’s my favorite exhibit and the one that I know the most about.”
When not at the zoo, Strasius devotes time to the Pinecrest City Music Project. She worked with them as a graphic designer.
“PCMP is a student-run non-profit that has educated over 500 K-12 art students in the South Miami-Dade community in the arts,” she says.
She helped create flyers for the organization and worked on the programs, including Music at the Gardens which was held at Evelyn Greer Park and the South Dade School Arts Fest which took place at Pinecrest Gardens.
She also does graphic design for The Panther. She’s been the News and Design Editor and is moving to Business Manager for her senior year. She’ll still be doing design, but now working with the advertisements.
“I have always found design very therapeutic,” she says.
As Business Manager she’ll handle the financial and advertising parts of the paper.
“I look forward to expanding the paper and financial aspects of the paper,” she says.
For her senior year, Strasius will be the Student Council Secretary. Previously, she was the Class of ’22 secretary for sophomore and junior years.
She’s also the secretary of the Capstone Club.
“We focus attention on community service projects and beautification projects,” she says.
Finances are interesting to her so she’s in the Finance Club and is the incoming historian.
“I’ll be managing our social media platform and using pictures of our meetings,” she says.
“It’s about raising awareness and putting the club out there on social media.”
Last summer, Strasius attended the Harvard Science Research Conference online.
“I was able to hear lectures from professors in STEM fields like biology, computer science and physics,” she says. “Being able to work with people from around the world was exciting.”
She and her team worked on a project called the Innovation Challenge, which looked at the protection of genetic data. The team won the challenge.
She hopes to do another program this summer from one of the universities she’s interested in. That list includes the University of Michigan, University of Florida, Florida State, Wake Forest and Oxford University.
She has numerous interests so she’s still undecided on a college major. She does know she wants to participate in a study abroad program.
During her high school career Strasius has won the Panther of Distinction Award and the Core Values Award.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
