students – coexist

2025 summer fellowship app now open!

The Bailey College of the Environment (COE) Research Fellowship Program allows current Wesleyan undergrads to undertake research on environmental topics under the guidance of a faculty mentor, either during the summer or during fall or spring semesters. Projects must relate to any of the broad themes covered by Environmental Studies and the Bailey COE. Fellowships are available to current Wesleyan juniors, sophomores and first-years, regardless of major, and may be undertaken at Wesleyan or anywhere in the world.

Apply now here!

Full summer research fellows will receive a total of $5000. Partial summer & fall or spring fellowships, also available. Deadline for all: February 24!

COE summer fellows find themselves while exploring the world

by Laurie Kenney

Last year, the Bailey COE awarded almost 40 fellowships to Wes students to pursue research opportunities on campus, across the country, and abroad. Learn more about the summer experiences of (from top left): Zoe Todd ’27, Kallan Tripician ’27, Ronan Costello ’25 (AMST, ENVS), Sadie Woodruff ’26 (BIOL, E&ES), Constance Hirwa (NS&B, PSYC), Ava Yuanshun Guralnick ’25 (AMST, ENGL), Jasmine Fridman ’25 (E&ES, STS), & Jeet Patel ’25 (E&ES), below!

Applications for summer 2025, fall 2025 and spring 2026 Bailey COE fellowships are open now! Apply by February 24!

chamberlain ’26 studies cougar conservation

by sjager

Every year, the Bailey COE awards fellowships to fund research opportunities for Wesleyan students across all majors and class years. Most recently, the COE awarded nearly 40 summer fellowships. One of those fellows, Milo Chamberlain ’26, is a junior majoring in environmental studies and government. He called in to the Bailey COE from his semester abroad in Arusha, Tanzania, to tell us about his summer researching a subpopulation of the endangered North American cougar on a potential development site in Los Angeles’s Verdugo Mountains.

george ’26 spends summer exploring food systems

by candersen

Every year, the Bailey COE awards fellowships to fund research opportunities for Wesleyan students across all majors and class years. Most recently, the COE awarded nearly 40 summer fellowships, including sociology and psychology double major Lacy George ’26, who spent her summer farming in Northern Italy and working at her local food bank in Seattle to conduct a narrative-based analysis of how food production, distribution, and waste is structured in small Italian and American communities. Her research aims to understand food justice solutions at the local level to potentially replicate at a national level.

meet our envs class of 2025!

by candersen

Environmental studies (ENVS) is the academic component of the Bailey COE. Offered as a linked major or minor, ENVS current and past students hail from almost every single department and program Wesleyan has to offer: from government, art, and chemistry to economics, English, and earth and environmental sciences to film studies, sociology, and biology. Meet some of our 40 ENVS class of 2025 majors below!

leviton ’25 explores how educators define a sustainable future

by pdamato

Every year, the Bailey COE awards fellowships to fund summer (and spring and fall) research opportunities for Wesleyan undergrads across all majors and class years. Most recently, the Bailey COE awarded almost 40 fellowships to Wes students, including Isadora Goldman Leviton ’25, an education and American studies major, who spent the summer conducting qualitative research interviews in the Greater Hartford area, regarding how educators define a sustainable future for themselves and their students.

envs course inspires guillemin ’27 to obtain wildfire cert

by ssekkmmiles

This past June, E&ES major Finn Guillemin ‘27 participated in an incredible hands-on learning experience through the YMCA of the Pines in Western New Jersey: getting his wildfire firefighter certification.

Finn’s decision to pursue certification was heavily influenced by a course he took in spring 2024: Fire Ecology and Management/ENVS329, taught by Professor Helen Poulos. The course focuses on fire as a fundamental ecological disturbance process that shapes plant communities globally. In the course, students explore how climate change and human land use have altered fire behavior, disrupting many species. The course also examines shifting fire regimes over time, from indigenous fire practices to contemporary fire management. The mix of in-class lectures, field exercises, and discussions fueled Finn’s curiosity and desire for hands-on experience.