senior spotlight: lea schaffer ’24

What majors or minors did you combine with environmental studies?
I’m a biology and environmental studies major.

Why did you decide to become an environmental studies major?
I actually transferred to Wesleyan University for my junior year. Part of what interested me in transferring is that I was coming from a school that was just doing hard sciences and biology. I wanted to get a better understanding of its applications in the world, and I thought the environmental studies program was a very good way for me to see, especially in terms of sustainability, the impacts and the larger picture. 

Can you tell me about your senior project?
I’m doing an essay that has to do with wastewater management and climate change. So, what is wastewater management? How does it function? And what are the problems with it? And how does climate change exacerbate it?

Why did you choose that topic?We have these family friends that my dad has worked with that has this really cool company called Clean Two that does septic tanks that have a process to denitrify the waste. So I learned all about why it was needed. It was placed near Cape Cod in Massachusetts, where they have a huge nitrogen problem in the water and all of it comes from wastewater. It’s kind of a solution to that. That got me interested in wastewater in general, and kind of understanding how climate change makes things more important in that matter.

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