The featured student in the April 2016 edition of IMPACT is Courtney Hammond Wagner, a PhD candidate in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. Courtney is also a Gund Institute Graduate Student Fellow and an Economics for the Anthropocene Fellow.
IMPACT: Hi Courtney! Thanks for joining us. Please tell our readers where you are from and what you studied as an undergraduate.
Courtney Hammond Wagner: I'm originally from the Pacific Northwest, just outside of Seattle. Growing up in the Northwest, it's hard to not feel connected to the natural environment, with the Cascade Mountains, Mt. Rainier, Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains serving as a daily reminder of the natural systems that surround and support the region. My family had a deep connection to the mountains, and I recall spending nearly every winter weekend of my childhood in the mountains.
For my undergraduate studies, I transitioned from the west coast mountains to the east coast mountains and studied Psychology at Dartmouth College. My interest in psychology stemmed from a desire to understand how people relate to others and to their environment and, more importantly for me, how people make decisions about the environment.
IMPACT: We are happy to have you in New England! What inspired you to go to graduate school at UVM?
CHW: Transitioning out of my undergrad at Dartmouth, as my interest in the interdependencies of social and natural systems was beginning to take shape, I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with a group of Ph.D. students in an interdisciplinary graduate program on polar environmental change.
With the group, I spent two summer field seasons in the Greenlandic tundra studying soil carbon storage and thinking broadly about the social and political implications of global climate change. Seeing the work that professors and graduate students were doing in the Arctic inspired me to pursue research as a way to better understand the interactions between social and ecological systems. Then, following another research opportunity in Peru looking at the interactions between farming practices, water use and community health amongst smallholder farmers, I narrowed my research interest to decision making on water resource management.
In deciding upon graduate programs, UVM and the Rubenstein School provided a number of key opportunities that I was looking for in my graduate education: an interdisciplinary school focused on applied research, connections to regional and state partners to ground my research in policy-relevant questions, a hub for innovative research in Ecological Economics (the Gund Institute), and the ability for me to combine my interests in social and ecological systems through my co-advisers (Dr. Breck Bowden in RSENR and Dr. Asim Zia in CDAE).
Finally, the Gund Institute's Economics for the Anthropocene (E4A) graduate program in Ecological Economics (a partnership between McGill University in Montreal, York University in Toronto, and UVM), offered the opportunity to be a part of an innovative, multi-university cohort of students and faculty committed to tackling some of the world's most pressing environmental challenges.
All of this at UVM seemed too good to pass up.
IMPACT: Tell us about your experiences in grad school. What is it like to work with faculty members and to do your own scholarship or research?
CHW: Entering the Rubenstein School in the fall of 2014, I had a good idea of the types of systems and questions I would like to study, but I didn't have a specific research program that I was stepping into. Rather, I had the challenge and opportunity to design my dissertation research from the ground up.
Working with my advisors and in classes, I spent my first year exploring the topics of water quality, ecological economics, agricultural nutrient flows, policy systems and psychological decision-making models. Alongside my individual research, I connected with practitioners and policymakers in the state to get a better understanding of the types of water quality challenges faced locally.
Both of my advisers research various aspects of water quality in the Lake Champlain Basin. Dr. Bowden focuses on watershed nutrient dynamics and Dr. Zia focuses more on the policy and decision-making processes in the Basin. So it was a natural choice for me to focus on water quality in the Lake Champlain Basin as one aspect of my research. Furthermore, in the summer of 2015, Dr. Jon Erickson, one of the UVM heads of the E4A program, led a field course for the E4A project on water quality in Lake Champlain Basin. The intensive course took us all over the Basin, meeting with stakeholders and getting a firsthand understanding of the local dynamics of the problem.
Because of a connection through my adviser Dr. Bowden to Dr. Suzie Greenhalgh at Landcare Research in New Zealand, I also began exploring the very similar dynamics of water quality and nutrient pollution in New Zealand. Given the time, in my second year, to explore the dynamics of each of these case studies, I have developed the basic foundation and outline of my dissertation research: a comparative study of agricultural water quality policy and decision making in Vermont and New Zealand.
Developing my research has been an exciting, challenging and creative process. Now, nearing the end of my second year, I am looking forward to transitioning from the development phase to collecting and analyzing my own data.
In my research I am investigating the social and political influences on farmers' decision to adopt water quality best management practices on farms. To approach this question, I have chosen Vermont and New Zealand because they are two regions that face a similar challenge -- poor water quality -- from a similar source -- farms, with differing approaches to managing the problem.
My research will examine farmers' decisions about the adoption of water quality best management practices in these two contexts to shed light on the role that policy design plays in the farm business decision making process, with the goal of informing improved policy design.
IMPACT: Where are you currently in your graduate education and what do you plan to do after graduating?
CHW: I'm in the second year of my PhD and am excited to be entering a time where I get to dig into my research questions and start collecting data and honing my knowledge in my area of expertise.
I'll be headed to New Zealand this summer to conduct research on the Lake Taupo and Lake Rotorua water quality policies on the North Island of New Zealand. The data collected will be compared to a similar dataset that I will collect in Vermont next year. To support this research I am honored to have recently received the Votta Scholarship from the UVM Graduate College and a National Science Foundation East Asian Summer Pacific Institutes Fellowship for New Zealand.
Looking forward to life after my PhD, I aspire to pursue an academic career studying sustainable decision making and the human relationship to water and water systems. I am excited to serve as an intermediary between social science and natural/physical science, as well as between academia, political decision makers and the public. In my career, through increasing knowledge of decision making on water resources, I hope to encourage others to share my great appreciation for the important role of healthy water systems in sustainable communities.