Environment & Community | Explore the diverse relationships between environment and community.

Capstone topics in this program include the following general themes:

International Conservation Project Officer for the American Bird Conservancy

Wendy Willis

Wendy Willis landed a dream job at the American Bird Conservancy, a Virginia-based nonprofit that focuses on conservation of birds in the Americas. As the organization’s new international conservation project officer, Wendy will manage projects in Colombia and Ecuador that range from land acquisitions, community development, and reforestation initiatives to building technical capacity with Latin American partners, and implementing sub-grants from private donors and foundations. Wendy credits the Environment and Community program and its interdisciplinary approach for helping her develop the critical thinking skills she’ll use throughout her career.

Analyzing access to California's regulatory forest offset market.

Marissa Schmitz

The Environment and Community M.A. program allowed Marissa to gain familiarity with research design, data collection and analysis, and manuscript writing, while also developing a specialized research focus. Having the freedom to shape her project using personal judgments and according to her own theoretical interests helped her mature as a researcher. She is now a doctoral student in Natural Resources at the University of Minnesota, where she studies forest economics and policy, including non-timber forest products and landowner participation in carbon sequestration markets. She enjoys using qualitative methods and critical theory to understand natural resource management. Marissa and her Environment and Community advisor are currently publishing papers from her thesis, with one article appearing in Global Environmental Politics and another with Geoforum. The word “Geoforum” can be linked to the article here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.06.021