coexist – Page 13 – bailey college of the environment @ wes u

andrews ’24 retraces her great-grandfather’s farming footsteps

Every year, the Bailey COE awards fellowships to fund summer research opportunities for Wesleyan students across all majors and class years. Most recently, the COE awarded 35 summer fellowships and 1 fall fellowship to Wes students. Olivia Andrews ’24 is an art history major with a minor in film. Olivia’s summer fellowship project mainly centered around her great-grandfather, Tony Andrews, a black farmer who emigrated from Cape Verde by boat in 1926 and founded the family’s farm in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

senior spotlight: dylan campos ’24

by acmorris

Our 33 class of 2024 ENVS linked majors have primary majors in 15 different departments, from film to government to feminist, gender and sexuality to chemistry. This diversity reflects the deep and widespread interest in environmental issues on the Wesleyan campus and our incredibly fertile coexist community! Dylan Campos ’24 (he/they) is a history and environmental studies major with a minor in global engagement. Learn more about Dylan, below!

angstadt ’25 digs coe summer fellowship opp

by acmorris

Every year, the Bailey COE awards fellowships to fund summer research opportunities for Wesleyan students across all majors and class years. Most recently, the COE awarded 35 summer fellowships and 1 fall fellowship to Wes students. Natalie Angstadt ’25 is a junior majoring in Archaeology and Neuroscience & Behavior. Last summer she engaged in an archaeological dig at Trasimeno Archaeology Field School with the Umbra Institute in Perugia, Italy.

coe student-faculty research funds allow o’neil to study connection between pesticides, als

by lfranklin

Each year the Bailey College of the Environment provides faculty-student research grants to provide faculty and their students an opportunity to conduct research that would not have been otherwise possible. Research in the O’Neil lab is focused on understanding the structure-function relationship of proteins involved in neurodegenerative diseases, specifically ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; commonly called Lou Gehrig’s disease) and Alzheimer’s Disease. Thanks to a COE faculty-student research grant and a COE summer fellowship, Alison O’Neil, assistant professor of chemistry, Gloster Aaron, professor of biology, and Aaron Berson ‘24, an NS&B (neuroscience and behavior) and IDEAS (Integrated Design, Engineering, Arts & Society) major with a minor in chemistry, were able to collaborate on Professor O’Neil’s investigation of cis-chlordane as an environmental trigger of ALS.

kirana ’21 uses data to tell climate stories

by kwu01

Yuke Kirana ‘21 received her BA from Wesleyan in environmental studies and earth & environmental sciences. She is currently working as a data analyst at the Systems Change Lab at World Resources Institute (WRI), a global research nonprofit partnering with the Bezos Earth Funds and funded by the GEF Foundation, focusing on seven key areas relating to natural resources: food, forests, water, energy, cities, climate, and ocean.

Yuke’s interest in environmental studies began in high school, when she worked on a plastic waste reduction project as a student in Jakarta, Indonesia. “That project exposed me to the complexity of environmental issues,” says Yuke. “And it piqued my interest to learn more about the complex system that influences and shapes environmental initiatives.”

biasucci ’21 helps companies become more sustainable

by lfranklin

Liana Biasucci ‘21 was an economics and environmental studies double major at Wes whose senior capstone essay was entitled, How to Build Back Better: Greening the Recovery from COVID-19, about using government stimulus packages to advance climate mitigation in the US and combining economic goals with environmental ones (before the Inflation Reduction Act came out). Today, she is a manager at Green Strategies, a sustainability consulting firm.

nimura explores women writing about the natural world

by lfranklin

In spring 2024, Janice Nimura will be teaching ENVS272/Knowing Their Place: Two Centuries of Women Generating Wonder in the Natural World, exploring the history of women writing about the natural world. The course runs in conjunction with Professor Nimura’s newest book project.

This year as part of the 20th Annual Robert F. Schumann Where On Earth Are We Going symposium, Janice Nimura, this year’s Menakka and Essel Bailey ‘66 Distinguished Visiting Scholar and finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, delivered the opening talk entitled, “Knowing Their Place: Rachel Carson and the Women Who Came Before Her.” The talk was inspired by a book Nimura is currently researching that will dive deep into the life and thinking of Rachel Carson and explore the 19th-century women naturalists who preceded her.