The Environment and Community M.A. program allowed Marissa Schmitz 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. 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.