Bio

As a child, I was restless indoors on a sunny day, loved hopping into local streams to find crawfish, and never turned down the opportunity to go exploring (much to the horror of my family who knew very well my lack of direction as a child). But my passion for environmental science started with the click of a remote: news channels broadcasting record high temperatures and raging wildfires, droughts and coastal flooding, and warnings for yet another hurricane heading to make landfall. I remember sitting in front of the television, hearing similar news over and over, and as I grew, the words “climate change” became more familiar. Yet as scary as the climate crisis was, I only ever seemed to hear complaints and problems without any suggestion of a solution. Eventually something must have snapped in me because I went from mildly concerned to declaring that, after years of flipping between aspirations, I would be going to college to get an environmental science degree. Years of studying and planning for my future were not going to go to waste at the projections of no world to actually enjoy. If I was going to complain about the state of the environment, I best at least try and do something about it.

I am from a small, homogenous town in New Jersey and jumped into college with admittedly little knowledge about what occurred outside of the comfort bubble I had enjoyed for the previous 18 years. I was running simply on the desire to make a difference and intense curiosity, but had little idea of where environmental concerns and injustices stemmed from. So although I knew I loved nature and what broad category of study I wanted to pursue, I was met with such a plethora of information all at once that I became overwhelmed. Through my classes I also started to learn why exactly no one had found a solution to climate change - there truly isn’t one, or at least one that is agreed upon by enough people to pursue it outright. Thus I tried to find something more tangible and ran with one of my more persistent interests, aquatic health.

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Sophomore year started with a new opportunity that embraced this interest. I became a Watershed Coordinator for the Alliance for Aquatic Research Monitoring (ALLARM), an organization that empowers volunteers through the use of citizen science to monitor the health of local streams and to ultimately improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. For a long while I had the mindset that while human components were important, science speaks the truth and can be trusted when trying to tackle scientific problems. Thus I had gone into ALLARM primarily interested in working in the on-campus lab, doing the actual water quality control testing.  Yet the most valuable experiences I ended up having were with the volunteers. Citizen science was a whole new concept to me - science in my mind was something elite in a sense, only carried out by those with high degrees and a couple publications under their belt. Yet at every workshop, I had an opportunity to talk to the volunteers and very quickly realized that they more than anyone knew their local waters, had stories about why they monitor, and knew the chemical and biological trends present. Numbers alone could not add the qualitative aspects that the volunteers knew well. Over my three years at ALLARM, I have followed volunteer groups from their first training, to having a couple years of stream sampling under their belts at the data interpretation meetings and I have grown to adore and value the human aspects of science. 

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The biggest value shift I experienced was going from the romanticized “saving the world” mentality to understanding that small scale does not mean small impact. The small groups of ALLARM volunteers I worked with have created a spatially and temporally impressive network of information from headwaters to Bay; a web that greatly extends what was able to be gathered through more traditional means. It is amazing seeing this more holistic health review of the whole Chesapeake Bay knowing that it was the dedication of individuals of varying backgrounds and experience levels that got the work done. By helping put science in the hands of ALLARM volunteers, we have given them the tools to make their own conclusions and to push for any changes they see needed in their communities. Science does not have to be and certainly should not be gatekept and I have found a sense of fulfilment through science accessibility. This accessibility comes in more forms than direct training. I have had the opportunity to explore science communication through my classes at Dickinson College and I am grateful to say that I have been able to experiment with film, infographics, children's books, reports, maps and workbooks. Ways to communicate science appear seemingly endless as long as one is creative, so I see no reason why any important research and findings should be kept to an inner ring of scientists when there is literally a whole world of curious people.

I feel like I have finally found an outlet that allows me to feel like I am making a tangible difference that connects my passion for creativity and science, and my long-standing love of nature. My fascination with nature started at a young age, and I can say that not much has changed in that regard. I still crave the outdoors, but now jump into streams and take comfort in that crawfish presence means healthy waters, and have traveled to Iceland and New Zealand to try and satiate my need to explore. I have learned that science is for everyone, not just those with a degree in a science. It is the common interest, desire and validation of many that will eventually put inertia favorably back behind positive impacts on the earth’s health. This epiphany has fueled a passion to make a career out of ensuring that all that seek and want to understand will have a vehicle to propel them in knowledge and action. With any luck, I will be able to step out of college to find ways to continue making the science I love more accessible to the public whether it be through words, workshops or the occasional works of art.