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SARSEF Alumni of the Month- Melissa Sevigny
 Melissa Sevigny says she was “always a geeky child,” collecting rocks because she loved geology, but “SARSEF kept opening my horizons.” Melissa was “a low-income kid, in a low-income school considered to be poor performing, but SARSEF gave me opportunities my family could never have afforded.” She entered her first science fair in the first grade, and “won a big purple ribbon.”
Melissa is now a science reporter for Flagstaff’s National Public Radio station, and a twice- published author. “My first book Under Desert Skies, is about Tucson’s role in space exploration and, and my second book, Mythical River is about Southwest geology and water issues – and both books grew out of my SARSEF experience.”
“I even write about one of my SARSEF projects in the second book.” While Melissa is still interested in rocks, and space, and publishing again, science is about more than that to her. “It’s all about learning how science works. Having the question that I couldn’t look up in a textbook…or, now, the internet, and learning the process of how to answer that for yourself… that’s what science is, and it’s not going to change. Understanding and learning that process and especially in the later years, learning how to communicate what you’ve learned – I’ll use those interview and communication skills the rest of my life.”
-Story by Julie Morrison, Photo credit Alexis Knapp
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