Discovering his current

Stephen grew up about an hour and a half from Huntington, West Virginia, in Wellston, Ohio.

After his military experience, Stephen decided to enroll at Marshall in the spring of 2023.

“I really liked being outdoors and what pushed me into it was the wildlife work. I wanted to work with fish. And at the time, I didn’t really want to work with other people. I thought working in streams and outside, I’d be by myself — I was super wrong. I’m in teams all the time, but I really don’t mind it now because I’m with like-minded people,” Stephen said.

During Stephen’s first year at Marshall, he took a class with Dr. Tom Jones.

That led to Stephen applying for a work-study position in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment where he cleaned samples of freshwater mussels that had been collected for student research and senior projects.

In his undergraduate research experience, he’s been pleasantly surprised to find how many people care about the health of rivers and environmental impact.

“They want the fish to come back. They want pretty banks and not just a bunch of sand or gravel bars along the edge or cities,” he said. “I think that was really cool outside of the wildlife stuff, because initially I just came in for working with animals, but now I work more with people and communicating along the river.”

This summer, Stephen completed an internship with the Ohio River Way, a nonprofit organization based in Cincinnati, Ohio, focused on caring for the land and water along the 308-mile National Water Trail, called the Ohio River Way Challenge.

Stephen discovered the program in 2025 when Professor Rick Gage visited his statistics class and presented the opportunity.

“I felt like a bunch of people in my major were signing up, but as it turns out, I was the only one that signed up for it,” Stephen said.

Stephen joined the research team for the 2025 trip and then led the research team in 2026 for the full trip.

To prepare to lead the research team, Stephen was mentored and trained by Dr. Mindy Armstead from the Natural Resources and Environmental Science Department.

This year, Stephen was one of 10 interns from across the country who participated in the Ohio River Way Challenge, along with two other Marshall students, Paul Starkey and Sam Wallace.

The challenge takes place over three weeks and spans 488.5 nautical miles. It starts in Huntington and finishes in Evansville, Indiana.

Stephen coordinated the first land conservation planning project for the Ohio River Way, focusing on the Ohio River between the Big Sandy River and Ohio Brush Creek.

The project involved fish habitat surveys, looking at vegetation and land use, taking insect samples and testing water quality.

The work to protect the river and its creatures also focused on mapping. After the three-week project of mapping the river, the group entered the data into a Geographic Information System (GIS) to analyze what parts of the river are healthy and what parts need improved.

“We can start pinpointing what issues there are and what’s causing them, whether it be from construction or some industrial issues happening,” Stephen said.

The data can also help fishing enthusiasts determine the best spots for fishing, by seeing where certain microvertebrates are more present for the fish to eat.

The trip was documented by the National Parks Service, who is working on making a documentary about the challenge.

On campus, Stephen participates in the Marshall University Subchapter of the American Fisheries Society.

Now, Stephen has spoken at conferences about his own research and most recently, this fall, about his work on the Ohio River Way Challenge.