coexist – Page 3 – bailey college of the environment @ wes u

bery ’21 studies city-level climate planning

Sanya Bery ‘21 graduated from Wes with majors in government and environmental studies. She is currently a graduate candidate in environmental justice, sustainable development, and urban planning at the University of Michigan.

As an environmental studies student at Wesleyan, how did your academic and extracurricular experiences shape your decision to pursue graduate studies in environmental justice and urban planning?
The Bailey College of the Environment was such a unique program; it approached environmental issues through a justice-oriented lens, which isn’t common for undergrad programs. If not for the COE, I might have felt hesitant about pursuing this path because environmental studies can feel so focused on pure science and conservation. My thesis project with Professor Haddad, which analyzed the ambitious aspects of Middletown’s Climate Action Plan, prepared me well for graduate school.

chamberlin ’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 Chamberlin ’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.

food justice, solidarity in new london and beyond

by lgorman

On Monday, October 7, Wesleyan students, faculty, and members of the broader community broke with their lunch routines to attend “Food Justice & Solidarity in New London, CT, sponsored by a grant from the Robert F. Schumann Foundation to the Schumann Institute of the Bailey College of the Environment. There were about 20 Wesleyan students, staff and faculty, as well as community members in attendance. The hour-long workshop was facilitated by Julie R. Jacome-Garay (Co-Director of Operations and Programming) and Chloë Nuñez (Youth Program Manager) of FRESH New London, with the aim of spreading awareness about the organization’s food justice work. Despite its short duration, the workshop was packed full of informative and engaging content. Following group introductions, we got to know Julie and Chloë, learned in-depth about FRESH’s work, and heard stories from Wesleyan food justice interns who were placed at FRESH this summer.

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.

think tank explores agency: affect and action

by sjager

Every academic year, the COE invites a small group of Wesleyan faculty and undergraduate students, plus a noted scholar from outside the University, to gather together for the Think Tank: a yearlong discussion of a critical environmental issue. The 2024-2025 Bailey COE Think Tank feature Sonia Sultan, Alan M. Dachs Professor of Science, Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies; Justine Quijada, Associate Professor of Religion, Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and Environmental Studies; and Garry Bertholf, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, alongside undergraduates Maryam Badr ’25, Hannah Podol ’25, and Nic Galleno, ’25. These University fellows will be joined by the 2024-2025 Menakka and Essel Bailey ‘66 Distinguished Visiting Scholar Roxy Coss: Jazz saxophonist and Founding President of the Women In Jazz Organization, as well as a Grammy-award winning musician, composer, educator and activist.

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!

grammy-winner coss joins coe think tank

by sjager

What brought you to the Bailey COE, and what kinds of contributions are you hoping to make here?
I’m officially here for the Bailey COE Think Tank, continuing the tradition to include cross-disciplinary contributors. This year the theme is agency, and the three faculty fellows wanted an artist or musician to complete the team. There’s a biologist [Sonia Sultan], an anthropologist and religion scholar [Justine Quijada], and an African American studies and literature scholar [Garry Bertholf] on the faculty.