Gillian Tiley’s interests cover a lot of territory, and she mixed and matched several combinations of majors before settling on political science and geography, with a minor in French. In large part, she managed to craft her own educational experience, combining her interests in policy, geography, language, and social advocacy.

She graduated this May with two degrees and a pair of awards in political science: The Departmental Prize in Political Theory and the Philo Sherman Bennet Essay Prize. She was recently accepted into the University of Pennsylvania’s Masters of City and Regional Planning Program.

Senior Rachael Carrell spent the summer conducting research for her senior thesis and working with an organization in Humacao, Puerto Rico, an experience that she says has been pivotal to her education. Made possible with funds from the Office of Undergraduate Research, which offers advice and research funding opportunities, Carrell worked with Proyecto de Apoyo (PAM), an organization in a rural neighborhood that aims to develop an emergency plan so that the community will be able to respond more effectively and efficiently to future catastrophes.

As the community was still recovering from Hurricane Maria, Carrell made herself available for any other tasks they needed help with, from working in the orchards and conducting data entry to cleaning out an abandoned school so it could be converted into a community center. “A big focus of mine is to be conscious of my privilege and my position as a student and an outsider. Not only do I want to make sure that my work and presence here are not extractive, but I am trying to do my best to support the community as much as I can.”

Carrell was especially impacted by the interdisciplinary nature of the work PAM performs in Humacao, noting she got “to see first-hand how the leaders of the organization are actively seeking help from people of all different specialties and professions. This helps me both better understand the skills geographers have to offer in a context or project like this and allow me to experience how geographers can collaborate with people of other specialties to work towards a shared goal.”

This fall in Professor Cheryl Morse's "Geography of Vermont" service-learning course, students took an active role in the material. Working from a geographic lens, students redesigned three drop-off centers for the Chittenden Solid Waste District and participated in fieldwork to implement their ideas.

This summer, Darby Relyea traveled to Belize to take part in an exciting project drone-mapping the coastal communities and cayes to uncover the effects of climate change. Relyea also conducted field interviews with residents of the cayes, or islands, to learn about their perceptions of climate change and how they've adapted to the change. She credits the internship with allowing her to conduct her own field research from scratch and developing her skills in remote sensing and GIS through image processing, digitizing, and data analysis. Perhaps more importantly, "It also exposed me to what social science in GIS might look like in the form of citizen science."

Relyea originally heard about the opportunity when Dr. Tim Hawthorne came to UVM and gave a presentation about the REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) funded by the National Science Foundation. Her paid internship was hosted by the University of Central Florida's Community GIS and Citizen Science REU site in Belize.

Next plans for Relyea include studying abroad in Tunisia and Italy this coming Fall to study religion, politics, and migration, for which she plans to conduct more community-based research- which this summer's experience has given her a firm background in. She hopes to continue on with this summer's work by eventually going back out into the field or engaging in a writing retreat. Relyea encourages students to pursue similar experiences by "speak[ing] with your professors about potential opportunities sooner rather than later. That way you can fully prepare yourself to be a competitive applicant."

This summer, geography junior Lucia Possehl substituted the air-conditioned classroom for rural farmland. Possehl was awarded funds from the National Science Foundation to conduct research through the University of Wisconsin-Stout on the Red Cedar River Watershed. Possehl hopes to shed light on the serious phosphorus pollution problem in the area, caused mainly by agricultural runoff and lakefront lawn fertilization, by conducting interviews with farmers and lakefront property owners to better understand the complicated realities they face.