What Graduate Students are Saying
About the Environmental Leadership Program
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| Wen Lee, X-Stream Team ’08 “I would recommend this GTF position to any graduate student who is interested in management or project coordinating experience! The ELP provides GTFs with the unique opportunity to supervise a small team doing real, hands-on projects in the community. You get to work closely with your students, watch as they grow as leaders, and learn invaluable lessons about what it takes to execute a successful team project.” |
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| Ali Abbors, Forest Team ’08 “ELP provides graduate students with an unusual opportunity to improve our own leadership skills by cultivating leadership in others. As the GTF for the Environmental Education course in the Winter of 2008 and ELP Forest Team Leader in the Spring of 2008, I have accompanied a group of dedicated undergraduates on their journey from students to educators. They have explored learning theories, planned a suite of lessons, and taught those lessons in elementary, middle school, and high school classrooms; facilitating this process has been extremely gratifying and has helped me become a more effective teacher and learner.” |
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| Rebecca Silver, Corporate Sustainability Team ’07 “Being a GTF for an ELP project was a great opportunity for me in many ways: I built on my project management skills, got to work with an intelligent and motivated group of undergraduates, and managed a challenging survey research project that ended up teaching me skills that came in handy as I completed my thesis research!” |
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| Rebecca Briggs, Wetlands Team ’07 "ELP is a great way to connect schools, university students, and community members. These projects not only allow UO students the chance to build their teaching skills, but also connect them in a much more personal way to the children of their community. This is a mutual connection, as local school children also gain exposure to the university and community groups. Strengthening these community bonds ultimately instills in children the importance of such connections and personal responsibility for one’s hometown. And as a project leader, I saw first-hand the effect it has on the UO students, who come to care very personally and deeply about the Eugene area’s environment and inhabitants. The ELP teams’ excitement to inspire these children is absolutely infectious." |