For Carmen Braun, a passion for the outdoors guides every aspect of her life.
The Calgary native, graduating with a Bachelor of Science with a combined honours in Earth Sciences and Oceanography, knew this was the path she wanted to take after spending a semester at sea while in high school. Her love
for the outdoors, however, was sparked long before that.
“I was hiking as soon as I could walk,” she says, “and my parents took me on my first camping road trip when I was six months old.”
Carmen has taken advantage of every opportunity she can to get outdoors and learn more about the world. “Travelling has always been something I’ve been very keen on,” she says. “I started looking at places I could go on exchange to before I started looking at actual universities.”
While studying abroad in Geneva during her third year, she completed all of her coursework in French and participated in field schools and mapping courses in Switzerland, Corsica and France. She also got to participate in a month-long research cruise and completed an eight-week glaciology field school program in Alaska.
In Halifax, she has been a teacher’s assistant for a number of geology, earth sciences and science courses, held a position on the executive council for DalOUT, and was the trip director for the Dalhousie Outdoors Society. Carmen also volunteers with Halifax Regional Search & Rescue. “It’s a great combination of doing something for the community and also being outside,” she says.
To further demonstrate her love for the outdoors, Carmen is completing a 100 days of camping challenge. “Someone mentioned a similar challenge posted on a blog and it just kind of went from there.” She will fulfill 30 of these days during geology field school in California and Nevada later this year. Afterwards, Carmen will be road tripping from California to Alaska, backpacking around Calgary and then making her way back east with her sights on a master’s program.
The article is part of a series of profiles on members of the Class of 2016. Read all of our grad profiles. Spring Convocation takes place May 13 in Truro and from May 30 to June 4 in Halifax.