Lizzie Edwards ’21 (she/her) double majored in Anthropology and Environmental Studies and minored in Middle Eastern Studies. While at Wesleyan, her senior capstone project, Politics of Thirst: Privatized Water, the Shadow State, and Citizenship Claims in Jordan, examined how water has become a key medium in which state responsibility is being privatized as well as the water access of refugees, low-income Jordanians, and elite residents. Here she shares her experience volunteering with the Student Voices for Refugees program of the University Alliance for Refugees & At-Risk Migrants (UARRM).
alumni
vogel ’11 shares career path with wes students
The Careers in Sustainability panel, hosted by the Gordon Career Center, the College of the Environment, and the Sustainability Office on October 4, 2019, included Nora Vogel ’11, director of communications for Coalition for Green Capital. The College of the Environment graduated its first cohort of environmental studies majors in 2010. Below, an interview with Vogel ’11, one of the first students to ever major in environmental studies at Wesleyan.
Did you come to Wesleyan knowing you wanted to study Environmental Studies? What led you to the COE?
Nora Vogel (NV): I knew I was interested in science and the environment, and I was thinking about doing biology. I actually worked in Professor Sonia Sultan’s lab, which was an amazing experience. At the same time, it felt hard to stick to research science as a career path, when I felt that many decision-makers in the world aren’t listening to the perfectly good science that we already have. That’s what got me interested in communications and in the Science in Society Program (SISP). I wondered what makes people make decisions about things, and what makes them trust one source and not another one. I took a Media in Society class that dovetailed really well with that, along with some sociology classes. I took a philosophy class with Professor Joseph Rouse about objectivity that I loved; we went deep down the rabbit hole of whether objective truth really exists. I still think about it all the time. The great thing about SISP was that it gave me a way to fit those things together, and it ended up being directly relevant to the career path I ended up on.
spitzer ’68 shares lessons from the osprey gardens
On Thursday, September 12, Dr. Paul Spitzer ‘68 gave a talk titled “Lessons From the Osprey Gardens” to mark the first day of his monthlong stay at Wesleyan. Dr. Spitzer is a visiting guest who will be giving several talks over the course of his stay and leading field trips for Mike Singer’s BIOL220/ Conservation Biology class. His next seminar—Biological Secrets & Ecological Significance of the Common Loon—will take place on Thursday, October 3 at noon here at Wesleyan.
pearce ’94 works to restore natural balance at woodend
Alison Bidwell Pearce ’94 is an ecological anthropologist working to restore the ecological communities of Woodend Nature Sanctuary in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and spread an environmental ethos in the DC region.