Master’s Students

I graduated from UC San Diego with a B.A. in Sociology with a concentration in Social Inequality and minors in Environmental Studies and Education Studies. I spent the past two years as an intern for a nonprofit organization called Citizens Climate Lobby, contributing to their efforts to ameliorate the acute need for effective climate legislation in the U.S. During my internship, I realized how environmental policy and environmental education have related and critical roles in ensuring the successful implementation of effective climate policy. As a result, my planned areas of focus at UO are public policy, environmental education, and environmental justice.

I was born and raised in Rumney, New Hampshire (population 1,400) and received my bachelor’s degree from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine in 2003. As the son of a builder, I have worked for my father throughout high school and college and always enjoyed the practical problem-solving and spatial challenges inherent in building. As the least experienced guy on the crew, it was often my responsibility to pick up trash on the job site, and as a result I also became suspicious from an early age of how much waste is generated by modern building systems.

Interested in learning more about traditional building systems utilizing locally available materials, I joined a project in Riobamba, Ecuador, constructing a training facility out of adobe for a local non-profit called Ecovida. After two years in Ecuador volunteering for Ecovida and teaching English, I moved to San Francisco, CA, where I spent the next few years preserving historic adobe buildings and other masonry structures around the state and getting to witness the durability first hand of very traditional techniques. Shifting back to new construction with a more social focus, in 2009 I moved to Guatemala to work as a field coordinator for the Global Village Program with Habitat for Humanity Guatemala. Since then I have served both Habitat and FINCA, a microfinance foundation, in the pursuit of more affordable housing and housing finance solutions for Guatemalans living in poverty.
My goal through the ENVS program is to help develop tools for analyzing building materials and systems, with the overall aim of expanding the options for practical, sustainable housing solutions for people living in poverty while reducing both environmental impact and cost of construction at the same time. I am convinced you can have your cake and eat it, too.
My other interests include coffee consumption, travel, running, hiking and buzzing around back roads on a motorcycle. California is the closest I have come to Oregon so I am very excited about exploring the habitat of a duck!

My muse is my mother’s favorite bedtime song, a casual family ritual that became inspiration for my future. On hot summer nights in Wisconsin, my thirty-something mother would sing Janis Joplin’s a cappella hit, “Mercedes Benz.” An unconventional evening tradition, the lyrics still echo: “Worked hard all my lifetime no help from my friends / So Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz.” My mother’s adoration for these sardonic lyrics derived from experiences with, and the rejection of, social inequality during her adolescence. This small bedtime lesson has stuck with me longer than she predicted. In my approach to environmental issues, I have never been able to take people and power out of the equation.

After I graduated with a degree in Cultural Anthropology from DePauw University, I took a journey north to Chicago and found community in urban farmers, organizers, nutritionists and individuals that illuminated the deep immediacy to rectify racial and economic injustice, environmental degradation and climate change, all increasingly taboo and intersecting topics in the U.S. I spent the next few years in “food education,” teaching cooking and nutrition classes, volunteering in city gardens, examining food systems in Uganda, as well as working at an aquarium to educate the culinary industry and seafood consumers on critical oceanic issues. Through all this, I have learned that environmental studies cannot exist as a specialized language of a select academic cadre. Rather, it must be accessible and applicable.

As I enter UO, my broad academic interest is in environmental sociology, but specifically I would like to expand on the effects of climate change on fisheries and agriculture, the financialization of nature, the politics of sustainable development (particularly in east Africa), and urban environmental education.

I was born and raised in Sacramento, CA. Growing up, I had a passion for mathematics and the sciences. I was also heavily involved in playing softball, which actually helped me afford to go to college. Entering my undergrad I planned to take a pre-med route because I wanted a job where I could help those in need in my community and abroad. However by the end of my first year I started to feel that environmental issues were one of the biggest things afflicting us. I decided to switch to geology so I could stay in the sciences but also get a better understanding of the earth and our environment. My education in geology, along with environmental policy, anthropology and sociology courses, helped me realize my desire to work on environmental justice issues. I hope to help people who have been environmentally harmed because of their race or economic situation, both in the US and abroad. I have a particular interest in how black Americans and Africans have been affected by the concentration of pollution in their environments. I plan to focus on history and geography to help me study environmental justice issues. I want to understand and visually represent how things have come to be. I hope my work in graduate school will help bring awareness to policymakers and the communities studied about the severity of these problems and thus help bring about change.

My interests outside of school include reading, watching movies, spending time with friends and family, hiking/enjoying the outdoors, yoga, travelling and community service. I spent the last 6 months abroad. Five months were spent volunteering in Tanzania, teaching English and computers, with an extra month of travel to neighboring countries.

I was born amidst the towering white pines, upon the deep soils and granite bedrock of the land known as New Hampshire. I am the son of a carpenter, furniture maker, and architect, and the brother of a farmer. My father imparted to me a love for the human imagination and tangible creation. My brother, as we work together, lends me a love for the comprehensive ecology and human sweat that gives rise to fresh food and a healthy life.
My college years carried me across the Connecticut River, to Middlebury College in Vermont. In those years, as an Independent Scholar (B.A., ‘09), I cultivated a philosophical, synergistic, and impassioned approach to life and thought. I engaged in a program of study that aimed to strike a balance between the Natural Sciences and Humanities, with foci in Chemistry and Classics, respectively. I deemed this pursuit “Humanist Science”, an ideological approach that continues to inform my words and deeds, as a teacher, builder, and agrarian.
Immediately upon graduating from college, I assistant taught an Ecology course at a private high school in Concord, New Hampshire. Here I discovered that teaching stokes the furnace within me. I felt the excitement of kindling a “spark” in another through discussion and hands-on, experiential learning.
With a summer of teaching under my belt, I returned to the familiar landscape of the jobsite. For two years I worked as a carpenter in the Burlington, Vermont region. I learned the time-honored tricks of master carpenters, while also exploring novel ideas in high-efficiency, net-zero building. I now harbor dreams of simple, affordable residences, and the symbiosis of built structure and landscape.
Most recently, over the course of this past year (’11-’12), I taught public high school Chemistry, further delving into the challenges and triumphs of education, while cementing my commitment to teaching as a lifelong endeavor. I am sustained by relationships with students.
I enjoy exploring the forests, fields, mountains, and waters of Earth. I like to cook slowly, preferably with ingredients fresh from the soil. I often admire the sheen of face grain in the wake of the plane blade, or the swollen bud of a fruit tree in early spring. I value wise participation in the environment, to then cultivate a deeper appreciation of the world, and learn to live sensitively amidst the dynamic patterns of nature.

While Ithaca truly was gorges, after 16 years in an insular community I wanted out. I graduated high school a year early and moved to Argentina. The coin toss of an exchange program landed me in an area known for farming and mountains. Fate might have been telling me something, but I butted my head against it and moved to New York City. After four years of college, I was ready for nature. I moved to Brooklyn. While not as mountainous as I had hoped, I stayed rooted for two years.

My time at Barnard College did more than impress upon me that I didn’t want to live in a big city. I interned at Amnesty International and the Council on Foreign Relations, and did the requisite summer in DC, with Global Trade Watch. A Boren Fellowship took me back to Argentina, and a project on the informal recycling sector in Buenos Aires solidified my interest in environmental policy. While friends looked on in horror as I dissected garbage bags to see what could have been recycled, I knew I had found my calling. It took two years of work at the Social Science Research Council, looking over countless fellowship proposals, to choose the right graduate program. I am confident that, unlike Brooklyn, Eugene will have plenty of trees and maybe even a small hill.

My non-academic interests include running, biking, watching my dad’s bees and eating their honey, and practicing/teaching yoga.

As an Idahoan who still carries the bizarre tic of clapping twice and slapping the roof every time I drive over a cattle guard, I cannot discount my state’s ubiquitous, troubled bonds with both livestock and wolves as I try to reconstruct the roots of my environmentalism. One of my sharpest recollections from the third grade was a late April night in Yellowstone, when my dad and I couldn’t sleep for all the recently-reintroduced howling. I spent the next year fashioning radio collars for my playmates and “tracking” them with tin-foil telemetry.

I grew up and attended Scripps College in Claremont, California, where I managed to weasel my way into two stays abroad, including biodiversity research in Costa Rica and an ecology program in South Africa. I finally got to practice with real telemetry (on tortoises. I lost almost all of them). However, once handed the opportunity to perform research I found myself captivated instead by storytelling—the intersections between South African environmental history and social justice, the nonchalant manner with which Costa Rican ecologists avoid pit vipers. I graduated with my degree in English and a minor in biology.
After college I joined The Peregrine Fund to research and design interpretive displays and later transitioned to my current position as outreach coordinator for the American Kestrel Partnership, a project that aims to produce kestrel research and management solutions through the collaborations of both professional and citizen scientists. I am now returning to my studies at the University of Oregon with interest in nonfiction writing and a concentration in US environmental history. I think back to my childhood and the “war” between wolves and livestock. How do we chisel cultural narratives into something less vitriolic? And can a community care this much about bunchgrass?
In my free time I play roller derby, music, and human fetch for my pet lovebird. I also have aspirations of photographing the Andromeda galaxy, given significant improvements in skill and geek budget.

I grew up in Boise, Idaho, surrounded by the curves of foothills, the smell of sage, and the beige flowers of antelope-bitterbrush. I stayed close to home for college, attending The College of Idaho, a private liberal-arts college in Caldwell, a rural farm town that smells like sugarbeets and cow manure after it rains. I graduated in 2011 with my B.S. in environmental studies with a focus in conservation biology and a minor in creative writing.

My current graduate studies at the University of Oregon concentrate on marine biology and natural resource management. My thesis concerns the manner in which coastal development may promote jellyfish blooms and the economic impact such blooms may have on fishermen in the Northern California Current. My advisor is Dr. Kelly Sutherland.

Outside of school, I enjoy yoga, river rafting, and mixed martial arts.

As a youngster growing up in a suburb of Chicago, I cultivated an early interest in fishing through summer trips to Wisconsin, West Virginia, and North Carolina, as well as poaching bass ponds on nearby golf courses after hours via bicycle and spinning rod.

While attending Middlebury College in Vermont I “evolved” into a fly fisherman and at that point there was no turning back. I have since spent most of my adult life planning my next fly fishing adventure. Ultimately, this led me to full-time residence in Maupin, Oregon- a rural Central Oregon town of 450 people on the lower Deschutes River.

In five years as retail and guide service manager, guide, and instructor at the Deschutes Angler Fly Shop in Maupin, I was regularly exposed to a large range of issues surrounding the high profile water resource of the Deschutes River. The river defined the small community in which I lived, and decisions concerning the management of the river had enormous impact on the livelihoods of many in the community, myself included.
Through my almost daily forays to the Deschutes and elsewhere, fly rod in hand, I developed an impassioned concern for the vitality of our rivers. In turn, this led to an inspired interest in the policies managing our region’s water resources with respect to the health of our fisheries.

Subsequently, I began working with Trout Unlimited in Bend, OR to further explore the field of watershed management. I have since worked directly on a range of policy issues concerning water resources in Central Oregon as numerous federal, state, and non-profit organizations attempt to balance the demands of recreation, irrigation, and fisheries in our region.

Through the Environmental Studies program at UO I will pursue an outstanding academic foundation to complement my experience in the field. Ultimately, I aspire to contribute to water policy and watershed management decisions by innovating solutions to the allocation of water resources in the Western US.

My all-time favorite thing to do is to float and camp on rivers, and with some good fishing in the mix I could ask for nothing more. I also enjoy hiking with my two dogs, barbequeing on the back deck, watching Chicago Cubs games, tying steelhead flies, and chasing steelhead throughout the Pacific Northwest.

I graduated from Pacific Lutheran University in 2010 with a B.A. in Chemistry and minors in Environmental Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies. For the next year, I worked in outreach and education as a Lutheran Volunteer Corps volunteer at Citizens for a Healthy Bay, an environmental nonprofit in Tacoma, WA.
I am interested in the intersect of human and environment; thus my proposed concentrations are sustainable development and affecting social change. A Minnesotan by birth, I’ve adapted well to the Pacific Northwest over the last five years: clouds and rain (versus sweltering heat and snow) signify year-round ultimate frisbee and bike commuting opportunities, plus a significant reduction in exposure to harmful UV radiation! I have dreams of becoming the next Bill Nye, trekking in Patagonia, and learning to cook.

I was raised macrobiotically in Madison, Wisconsin. After graduating from Beloit College in 2006 with a degree in studio art and French, I moved on a whim to Oakland, California. I landed a job as a picture framer and began trying to figure out what to do next.

A copy of Heat by George Monbiot jolted me awake to the severity of the climate crisis. I started an environmental blog and turned my workplace into a certified green business. Thanks to my upbringing, I have always connected food with larger issues, and this one was no different. During a yearlong internship with SAGE (Sustainable Agriculture Education) of Berkeley, I collaborated on a curriculum for the Sunol AgPark, and, more recently, I began helping out at City Slicker Farms.

I’m especially interested in how modern food systems and climate change interrelate, and in the ways that visual art and literature equip us to deal conceptually with our own small part in large-scale ecological problems.

Although I loved living in the Bay Area, I never quite got used to the mild weather or to the startling tropical plant life, so I am excited to move to Eugene, where the flora is a little more familiar, and where, I’ve heard, there is a small chance it might even snow.

I grew up in Eugene and then moved away for eight years, attending college in Indiana and Connecticut. For a brief while I was a classical musician. However, the pull of Oregon (truly the best place on Earth), and my growing curiosity about science and the natural world, were too great to resist, and I returned home to study biology. For the last 20+ years I have lived and worked in the Lane County area in various occupations, from hazelnut farmer, to water treatment plant operator, water laboratory analyst, and laboratory quality assurance officer. I am pursuing environmental studies to add a much richer dimension to my life and my future work, hopefully in service to the community and the environment. I was drawn to the University of Oregon for the diversity of faculty and students affiliated with environmental studies, and the unique interdisciplinary program that is not offered at other schools.

My intellectual interests relate to central themes about how we live and work: 1) the qualities of social, organizational and economic systems that either serve to connect us to or alienate us from non-human life and bio-physical processes, and 2) different cultural/intellectual approaches that shape our response as we interact with nature. More specifically, I am interested in the conceptual foundations that shape scientific ecological inquiry, the popular conceptions of ecology and science in general, and their bearing on how we use science in public decision-making processes. I am also interested in philosophical conceptions of self/other and how these conceptions affect our understanding of, and relationship with the non-built environment. Additionally, I would like to find ways to beneficially apply philosophy in public and group decision-making processes as a way to foster deep and lasting change.

In my spare time I enjoy listening to music, reading poetry, natural history, science, and philosophy, playing poker and other games, gardening, hiking, cooking, and spending time with my family and friends (both two- and four-legged).

I could say that it all began with a childhood spent largely in trees; with the stubborn six-year-old who would scramble ungracefully up the ancient mango tree in our yard. I went on to spend much of my days there, in the woods, in the mud and getting bitten by red ants.

But the truth is, it was only much later that I noticed changes in Kerala, the astonishingly beautiful state in India where I was born. Gaping wounds were mined open in the mountains that our house overlooked, the earth growing bald in patches. At 12, I went to the beach we visited every day, and saw it coated in thick sulphurous foam and strewn with fish, after the titanium factory up the coast decided that it was too expensive taking its effluents offshore.

I graduated in Economics, did a diploma in International Relations and Geopolitics, and worked with a few social change research centres; then decided to return to writing, my first love, and completed my post-graduate diploma in Journalism. I spent two years at The Hindu, one of India’s oldest English newspapers, and became part of its 131-year-old history as Reporter and Sub-Editor, and worked on more than a hundred stories on heritage, art, literature and the environment. Elsewhere, I wrote on human rights, tribal issues, the politics of water and agriculture.

I’d like to study how our perspectives on culture and identity tie up with the way we view our environment. I hope to understand why different cultures, genders, races and classes think so differently about the environment, and how our performative and non-performative aspects – like theatre, languages, literature, dance and storytelling- influence our relationship with our communities and their issues. This is because I believe that that besides our ongoing battles to protect the environment, we must also work towards boosting the immunities of our communities, so that over time, we evolve a new way of living, and thinking about living.

As a citizen of the “Third World”, I also have a deliberate interest in social justice movements, in the social irony of living a life of deprivation in areas that are resource-rich. I have come to understand the environment not just as the wetlands and the jungles, but as the land where we do live – specifically, the land consigned to the poorest among us.

All along the way, there have also been martial arts, mountaineering, diving, swimming, writing, trekking, theatre, filmmaking, pottery, reading, and dancing.

Few people have the privilege of having a Spanish dreamer for a father and a nomadic wild-child from Northern Wisconsin for a mother. These two characters brought me into this world on a snowy evening in Lake Tahoe, CA, and have since given me a run for my money.

By the time I was 14, I had lived in California, the province of Quebec, Canada, the Catalan Pyrenees of Spain and the Wisconsin-Michigan border. I speak Catalan with a mountain accent, Spanish with a Catalan accent and English with an Upper-Peninsula-of-Michigan accent. All of this hullabaloo meant a lot of change, but there were also some constants: everywhere we went, my dad always knew the geography, my mom always made us look at the moon, and I made nature my imaginary friend. Now a bit older, I try to have actual friends, but the great outdoors is still a big part of my life. I very much look forward to exploring the natural wonders that the Pacific Northwest has to offer.

Academically, the topics that put a twinkle in my eye include environmental sociology, ethics, education and communications. I received my B.S. in Landscape Architecture from the University of Wisconsin in 2008, and have since been working as an ecological designer at Applied Ecological Services in Brodhead, WI. I enjoy using my written and graphic creativity to communicate in various ways. Ideally, the future will present me with the opportunity to funnel this creativity into the development of multi-media tools and strategies to inform a given audience about pressing environmental issues. The University of Oregon provides me with the perfect setting in which to grow closer to this objective, and I am thrilled to embark on this new chapter of my life!

Which reminds me… I need to go practice how to say Oregon, Eugene and Willamette like a local and not like an idiot. Wish me luck!

Growing up in the Central Valley of California – one of the nation’s agricultural hot spots – I became fascinated with the seemingly oblivious and wasteful motions of our capitalistic culture, (never mind the harmful side effects of pesticides or the gross injustice of dislocating families from their historical land for intensive farming practices). In this context, I wondered how the current corporate system of manufacturing and farming could change in a way that would be more sustainable, while also being practical and socially desirable. This interest and curiosity led me through disparate, yet interwoven avenues, where sustainability played out in my life.

Throughout my undergraduate career at California State University, Fresno, I worked with a non-profit organization – the Sequoia ForestKeeper – to produce forest surveys and to document and research Forest Service logging practices within the boundaries of the Sequoia National Forest. Then, collaborating with the engineering department on my campus, I joined The Green Issue, a school club for sustainable building, and helped launch our very first sustainability film festival in the spring of 2011. I have been composting my family’s food waste for three years, as well as participating in my school’s recycling club. At the University of Oregon’s Environmental Studies program, I hope to take these passions for sustainability, with my undergraduate interdisciplinary background in neuroscience, to use MRI technology to understand the neural circuits and patterns of sustainable decision-making.

Some of my other interests include helping my family, volunteering for various river cleanup events, working on a research project with the San Joaquin River, hiking, backpacking, enjoying the outdoors with friends, kickboxing, and playing badminton.

Concentration areas: Sustainable Food Systems; Ecology

Advisor: Bendan Bohannan, Biology

Despite being a (begrudging) Boyscout, I was a youngster that didn’t care too much for being in or thinking about the outdoors. Instead, I stayed inside reading books, playing the piano, building models, learning computers, and generally being an artsy nerd. While getting a dual degree in Music Composition and English from Centre College, I started doubting the worth of many of those things, took a class on Kant/natural aesthetics/walking, worked in Yellowstone for a summer, and got hooked on nature so bad it became a liability.

I spent the next few years working in and traveling to beautiful places. I was a Student Conservation Association intern in Yellowstone and Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Parks, a guide in Kantishna, Alaska, and an environmental educator in Denali National Park and Preserve. Between jobs, I traveled extensively as a professional bum. (You can look at maps of the jobs I’ve had and the places I’ve lived, if you’d like.)

Despite having the time of my life, I somehow couldn’t stay away from school for long. I began the Masters program in 2009 and have already grown intellectually in unexpected and exciting ways. My concentrations are in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Conservation, and I’m beginning work on a project examining off-trail group wilderness travel in Denali. I’m also taking classes in climbing, mountaineering, and environmental education from UO’s fantastic Outdoor Pursuits Program.

Fun = backpacking, climbing, hiking, packrafting, skiing; co-oping, journaling, listening to music, photographing, reading; and wandering, generally.

I’ve lived in rural Oregon 11 years, appreciating the climate for year-round gardening and outdoor living. I entered the UO ENVS program with a passion for education, plants, and food. During my first year as a master’s student, I concentrated on Native American studies, forest ecology, and food security, discovering how my interests collide.

Beginning my second year as a graduate student, I will be teaching an interactive ENVS 411 course titled Northwest Ethnobotany. This course is the first in a series for the 2011-2012 Environmental Leadership Program. After learning about culturally important local plant species in the fall course, students will develop ethnobotanical educational curricula for three community partners and lead field trips and lessons for middle school students. Learn more here. I am very excited about these upcoming projects!

The research I am doing for my thesis focuses on how the physical effects of climate change on culturally important, edible native plant species will affect the culture and traditions of Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest. Working with the Tribal Climate Change Project, I hope that what I learn through interviews and research will build an awareness of the significance of understanding the impacts of climate change on culturally important plants and the people who use them, as well as strategies for their preservation.

I’m working toward concurrent Master’s degrees in Environmental Studies and Conflict and Dispute Resolution, as well as taking courses toward the completion of a Nonprofit Management Certificate.

My interests are focused on collaborative planning and policy addressing complex natural resource issues involving multiple stakeholders.  I’m also interested in conservation work and in ecological restoration as a community and economic development tool.  I’m fascinated by the work of land trusts and watershed councils, and worked full time from June 2010 to August 2011 for McKenzie River Trust (a regional land trust based in Eugene) as a Habitat Restoration Technician, and then Conservation Planning Associate through the Resource Assistance for Rural Environments (RARE) program in the University of Oregon’s Community Service Center.

During my previous life as a Hoosier, I completed a B.S. in Biology and an interdisciplinary certificate combining liberal arts and business management. Before moving to Oregon, I worked as a Research Associate in a soil ecology lab, worked and volunteered at organic gardens, co-taught an environmental studies course at an independent school, worked at a local outdoor gear shop, and did research for an upcoming book on environmental social science.

When I’m not working, you’ll find me climbing or bouldering, basking in the sun in a park, cooking, hiking, biking, or finding any reasonable excuse to be outside. I’m also interested in communities, time banks, facilitation, potlucks, gardening, nonviolent communication, and good beer.

I graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 2009 with a B.A. in Zoology. My undergraduate research focused on the sublethal and often subtle effects that pesticides and other chemical pollutants can have on wildlife and human health. This work made me aware of the inadequacy of many current policies related to chemical and nonpoint source water pollution. Here at the University of Oregon, I plan on concentrations in Ecology and Policy. My current research interests involve the success of voluntary policies in reducing pesticide use and agricultural nonpoint source pollution. I hope that ENVS will help me accomplish my lifelong goal of being a Planeteer. A few interests of mine include cooking, environmental and social justice, amphibians, bikes, laughing, and playing the ukulele.

Concentration Areas: Principles and Methods in Conservation Policy; Conservation Policy in Law and Land Use Planning; Conceptions of Nature, Environment, and Conservation.

Advisors:
Ted Toadvine, Philosophy and Environmental Studies
Peter Walker, Geography and Environmental Studies
Rich Margerum, Planning, Public Policy and Management
Patrick Hurley, Environmental Studies

Research Interests: I am interested in the political and policy implications of disequilibrium ecology for conserving biodiversity on private land. I hope to contribute to sustainability through research in political ecology, with an emphasis on communicative planning. My more specific interests include natural resource policy, environmental economics, game theory, collaborative planning, interpretive policy analysis, Leopold’s land ethic, and the Willamette Valley’s oak savanna.

In my thesis, I am arguing that humans inadvertently risk exacerbating the loss of biodiversity in the name of saving it, by disregarding risk to maintenance-dependent species from species-based land-use regulation.

Prior to entering the ENVS program, I worked as a technical writer, produced field recordings of traditional African percussion, and became actively interested in conserving biodiversity on private land.

I graduated from Elmira College with a B.A. in both English Literature and an individualized study in Environment, Culture and Society. These spheres of study, combined with four years living in upstate NY, made for a colorful Venn diagram of “Things that I care about very much!” One of the subjects in the middle of that diagram is hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, as well as the environmental justice issues surrounding the practice. If you’re not sure what hydraulic fracturing is, well, I have exciting news! For my terminal project, I am writing a book about it: literary nonfiction, written for a popular audience. I’ll be visiting and interviewing several Native American groups to learn how this drilling process will impact them — or, in the case of many tribes in the Western parts of the United States, how it has already impacted them. Is hydraulic fracturing sustainable in environmental, social, and economic terms? Are the benefits and drawbacks equally distributed? Currently, there is a moratorium on drilling in NY until the state has gathered enough information to act. It is critical that when the moratorium ends, and discussion on the future of “fracking” picks up, that every stakeholder is equitably represented.

Occasionally I do things besides “read,” “write,” and “read some more”. I’m passionately invested in environmental education, having worked as a Teacher Naturalist with Massachusetts Audubon for six years (www.massaudubon.org), and interned at Tanglewood Nature Center in Elmira, NY (www.tanglewoodnaturecenter.com). Currently, I serve on the Board of Directors for an environmental education nonprofit in Eugene, Camas Educational Network (www.camasnet.org), and invite all of you to come work with us!

I like to walk everywhere, and sometimes diversify my travels via SCUBA, kayak, and scampering.

Growing up exploring the mountains, lakes and rivers of the Pacific Northwest has given me a deep respect for wild places and natural surroundings. In graduate school I want to explore the connection human beings have with the natural environment and find ways to better integrate ecological and social systems.

My main interest is in environmental anthropology and more specifically in community based restoration/conservation programs; cultural conceptions of nature; ethnobotany; sustainable resource use; environmental education; and nature reserve/park design and management. I currently have a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from Southern Oregon University, and I am finishing a certificate in botany.

In the past I have worked with nature centers and natural history museums teaching environmental education curriculums to local school children. I have also worked with the Forest service doing goshawk, spotted owl and salamander surveys. The salamander surveys even resulted in the discovery of a new species, the Scott Bar Salamander. Just recently I finished a 2 year research project on the mycorrhizal symbionts of oak and mountain mahogany trees and published a paper with a professor at SOU. Currently I am working with the BLM doing a large scale landscape ecology project on the biodiverse flora of the Cascade Siskiyou National Monument.

In my free time I like going for long backpacking trips into the wilderness, traveling through Mexico and Central America, exploring creeks and rivers, organic gardening, painting with watercolors, making pottery, learning about ayurvedic healing and nature journaling. I am inspired by natures’ details. I enjoy looking deeply into my surroundings and I hope to share this vision with my local and global community.

I grew up hiking, biking and tidepool-hopping around the Pacific Northwest. In college, I played around with ecology and poetry—with sea turtle conservation in Mexico and magic realism in the literature of marginalized groups—and ended up majoring in Biology and English.

Since then, I’ve worked on energy efficiency and education projects for underserved populations in Detroit, community-based renewable energy projects in Seattle, monitored shorebirds and sea turtles in North Carolina, and freelanced for local papers off and on. I’m passionate about environmental justice, water resources, and writing, and I’m excited to connect these areas in my studies at UO.

Other passions include bikes, homebrews and swimming in any natural body of water I find.

Growing up in the great state of Montana, I learned to love the outdoors from an early age. During my undergraduate career at Cornell University, I studied Biology and Society with a focus in Environmental Studies, and co-authored a paper on biofuels and the global food system. I explored other areas as well, such as Gender Studies, and French, and spent a year studying abroad in Aix-en-Provence, France. After graduating, I made the move to the lovely city of San Francisco where I spent two years working for the statewide energy efficiency campaign, Flex Your Power. There, I learned about energy, climate change, and public outreach while working to promote environmentally responsible behavior throughout California.

For my master’s research, I am studying the intersection of gender and the environment with an emphasis on empowerment and collective action. This fall I will travel to India to work with Vanastree, a women’s seed collective, and the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE). Together with local participants, I plan to research how these organizations empower local community members, especially women, and what activities they use to accomplish their goals. I intend to make the research as collaborative as possible, working to investigate questions that participants want answered, and to co-produce written and artistic materials that highlight participant experiences. I also plan to work in collaboration with Kelly Sky to produce a film about Vanastree and ATREE, and to forge connections between the University of Oregon and these two groups.

In my leisure time I like to act, ski, sleep, camp, listen to music, float the river, and hit up the dance floor!

I was very lucky to grow up in a passive solar house that my parents built just before I was born in rural Western North Carolina. Although the mountains of North Carolina were a great place to grow up, I really enjoy the bigger mountains and trees out here on the West Coast. 

While at the University of North Carolina, I was involved in one of the first successful campus renewable energy campaigns in the southeast. I also won the Morris K. Udall scholarship (www.udall.gov), a national environmental leadership scholarship, in both 2002 & 2003. In 2004, I spent most of my senior year organizing the first Southeast Student Renewable Energy Conference to engage and network Southern students beyond UNC in energy and climate work. Then, I worked to support and build this network through the Southern Energy Network (www.climateaction.net) until 2009. I graduated in May 2004 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Science and a Minor in Biology.

In the summer of 2004, I became a co-founding member of Energy Action Coalition (EAC) (www.energyactioncoalition.org), which I was involved with through the summer of 2009. In late fall 2005, I attended the UN Climate Negotiations in Montreal with the EAC. There, I helped start the international youth climate blog: www.itsgettinghotinhere.org , which is now in the top three climate change blogs in the world. I was co-chair of the EAC Steering Committee, which oversaw the central staff and most of the coalition work, from 2006-2008. I have collaborated with a number of community, state, regional and national organizations on fighting new dirty energy facilities and promoting cleaner energy alternatives. In the fall of 2008, I joined the Board of Directors of the Highlander Center (www.highlandercenter.org), which has been central in the fight for social justice in the South and Appalachia since 1932.

I’m just getting connected here in Eugene, but I volunteer weekly at Grower’s Market, am a member of the Rural Organizing Project and volunteer with the Labor Education Resource Center (LERC) at UO to support green jobs networking and resource sharing in Oregon. In my free time, I enjoy biking, hiking, gardening, listening to many different kinds of music, and I dream of learning to play the banjo someday.