Madison Cilk ’20 has been accepted to Sciences Po in Paris, France, for a master's program in urban environmental governance beginning in August 2021.

Cilk came to UVM intent on studying ecological agriculture. She soon switched her major to environmental studies and added an additional degree in political science.

"I realized that in order to implement sustainable change, you need to understand policy and communicate well with people," she said. "The interdisciplinary nature of the environmental studies and political science programs enabled me to do just that."

Cilk hails from Naples, Florida, a coastal city on the Gulf Coast that is already experiencing the effects of climate change. She recently wrote an op-ed article for her local daily The News Press observing that sea level rise is expected to rise approximately five inches in Southwest Florida by 2030.

“Our city needs to take action to educate its citizens about the looming threat of climate change and how city officials are developing adaptation and mitigation strategies,” she wrote.

As a UVM student, she‘s had a chance to explore the issue of climate change from the New England perspective.

She recalls visiting UVM during an admitted student visit day and immediately felt at home. “I definitely sensed a strong feeling of community between faculty and students—that’s the type of atmosphere where I really thrive.”

Cilk says she appreciates the opportunity to gain research experience and multiple internships at UVM. With funding from UVM’s Honors College, she spent a summer as an intern for the Marine Stewardship Council in London.

Among her most influential faculty mentors was Professor of Political Science Robert Bartlett, who specializes in environmental policy and politics. "Being in his class really inspired me to challenge current systems of governance," Cilk said. "By encouraging me to push my academic boundaries, I have gained a sense of confidence and curiosity that extends beyond the boundaries of the classroom."

On a summer day in San Francisco, Tristam Coffin was up to his ears in lighting plans, recycling machines, and local green building codes for a new store in the Castro district. The goal was to achieve Gold LEED. At the same time, he was fielding emergency calls from another store with electric power failures. And it was only early afternoon. As the go-to guy for sustainability issues for 37 Whole Foods Market stores in northern California, Tristam’s days vary widely. The training Tristam received in the Environmental Program has been key to his success.

“There’s no silver bullet solution with anything that we are doing, but having a background built on different disciplines has really helped me in my career. My role leading the sustainability program for Whole Foods Market is based on my ability to answer a broad array of questions that come from internal consultants, architects, engineers, as well as store staff and managers.”

Recently Tristam has applied his education in recycling, electric infrastructure, and planning to some of the pressing issues facing the company. “I loved the program’s interdisciplinary approach, having a bigger perspective in natural sciences, and being able to draw from the different folks in the Program—for instance, understanding composting systems, but also looking at the energy grid, transportation, and any number of different areas. Overall, the Program allowed me to understand and speak the language of sustainability.”

Kerry Duggan was recruited to UVM as a talented basketball player but changed course to follow a passion she found reading Rachel Carson in her high school environmental studies class. “I came to play basketball. But I got into the Environmental Program and went back to my roots—I found that there’s a lot more to life than just shooting hoops.”

Inspired by the teachers, by the global approach, and by the books she read, it all started to come together for Kerry in her sophomore year. “I remember a book by David Orr about digging in and really living, not just in a residence hall or a dorm, but actively participating in your community. I started to understand that everything I threw into the waste basket was going somewhere.” Duggan graduated from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences with a major in Environmental Studies. (Note: This major has since been moved to the College of Arts and Sciences.)

After UVM, Kerry returned home to Detroit, motivated to take up graduate study in environmental justice with a Master’s degree from the University of Michigan. Fired up about local political issues, she served as an organizer for the Michigan League of Conservation Voters and later took up national issues at the LCV office in DC.

“Probably the biggest thing I learned in the Environmental Program was critical thinking—looking at the connections between things, a systems thinking approach, and why policy matters. I think back to learning about Rachel Carson and how one person can really make a big change.”

Kerry C. Duggan is a CEO, sustainability expert, board director, angel investor, on faculty at the University of Michigan, a mentor, a public speaker, national political advisor, and former climate advisor to President Joe Biden.

Known as “climate MacGyver”, Duggan founded SustainabiliD in 2017, which is now the leading global strategic advisory firm that enables established organizations to see around the corner on climate and scales up the most innovative climate tech on the planet, all to equitably solve the climate crisis. SustainabiliD's wide-ranging partners include multinational corporations, many of the Breakthrough Energy Ventures portfolio companies (ONE, LuxWall, AeroSeal, Mill, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, ClearFlame), and other novel climate tech companies, such as WallBox, Gradient, and Vesta; as well as major universities and foundations, national laboratories and think tanks, global investment firms and banks, economic development agencies, and more!

Duggan sits on several boards, including Perma-Fix (NASDAQ: PESI) and Michigan LCV; and advisory boards, such as ONE, Aclima, Walker-Miller Energy Services, Arctaris Impact Investors, Commonweal Ventures, and BlueConduit. She is a senior advisor at RockCreek Global Investment. Duggan is also on Faculty at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) and was named Founding Director of the SEAS Sustainability Clinic in Detroit.

Duggan is an angel investor, supporting innovative Michigan-based companies such as The Electric Plant Co. and Renaissance Man. She is also an Executive Producer of SWIMMOBILE, a Detroit-based film in pre-production.

Duggan holds several political appointments, including the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board under Secretary Jennifer Granholm; and two appointments by Michigan's Governor Gretchen Whitmer, on the Growing Michigan Together Council (Infrastructure & Places Workgroup) and Council on Climate Solutions. In 2020, Duggan served on the Biden-Harris Transition Team for the Energy Agency Review and the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force as one of five Biden delegates alongside Gina McCarthy and Secretary John Kerry. From 2010-2017, Duggan served in various roles in the Obama-Biden Administration. She worked at the White House as climate policy advisor for then Vice President Joe Biden; and simultaneously as deputy director of the Obama Detroit task force. She held several senior roles at the Department of Energy, including as Secretary Moniz's Liaison to the City of Detroit, where she championed the LED streetlight conversion. After her public service, she co-founded the Smart Cities Lab and was a Partner at the Honorable Thomas J. Ridge’s firm. Duggan was named to Crain’s Detroit Business prestigious “40 Under 40” list, and their inaugural “Notable Leaders in Sustainability”.

Michael Crowley stumbled on the Environmental Program as a thoughtful 19-year-old after trying several other majors at UVM.

“I knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the way we were organized as a society. I didn’t have the words to articulate it. When I took ENVS 001 it connected a lot of the dots for me in terms of where we were heading in the world and it gave me a global perspective,” he says.

Michael went on to earn a master’s degree in Holistic Science at Schumacher College in England. He then came back to the US to start a career fighting climate change. He served as one of the first campus sustainability officers at Harvard University, then worked as a sustainability consultant in Boston before moving back to Vermont. He spent five years at the Montpelier-based Institute for Sustainable Communities where he developed a peer-learning program for municipal sustainability directors across the US and Canada. 

Central to his work is promoting the systems thinking he was first introduced to in ENVS 001.

“Taking a systems view of opportunities and challenges rather than just focusing on narrow areas helps me to think bigger and discover new possibilities,” he says.

Michael’s thesis focused on designing ecological systems for communities and he’s been doing that ever since. He encourages students to contact him about general career advice.

Michael lives in Middlesex, Vermont with daughter Lila and wife Chayah.

Rachel felt she joined a community when she entered UVM’s Environmental Program—a community that continues to engage and inspire her today. Core to her experiences at UVM were three formative years at Slade Hall—a hub of environmental activism on campus. Students grew some of their own food, worked member hours at the original Onion River Co-op, and engaged in dinner time and late night debates around the environmental issues of the day—Hydro-Quebec impacts, recycling, diversity on campus, and a proposed campus bus system, among others.

“I feel like my years at UVM really changed the direction of my life in so many ways. It was such a pivotal time. I attribute that to living at Slade and being involved with the Environmental Program. Both opened up my world and exposed me to new ways of thinking. Those years shaped me into who I am, gave me many of the friendships I still hold dear, and put me on my career path.”

Rachel went on to work as an environmental educator at ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center and Chewonki Camps, earning a master’s in education in South Africa on an international Rotary fellowship. She directed a program empowering women to improve their lives and careers. She lives in Burlington, Vermont with husband Adam Walker, and daughter Shayna.

Richard Wallace, Professor and Chair, Environmental Studies, Ursinus College

Richard Wallace has devoted his academic career to studying the role of interdisciplinary thinking in environmental studies. His writing looks at the integration of disciplinary approaches, problem solving methods, and social values in addressing complex environmental problems.

“One of the great fallacies in modern society is that we have an ability to separate who we are and how we feel from the work that we do. It isn’t true! Many great conservation successes—and failures—have been influenced by the values that people hold," he says. "In my work I explore the values that influence people’s behavior, such as the desire to obtain or limit power, respect, knowledge, skill, well being, or wealth. These sorts of influences can have a profound effect on conservation outcomes.”

Rich was strongly influenced by Professor Leslie King, who often invited student TAs out to her house in North Hero for conversations late into the evening. “The faculty-student mentoring relationships had a strong focus on developing learning skills that was enormously influential,” he says, adding that working closely with other students added to the rich learning environment. “I loved the peer to peer engagement, particularly with the ENVS majors my senior year we were a very tight group.”

Rich's ENVS thesis was titled "Conservation of the Western North Atlantic Humpback Whale in the U.S. and Dominican Republic." He went on from UVM to complete an M.E.S. and Ph.D. at Yale University in Environmental Studies, with a focus on conservation governance and behavior. He was founding chair of Environmental Studies at Ursinus College, where he has taught since 2002. Richard lives in Collegeville, Pennsylvania with his wife Shannon Spencer, and children Tucker and Noah.

I am entering politics as the Data Manager of U.S Senator Angus King's (Independent of Maine) re-election campaign. I run and repair the tech systems that my team of campaigners needs as they reach out to Maine voters. Senator King (who is an Independent) is running to stay in the Senate as an important voice for common-sense leadership, bipartisan civility, and great environmental policy.

Data work isn't where I imagined I would be after graduating with an ENVS degree in May of 2018. I realized quickly, though, that any solution to 21st-century environmental issues will involve 21st-century data systems. Campaigning for a great cause gives a great education. After the election, I'm planning to get more involved in the policy world of climate change mitigation and adaptation.

I chose to join the Environmental Program because of its honest discussion of big, global challenges and its commitment to big solutions. With a focus on policy, economics, and education, I made my way through spread-out classes - law to urban design to modern feminism - learning as much as I could about every force that is playing into our global crises. More than any other major, ENVS had the resources and the advisors that I needed to help me find my next steps. I realized early that the best thing an ENVS student can do is speak with an advisor regularly, whether or not they think they need it. Kevin and Ibit always seemed to know a point on the map that I had missed.

Good undergrad advising helped me to find great academic niches. I went to Germany's Black Forest to study human ecology, wrote gigantic essays for Headwaters Magazine (with the help of their terrific editors), and learned of fantastically different ways to understand our environment from great professors like Tatiana Abatemarco, Josh Farley, Jody Prescott, and Josh Brown, among many others. By far, I learned the most from teaching: I TA'd with four courses and pushed my limits of knowledge and expression with the help of my students.

Honestly, my most significant challenge came between classes. I lived in the Slade Co-op, UVM's oldest and greatest sustainable living group, during an emergency. Because of university policy changes, we needed to move the co-op off campus after forty-five years in campus buildings. That's hard to do, especially when every member of the co-op was a full-time student. The soul-searching, logistics, team building, and problem-solving of practicing sustainable principles in a crisis gave me some of the best friends I'll ever have. Slade's re-rooting also taught me the critical lesson of environmentalism: change is hard.

If I have any big, valuable takeaway from four whole months of hindsight, it's this: in ENVS, and with the help of exceptional students and teachers, I learned to be competent in many fields and excellent in a few of them. Campaign data management (what I do now) draws on some of those competencies in technology, organization, and flexibility, but those skills first developed because I was going after insanely different projects.

I designed websites, incorporated the Slade Co-op, ran negotiations, wrote feature articles, and taught students. Taken together, the lessons I learned to make those projects worthwhile set me up to take on another unfamiliar role, which I hope will open a wider path to facing the Grand Challenges of environmentalism.

Environmentalism, if you don't mind me musing as I wrap up, doesn't have a habitat like other fields. A doctor has to work in or near a hospital and a programmer needs a computer. Uniquely, an environmentalist can find a problem to solve pretty much anywhere. But, we are only useful if we have the right skills to help people. For the students reading this, looking for a direction to take: choose two directions. Find two different causes in Burlington that you care about (you have to care about them; you won't give your best if you're not passionate) and try to make a significant difference for both missions. Be ambitious. I do not know the right challenges for you, but your advisor may. Although, Slade always needs organizers.

If you commit locally now and make a difference before you graduate, you can not only say, "I have a degree," as you leave school, but, "I solved a problem, and I can solve the next one." If you have any interest in campaigning, politics, or policy, please contact me. I am still learning, too, but I may be able to answer a few of your questions.