Environment

Sophia Chapin

rstaffo2 — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 19:06:47 +0000

Sophia Chapin rstaffo2 Fri, 04/16/2021 - 15:06

Photo provided

"Being a part of the Honors College has played into the kind of person I always have been: someone who is thinking across disciplines," says Sophia Chapin.

Chapin has always brought this multidisciplinary perspective to bear, whether she's working on communications projects, environmental activism, or environmental science.

During her time at Mason, she spent a semester intensively studying conservation at the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation in Front Royal, which provides undergraduate students the opportunity to study at the prestigious Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. As a result of her time there, Chapin interned with the Clifton Institute in Warrenton, helping them with a data analysis project that illuminates the relationships between bird abundance and vegetation.

Chapin previously held an internship at Huntley Meadows park in Alexandria during the first few months of the pandemic. While working at Huntley Meadows, she participated in an environmental and water quality evaluation project.

This semester, Chapin has worked with a group of students who received funding from the Patriot Green Fund to re-establish trees and restore an environmentally degraded site on campus near where the College Apartments once stood.

Her excellence in the environmental sciences has complemented her commitment to environmental activism. Throughout the past year, Chapin has been involved with the Virginia Environmental Justice Summit, an event hosted by the Mason Environmental Justice Summit. During her time working on this project, she helped to organize the event, create and promote press releases, publish articles, and coordinate a highly professional social media presence. In doing so, she showed her commitment to inspiring others to join the environmental and climate justice movements, which seek to address systemic inequality as a part of responding ongoing environmental crises.

While developing and cultivating a commitment to environmental issues, Chapin has also become a formidable communicator.

Photo by Kayla Cook

Her journey as a communicator started during her first year at Mason, when she began writing about various social justice, cultural, and environmental issues for the Her Campus publication. During her first year, she also participated in the "Filming and Photography for Conservation" study abroad program in Nepal, which gave her an opportunity to explore her interests in conservation in connection with her skills as a communicator, while learning alongside students who were often pursuing careers in film or videography.

For the last two years, Chapin has been central to the Honors College Communications team, where she's managed a portfolio of communication projects that demonstrate her exceptional ability to tell compelling stories for a range of audiences. She often found opportunities to connect her strengths as a communicator with her academic interests by finding stories that make vivid the ways that the Honors College community is engaging with environmental issues. Her supervisor, Honors College Director of Communications Richard Todd Stafford, says of her: "Sophia is one of the strongest undergraduate communicators I have had the opportunity to work with; her awareness of audience, attention to detail, and ability to manage complex projects has improved the quality of every project she has touched."

Over the last year, as Chapin approached graduation, she took leadership over the Honors College alumni newsletter. In this role, she created the processes that enable the Honors College to reach its alumni community, while developing professional and interesting content that alumni would be interested in reading. Director of Advancement Valentino Bryant says that, ever since Chapin took over the project, alumni have been reaching out to him asking about how they can give back.

Leaving Mason, Chapin is interviewing for jobs that will give her the opportunity to combine these skills and interests. She says the Honors College helped her embrace the idea that she could find a multidisciplinary career: "I don't have to necessarily choose between environmental science and communications, but I can do something that is a hybrid of multiple things I'm interested in."

Topics

Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation

Ben Rhoades

rstaffo2 — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 18:55:23 +0000

Ben Rhoades rstaffo2 Fri, 04/16/2021 - 14:55

Ben Rhoades in Spring 2020 with a B.A. in Environmental and Sustainability Studies, after making an impact on environmental issues at Mason.

From talking about climate change policy with President Cabrera to protesting Virginia pipelines, Ben was a constant presences in conversations about sustainability and environmental justice during his four years at Mason. 

Since graduating, Rhoades has been working with the Reston Association as a Watershed Specialist, assisting with the maintenance of water resources within Reston, Virginia. “It has been a great way to apply the skills I learned in Mason's Environmental Studies program and get work outdoors,” says Rhoades. As a Watershed Specialist, Ben works as part of a team responsible for the water quality of the lakes, drainage and erosion issues, boating, and recreational water activities. “It’s been a great experience coming right out of college and being able to practice some of the things about water conservation that I learned over the course of my time at Mason in the Environmental Studies department.”

Before graduating, Rhoades knew that he wanted to continue working in sustainability, "whether I’m an ecologist or some kind of social scientist, [I'd like to] generally [be] working to restore or improve ecosystems for the better of life, to improve and mitigate climate change, or working within social institutions to improve rights... within the context of climate change.”

Now, Rhoades’ career aligns with his long-term goal of improving ecosystems, and many of the first steps towards his career came from his experiences in the Honors College. "I don’t think I would necessarily be aware of all of the issues [or] the entirety of the issues that I want to deal with without the Honors College."

As early as his freshman year at Mason, Rhoades knew he was passionate about environmental sustainability. Through his Honors 110 course, the Principles of Research and Inquiry component of the Honors College, Rhoades conducted literature research on photography in environmental education. In Honors 240: Reading the Past, with Professor Johanna Bockman, Rhoades was introduced to the big picture of economic systems and injustice, which are at the heart of much of the activism he does surrounding climate change.

Throughout his time at Mason, Ben was involved in additional environmental research through OSCAR’s Summer Team Impact Grants. He’s worked on projects under the program for two summers — the first looking at agricultural fields in Fauquier County. The second summer, Ben researched the presence of microplastics in the tidal Potomac River. Both opportunities familiarized Ben with experimental design, data collection, and working as part of a collaborative research team, all of which he now uses in his career: “[They were] really invaluable experiences.” In 2020, his microplastics research project won the OSCAR Student Excellence Award.

While at Mason, Rhoades studied Wildlife Ecology & Conservation (WEC) at the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation (SMSC) located in Front Royal, Virginia.  “It was a great experience not only because of the super-specialized conservation education I was getting from practitioners in the field, but also the experience of having such a small cohort of people living at [the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute] together.” 

Even now, Rhoades reflects on the value of a tight-knit academic community. “I am still friends with so many people,” he says of his peers in the Honors College. In addition to staying in touch with his old friends, Rhoades continues to meet and connect with new Honors College students through the Climate Change and Energy Transition reading group facilitated by Honors College Director of Communications, Professor Stafford. He has been enjoying staying in touch with activists from throughout the Mason community, sharing, “I still spend my free time thinking about preserving our global environment and fighting climate change [with other] GMU students and alum.”  

As an alumnus, Rhoades reflects on all the opportunities, both in and out of the classroom, that Mason presented for his success. “All of my projects had something to do with the environment or environmental impacts from people; it ties perfectly in with the watershed work I do at the Reston Association.”

Rhoades’ advice for current students is to make the most of the privileges they have and use those privileges to demand change. “Mason students have a lot of power in that they’re at this great point in their lives where they have incredible access to academic resources and political resources. They can combine those [resources]” to advocate for a better future.

Topics

Environment

Sustainability

Conservation

Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation

Honors College

Office of Student Scholarship Creative Activities and Research (OSCAR)

Honors College Students Help Organize Virginia Environmental Justice Summit

rstaffo2 — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 16:10:16 +0000

Honors College Students Help Organize Virginia Environmental Justice Summit rstaffo2 Fri, 03/19/2021 - 12:10

Facing a world of climate change, systemic racism, and resource inequity, ten Honors College students worked with peers from Mason and VCU to organize the second annual Virginia Environmental Justice Summit, held on Saturday March 27th, 2021.

“Seeing this conference continue into the second year, creating something sustaining that educates and empowers students throughout the state, has been a great metric of success," said Dasha Maslyukova, Honors College junior and president of the Mason Environmental Justice Alliance.

The idea for this initiative first came from Honors College alumna, Emma Gregory (2020), who envisioned a conference that would allow students interested in environmental justice to connect with other activists. She understood the injustices within her community and throughout Virginia, and she was looking to inspire change by organizing the first annual conference during her senior year at Mason.

“Environmental justice is social justice,” explained Gregory. “It is the pursuit of equitable protections for all communities. It’s really a response to the history of our country [...] Since the inception of our country, communities of color, and communities that are experiencing poverty, have really borne the brunt of pollution – [they] have not received environmental protections that keep them and their communities safe and healthy. Environmental justice to me means empowering all people to protect their communities and their health, and to take part in environmental decision-making from here on out.”

This year’s summit hosted a full day of talks from established activists and organizers, along with skill-building workshops to empower attendees to respond to key environmental justice issues.

“It was an honor being part of the amazing student team that helped plan this wonderful summit and I’m grateful to everyone that came, our speakers, advisors, and the donors that helped support us,” shared Julia Hakeem, a member of the planning committee and junior in the Honors College.

Over 120 attendees heard from the Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program and Coordinator and Co-founder of Women of Color United, Jacqueline Patterson, and an impressive list of other experts and practitioners, including Carlos Izurieta, Community Organizer at DC Fair Food; Josephus Allmond, an associate at the Southern Environmental Law Center; and BeKura W. Shabazz, Founder and President of First Alliance Consulting Group and Criminal Injustice Reform Network.

Education is the first step towards empowering others to make change, so students at the summit learned how to apply environmental justice principles to issues involving food, water, and energy issues. “I now understand the complexity and inclusivity needed in environmental justice,” shared Hakeem, who plans to use the lessons of the conference as she pursues a career in public health.

Attending this year’s event, Gregory felt a sense of pride in seeing how the summit has grown. “I’m really inspired by all the young people and everyone who is coming together to […] demand better from our governments, from our organizations, from everyone in our society,” said Gregory.

The students who organized the Virginia Environmental Justice Summit this year hope to continue the development of the event in 2022. For the organizers, change is necessary, and it is up to everyone to build a just future -- as a community. “The end of the summit is only the beginning to sustaining the relationships built during the conference and taking action to support environmental justice in our communities,” said Hakeem.

For more information, including a recording of the summit, visit the Virginia Environmental Justice Summit website.

Topics

Environment

Environmental Justice

Virginia Environmental Justice Summit