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Dear ESS Friends,
I’m happy to share some breaking news with you. Congratulations to Erika Francks ’17 (Environmental Studies) on being selected as a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship! I'll be sure to update you as we hear more. Erika Francks continues our impressive run of 4 ESS Rhodes finalists in the past five years. Elsewhere on the fellowship front, three of our past students, including Erika, are conducting Fulbright funded research in sub-Saharan Africa. Erika will be traveling to Lesotho to examine micro-grid access and solar energy. Lauren Cloward ’16 is currently in Burkina Faso studying the intersection of climate change and food and water security while Marisa Rudolph ’18 is in Ghana investigating how women’s access to extension services can improve agricultural productivity of Moringa tree products.
Last year we funded six of our students as part of the College of Arts and Sciences REAL (Real Experiences Actual Learning) Internship Program. These summer stipends allowed our students to:
- conduct primate research in Costa Rica (Stacey Odo ’20)
- create a training manual for the Green Rhinos environmental education program in India (Abby Suster ’19)
- tutor children in math and science in Bolivia (Kimberley Grandi ’19)
- investigate the extent of sea star wasting disease on the Pacific coast (Teresa Schofield ’19) and,
- measure carbon sequestration in soils at our very own Forge Garden (Sarah Porter ’19 and Zachary Gianotti ’19).
We are planning to fund many more REAL interns this academic year and summer. One exciting partnership is with the Santa Clara County Second Harvest Food Bank who will hire several ESS interns this winter to use their GIS (Geographic Information System) skills to map hunger in our county. These opportunities are made possible from donations to our ESS program. Thanks to all our ESS donors, big and small.
Leslie Gray
Department Chair
Environmental Studies and Sciences
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