Ash Hansen, M.S.

Ash Hansen is the interim director of Student Life at Cal Poly Humboldt, where she supports programs and experiences that help students connect with one another, campus resources, and the broader community. Ash brings experience coordinating orientation and collaborating with campus partners to create welcoming opportunities for students.

Ash holds a master’s degree from Cal Poly Humboldt and studied how barn owls impact rodent populations within Napa Valley vineyards. Over the barn owl breeding season, she compared rodent populations and their activity in vineyards with and without barn owl boxes. She found that the presence of barn owl nest boxes significantly reduced gopher activity! Her research advanced our understanding of using barn owls as a method of pest control and helped establish that barn owls attracted to nest boxes in winegrape vineyards can meaningfully suppress the number of rodent pests.