Aaron is a candidate for an M.S. in Natural Resources through the Rubenstein School. He is working as a research assistant in UVM's Transportation Research Center under Richard Watts and Tao Sun. Currently conducting a social network analysis of organizations in Northern New England who are promoting sustainable transportation policies, Aaron hopes to better understand how communication patterns and economic constraints act as roadblocks to building successful policy. Before coming to the University of Vermont, Aaron earned a BFA in creative writing at the University of Maine at Farmington in 2005, where he also served as president of the college's social and environmental activist club, SEA-Change. His motivation for environmental advocacy eventually led him back to school in 2007, where he studied environmental science and policy at Unity College in Maine. It was there that he discovered ecological economics through the guidance of professor Mick Womersley, a hands-on economist and human ecologist. While at Unity College, Aaron worked for the Center for Environmental Education, where he re-wrote the book, Blueprint for a Green School, originally written by Jayni Chase and published by Scholastic. After a year with the Center, he became managing director and oversaw the website, public relations, and a joint project with INFORM called "the Secret’s Out." In 2008, Aaron was hired as Unity College's interim sustainability coordinator, where he was responsible for all campus sustainability efforts, including energy use, recycling, composting, green purchasing decisions and further development of Unity's climate action plan for the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment. Aaron owes his passion for the environment to his rural upbringing in Acworth, New Hampshire, where the teachers in Acworth's small schoolhouse fostered environmental and social stewardship through a community-based, hands-on approach to education. His family also lived close to the land by hunting, fishing, picking wild edible plants like fiddle-heads, and raising honey bees.

Research Interests: Climate Change Policy, Campus Sustainability
Thesis: Inter-organizational Issue Networks Concerned with Sustainable Transportation Policy: An Examination of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont