students

congrats to the class of 2026!

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Environmental studies (ENVS) is the academic component of the Bailey COE. Offered as a linked major or minor, all ENVS linked majors have a primary major (or majors) in another academic department or program. So linked equals more, not less! Our current and past students hail from almost every single department and program at Wes: from government, art, and chemistry to economics, English, and earth and environmental sciences to film studies, sociology, and biology!

As we congratulate and wish all good things for our Class of 2026 ENVS majors, check out how the ENVS major can be linked across natural sciences, social sciences, and the arts and humanities, while learning more about four of our amazing graduating seniors (starting top left, above): FILM/ENVSmajor Chloe Andersen, PSYC/ENVS major Rachel Masterson, STS/GRST/ENVS major Isaac Ostrow, and E&ES/ENVS major Catherine Auerbach!

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schumann institute sponsors local food justice tour!

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by Josephine Almond

The Food Justice Adventurers Set Off
In the early morning hours of April 10, a group of Wesleyan students set off to experience local food justice efforts firsthand. At 9 am sharp (a challenging hour for even the best of Wesleyan students), eight Wesleyan student foodies, activists, and explorers, piled into a Wesleyan van, ready to experience local food justice efforts firsthand. The van was expertly piloted by Environmental Fellow and field-trip coordinator extraordinaire Rory, with our other amazing coordinator Jahlani next to him, riding shotgun. We started our day with a healthy amount of networking and granola bars en route to our first stop, Mi Tierra Tortilla.

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building a sustainable future

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This semester, Environmental Studies (ENVS), the academic arm of the Bailey College of the Environment, is offering a student forum called Constructing Sustainability: Solutions to the Environmental and Housing Crises. The forum aims to equip students with the ability to engage in and think critically about the interdisciplinary nature of the current “affordability” crisis. A major question posed to the class is, “How can we reconcile the pressing reality of the climate and ecological crises with urgent demands for affordable housing?”

The forum’s student leaders, Thalia Witkovsky ‘27 and Luca D’Agruma ‘27, designed the course as an introductory survey of the intersection of the major contemporary issues within the fields of housing, climate, and urban policy. A copy of the syllabus is linked here, if you’re interested in learning more. 

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2026 summer fellowship app now closed!

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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. Full summer research fellows will receive a total of $5250. Partial summer & fall or spring fellowships, also available. Deadline for all, for 2026: February 25, Need more info? Email lkenney01@wesleyan.edu.

envs197 students engage in enviro events

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by Kate Miller

  • Clockwise from left Visiting Assistant Professor Kate Miller, community volunteer Rebecca MacLachlan, Will Rassier ’29, Leonidas Boutris ’27, Graduate Teaching Assistant Elizabeth Gerbi and Bethzy Meija Jaime ’28 work to remove invasive species such as burning bush from Ravine Park, a city-owned park just a block from campus.
  • Annabel Sheir ’29 and Ella Hendricks (29 work with others at a clean-up at the Middletown Kayak Launch and Landfill organized by the Jonah Center, a local non-profit that has been expanding recreational use of the site.
  • Current and former Intro to Environmental Studies students along with fellow hockey team members help out with a landscaping project at the Bailey College of the Environment, pulling non-native plants out and replacing them with native species. L-R Will Rassier ’29, Dallas D’amato ’27, Jack DesRuisseaux ’29, jack Bosco ’26, Dylan Margel 29’, Danny Judge ’26, Ryan Garvey ’29, Patrick McDevitt ’28, Jakub Kohn ’28. Andie Bisceglia, COE Administrative Assistant, organized the event.
  • The impacts of those choosing other events are no less important as learning experiences. Attending a meeting of Middletown’s Inland Wetland and Watercourses Agency, Riley Harvey ’29 commented that “…the process was much more sophisticated than I had previously thought. It made me think about what would happen if agencies like this one did not exist; how the environment would be at even greater risk.”
  • Anya Bernardo ’28, Finnian Hayden ’28, and Louie Borris ’28 attending the Art Lecture: Richard Yancey ’85—Building the Future: Towards a Climate Ready Architecture.
  • Eliza Lampert ’29 frolics with dinosaurs at the Peabody.

One of the many activities in the primary gateway course to the Environmental Studies degree, Introduction to Environmental Studies (ENVS197), is the “Check it Out” assignment. Students are tasked with attending an environmental event on or off campus and submitting their reflection on key aspects, such as sponsoring organization, goals, audience and their own reactions. These can include films, talks, museum visits, conferences, meetings, workshops and volunteer events such as a landscaping work party, clean-ups and others.

Each semester more than 30 percent of the students choose a service project, and overwhelmingly their reflections convey a sense of comradery and satisfaction, and often a deeper understanding of what land stewardship requires. Most express a strong interest in doing it again.

Annabel Schneir reflected on a clean-up she and another student, Ella Hendricks, participated in at the closed landfill, which now hosts a kayak launch and trail. “I learned about a new place in Middletown, learned about what it looks like when erosion control goes wrong, and got the privilege to meet and observe how dedicated the locals are to preserving their environment. Everyone at the event was incredibly gracious, and it reminded me how good it feels to take action. It is hard not to be troubled by the state of our world, but doing something tangible, however small, makes it feel a little more bearable.”

Students visited a variety of on and off-campus locations for volunteer work, including Ravine Park, a city-owned preserve just a block from campus, which many used for a variety of other reasons including to conduct another project, the Ecosystem Walk, or for inspiration on their Nature & Art project. 

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Wes Students & Faculty explore Manresa Island

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During fall 2025, students and faculty from across Wesleyan pursued a coordinated set of research and creative projects at Manresa Island in Norwalk, Connecticut. The 25-acre island within a tidal marsh system of the Long Island Sound served as a Jesuit retreat in the late 19th and early 20th centuries before being acquired by Connecticut Light and Power for the construction of a coal-fired power plant. Over its 50 years of operation, the plant transitioned from coal to oil and expanded the land mass by roughly 100 acres, largely through the disposal of coal ash and dredge spoils. Since the plant’s decommissioning and abandonment in 2013, the island has developed an urban ecology marked by remnant industrial structures, an early-successional birch forest rooted in ash deposits, and resident populations of turkey, deer, and osprey along its rocky shoreline.

The semester brought together students and faculty in the humanities, arts, and earth and environmental sciences to explore a post-industrial coastal landscape in rapid socio-political and ecological transition. (The site is proposed as a park providing public shoreline access, funded by a philanthropic 501(c)3.) Students in Energy Legacies and Ecological Futures (HIST161/ENVS249/STS161), taught by Courtney Fullilove, launched the Manresa Stories Oral History Project, interviewing former power plant workers, community members, and others with long-standing ties to the island.  Working in partnership with University of Connecticut’s Engaged, Public, Oral, and Community Histories (EPOCH) and Central Connecticut State University’s Public History Programs, students used the digital oral-history platform TheirStory to record, archive, and exhibit community histories. George Schunk ‘28, the GIS assistant for the course, developed a StoryMap integrating archival materials gathered by the class, including company logbooks, city planning reports, photographs, and artifacts recovered on site. Through this work, students explored how a tidal estuary formed in glacial retreat some 18,000 years ago became, by the 21st century, a site of decayed fossil fuel infrastructure and chronic pollution.

In Soils, Dana Royer’s students sampled soils, leaves, and tree cores in the birch forest that has established itself on coal-ash deposits in the last fifty years. Their measurements confirmed the higher organic carbon content of the ash relative to a nearby control site. Tree ring analyses offered a record of environmental change over the lifetime of the trees, while samples of gray birch showed that the species concentrates toxins in its leaves but not its wood, indicating possibility for phytoremediation strategies.

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