Jillian Ingle ’16 didn’t start her college career at Appalachian State University. Instead, she enrolled in community college classes for a year while she figured out her career path.

While taking an anthropology class, she participated in a coastal archeological dig at Fort Caswell. There, she met students and faculty from Appalachian who demonstrated to her what it would be like to study anthropology in Boone.

Ingle saw the potential and transferred to Appalachian the next semester.

She said she was drawn to the Appalachian’s Department of Anthropology because it doesn’t have a graduate component. Therefore, research opportunities other schools might reserve for graduate students would be available to her as an undergraduate. “It seemed like a good fit,” Ingle said.

“We have some pretty awesome professors who are experts in many different fields.”

Ingle chose the Anthropology (BS) - Biological Anthropology degree because of her split interest between the sciences and arts.

“It is this interesting balance between hard science and the biological structure, and at the same time trying to understand what that means for the human being,” Ingle said.  “It’s a lot of theory and reading and writing and for me personally it was a good mesh between the two.”

In fall 2015, Ingle started working as an osteology assistant.

She works with the human osteology lab  to help students review their lab lectures, identify bones and help other students with extra lab time.

“It has taught me to look at things differently,” Ingle said. “Not every one learns the same way, and working with others I’ve learned how to adapt to other types of learning.”

After graduation, Ingle hopes to work for a science center or museum or as a research assistant before continuing on to graduate school. As a graduate student, she would like to explore warfare or violence as an acceptable part of cultures and apply her education to humanitarian work by helping identify remains from genocide and return the remains to families for burial.

“My education has taught me that as people we are not the same, and cultures all have different forms of body thought,” Ingle said. “But, even though we may be diverse, still we are all human.”