Georgetown College. Georgetown University.

Students Elizabeth Zimmerman, left, and Stephanie Majeski, right, spent the summer in Australia assisting Dr. Mann with her research. (Courtesy Stephanie Majeski)

By Katherine Morrissey

Stephanie Majeski became interested in Dr. Janet Mann’s research at Georgetown before she even moved into the college dorms.

“Before freshman year, during a tour of the Biology Department, I walked past Professor Mann’s office, saw a poster of dolphins, and knew this was the place for me,” says Majeski. “I have always had a love for animal behavior, and marine mammals have been a favorite of mine since I was a child. I was very excited to introduce myself and hoped to have the opportunity to work in her research lab.”

Her wish came true sophomore year when she joined Dr. Mann’s lab as an undergraduate research assistant.

“Since starting in the lab, I have contributed data from our dorsal fin identification system into the long-term demographic, behavioral, and ecological records Dr. Mann is compiling,” explains Majeski. “This helps us advance toward the goal of acquiring a clean dataset that can be integrated into a relational database system.”

This past summer Majeski was awarded the Zukowski Fellowship to accompany Dr. Mann to western Australia, assisting with the Shark Bay Dolphin Research Project. This allowed Majeski to experience fieldwork first hand and research bottlenose dolphins in the wild. She is excited to incorporate this experience into her senior thesis project.

“For the most part I collected behavioral data on calves,” says Majeski. “In particular, I observed the presence of a calf foraging technique known as snacking. I am currently coding, entering, and cleaning the foraging data to look across age-sex classes and determine the presence/absence of foraging types for adults, juveniles, and calves. My goal is to uncover patterns that will help us determine contributions of social, ecological, and demographic factors in the ontogeny of foraging behaviors.”

Majeski doesn’t spend all of her time in the lab, however. An avid painter, she is also working to complete her Studio Arts minor. She is set to graduate in May, but isn’t sure where she’ll head next.

“Medicine is an option I’ve been considering for quite some time,” she explains. “Behavioral science is fascinating to me, and a field such as psychiatry is a definite draw, but recently, I have also been tossing around ideas such as environmental law. I simply have to see where life takes me for now.”

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