last modified:2009-11-03 09:25:11
Student Profiles
Are you interested in learning more about studying in the Environmental Humanities Graduate Program? Current and past students have much to say about their experiences studying in the Environmental Humanities. Read about their interests and goals to gain valuable advice and insight.
Katie Plumb
I migrated to Salt Lake City from Bozeman, Montana, my home town. After obtaining a BA in English from the University of Puget Sound I moved back home to explore, play, and simply be. After two years of doing whatever I wanted, I realized that what I wanted, and needed, was to not make coffee for a living, and instead continue to engage my intellect and further my understanding of the world.
The EH program stuck out to me like a sore thumb for its combination of humanities, and, you guessed it… the environment. In this program I can pursue both writing and environmental issues. I can be both a learner and a teacher. I can play and study. I know that for myself, and many others in the program, environmental issues are not simply about science; they are also about our sense of place, our connection to the natural world, and our desire to maintain, if not improve, this connection. I am here, among other things, to be able to communicate environmental concerns beyond the scientific world in hopes of fostering a more educated and active public.
Andrea Nelson
Though born in Utah, I grew up in Austin, Texas, with a South Austinite mindset and a special love for longhorns. My childhood was filled with bugs, birds, exploration and scratched up knees. I found wildness nearby, in the gently rolling landscape of Hill Country. It seems like we were out every weekend, either flying kites at Zilker Park, splashing in the Pedernales, climbing Enchanted Rock, or fishing Onion Creek.
During the Summer of 2003 I found myself doing an insect survey on the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. I hiked endless miles through sand and slickrock, sage and cottonwood, catching tarantula hawks and velvet ants, golden delicious scarabs and green-eyed monster robberflies. That summer began an obsession with the Utah desert. I get down there as often as I can.
After living in the Highlands of Guatemala near Lake Atitlan, I earned a BA in Anthropology from Brigham Young University. My research focused on a midwife named Nicolasa, and her work with the women of Santa Clara La Laguna, Solola, Guatemala.
I worked for a year and a half teaching a range of subjects to at-risk youth. Once a student asked me if a beaver could chew through a human leg. I told him a beaver probably wouldn't go for a human. He asked, "What if the beaver has bloodlust?" It was a good time.
Those are some of the experiences that led me to the Environmental Humanities Program. I am interested in our sense of place, sense of wonder, and environmental education. The program's interdisciplinary approach appeals to me, and my interest in it can be summed up by E.O. Wilson's quote, "Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction."
Andy Ross
Born and raised in eastern Pennyslvania, I am a transplant to Utah. I am extremely pleased to be joining the Environmental Humanities program and for the opportunities I see here at the university. During my undergraduate studies I took a class that debated distinctions between science and religion, the arts, and the humanities. This, coupled with several summers farming had a profound effect on the way I consider art and the natural world to be connected. My scholarly interests are wide and scattered: cultural history of food, animal cognition, philosophy of science, and wilderness, contemporary American literature. In my spare time I enjoy documentary film, cooking, and NBA basketball.
Alison Holland
I was born and raised in California, went to Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, for my undergraduate work, and have spent parts of each year -- summer, winter, or both -- in Utah for the last ten: as a river guide, ski patrol, and fan of the intermountain west, my studies and the sanctity of myself keep me centered here. I am very excited to pursue my master's degree while obtaining a stronger sense of place in my home: the intermountain west and Utah.
I am currently exploring the various pressures on water usage and how to balance the needs with the distinct lack of water in the arid, intermountain west. Specifically, I am generally exploring the balance that needs to be struck between energy developments' use of water, a growing populations use of water, and nature's need for water.
David M. Hoza
A longtime writer emphasizing my relationship to nature—and the ways I find humans simultaneously confounding and full of potential —I’ve been equally immersed in deep waves of academic learning and the open seas of direct experience.
I got my consciousness in Austin, Texas in the early 1980s amongst a tribe of human idealists, strumming homemade folk music on 6th Street in front of places like a biker’s favorite the Black Cat Lounge. Love put me on a path to Selfhood, cultivating especially through the written word a psychological perspective rooted in the health and wellbeing of self, community and environment.
With a BA in English, minor in History from the University of Houston, I ventured to Utah in the mid 1990’s, bought 40 acres with friends and launched a decade-long odyssey living off the grid, exploring conscious living. Rugged self-sufficiency in the West Hills and Utah’s wild places satiated a hungry palate with the likes of Terry Tempest Williams, Mary Oliver, Stephen Trimble, and Wendell Berry, all of whom fed a sense of place rooted in nature. On the flipside of my consciousness, I drank deep from psychotherapists, Buddhists, Beats, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Thomas Moore, Pema Chodron and many others. Shikantaza meditation and yoga complemented my lifestyle in innumerable ways.
2005 brought the present journey. Stress awareness and management and organizational intelligence stems from decades in the service industry listening to people’s issues, offering non-judgmental perspectives and solution-making. An AS in Psychology led to environmental studies and the Environmental Humanities program where familiar mentors teach. No doubt this program will enrich my writing and I’ll surely reap a much broader, deeper understanding of the world I live in, the West.
May I better understand the issues, personalities and potential—for cultivating sustainable solutions—for people, communities and the environment through evolving practices such as collaborative conservation.
Erin Bragg
I have always taken an interest in the natural environment, you might say being born in Anchorage, Alaska growing up rafting, climbing, hiking and skiing will do that to a person. I moved to Salt Lake City sans family for competitive ski racing and high school but during my sophomore year they joined me and have lived in Park City since. My racing took me back east to Maine and Bates College where I received a BA in individual psychology. I was forced to examine the natural and built environments in a seminar about individual differences in early development and found it fascinating how ones individual differences can be seen at developmental milestones and are further shaped by the environment they are raised in. Due to my vast sense of curiosity my senior thesis bounced to another topic looking at mediating factors between sensation seeking individuals, depression and tattooing.
After graduation I lived in Boston and worked at Tufts Medical School in the psychopharmacology department but after 6 months I was done with the city and longing for the mountains. I moved back to Utah and for the past 2 years have been working in the Neurology department at the University of Utah School of Medicine. I got back to skiing on a daily basis and competing, but I’ve since ditched the gates for big mountain and the Freeskiing World Tour.
I have also been fortunate enough to assist the nonprofit She Jumps implement programming in Utah and look forward to helping spread their mission, reach a larger community of women, and grow as an organization.
My liberal arts background and an overflowing handful of interests made the Environmental Humanities program a perfect fit allowing a multidisciplinary approach to the questions I’d like to investigate further in addition to providing me with new ones!
Alexandra Porpora
I’m a Florida native who has recently been transplanted in the Intermountain West. Growing up in Central Florida, experiences with alligators, scrub jays, hurricanes, and beaches were common. However, I am enjoying the new interjection of topography into my daily life.
I earned my BA in Anthropology at the University of Miami in Coral Gables. My undergraduate research focused on obesity in captive orangutan populations. In addition to primates, I also have an interest in environmental education and was lucky enough to find a place that let me combine my dual interests.
Beginning in 2008 I worked at the Lemur Conservation Foundation, as both husbandry intern and education coordinator. Lemurs have captured my intellectual interest, as well as my imagination. While developing distance education programming I began to ponder how technology impacts our experience with the natural world, and if individuals can have meaningful experiences with nature via technological means. I’m also interested in the role of captive animals in zoos and how they impact our perception of the wild. I plan on exploring these ideas (and hopefully many others!) during my time in the EH program.
After EH, who knows? Maybe spending some time in Madagascar, continuing my career in environmental education, going for a doctorate…I’m looking forward to the journey.
Jessamyn Tinquist
California native, born and raised near Joshua Tree, I developed my passion for the wilderness at a young age. I headed to the coast of California to earn my Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology at San Diego State University. While I was at SDSU I fell in love with the subject of environmental anthropology, which inspired me to further pursue the study of human interaction with nature. I am extremely excited to be a part of the environmental humanities program at the University of Utah and can’t wait to explore all that this beautiful state has to offer me, intellectually and physically.
Brooke Musat
Growing up in Northeast Ohio, where the snow isn’t really snow but ice, it was always such a treat to escape to Utah for skiing. It was on trips like these that my love for Utah topography began its cultivation. After graduating high school in 2003, I decided to move to Salt Lake to study Political Science and Environmental Studies, right here at the U! Currently, I am training to be a Yoga Teacher and am looking forward to bringing that holistic awareness to my, understanding and exploration of water conservation.
Meaghan McKasy
I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, where the concept of respecting nature seemed to always be in the subtext of everyday life. Growing up, my family spent its weekends skiing, enjoying the beach, and generally spending time outdoors. The values that I was raised with stayed with me when I moved to Massachusetts to complete my undergraduate degree at Boston College.
I have always been an outgoing and interactive person, so my choice of a Communications major at BC was a natural fit. It was not until the second semester of my freshman year, when I took an Introduction to Environmental Sociology class, that I decided to add an Environmental Studies minor. I have enjoyed both collegiate tracks over the past four years and was looking for a path post graduation that would tie together my two interests. The Environmental Humanities Graduate Program at the University of Utah seemed like the perfect fit.
Given the current state of the natural world I believe the need for environmental awareness and action is at an all time high. The current situation is not just an environmental crisis but cultural problem as well. For improvement to occur, our society needs to change the way it thinks and acts. I would like to further my education to be able to do my part in the movement. I envision myself working in the business world, using my background and skills in communications to promote a more environmentally conscious society.
Dylan Mace
With the curiosity of a Magpie, and a passion for the arts and the non-human environment, I am excited to be entering the Environmental Humanities program. Through it, I am able to explore humanity’s relation with the rest of our world. I have Bachelor of Art degrees in History and Anthropology, which has given me a basic working knowledge of the human career on Earth.
Now, I want to know how we inhabit and understand our place. I am interested in examining/exploring the diverse ways cultures exist in their homes. Agricultural practices, pre-modern and traditional, are intriguing and worthy of investigation. They are sometimes more sustainable and more capable of integrating the human with the non-human. The liminal spaces between our binary constructs of domestic and wild, human and natural, as well as anthropomorphism and its opposites interests me. When all of this is distilled, I am interested in perceptions of landscape and environment: How is it storied and communicated, verbally, visually, and otherwise?
Jack Lasely
I was born in Alaska and made a brief stop in Las Vegas before I landed in Utah at 5 years old. I grew up in Park City and moved to Salt Lake City to pursue my B.A. at the University of Utah. Until about a year ago I considered Park City to be my home, however, I think I would consider myself a Salt Lake...ian now.
After graduating from the U, I decided to take my History degree and become a financial adviser (yeah, I know). My tolerance for suits was soon exhausted and I decided to change teams. So here I am.
I am currently an intern extraordinaire for Salt Lake City's Division of Sustainability and hope to pursue a similar career in community outreach promoting sustainable business practices upon graduation.
Lindsy Floyd
It’s been said that, because of the geographical and cultural isolation, when growing up in Utah, the most important lessons are not learned in the classroom or at home, but in the mountains. In comparison, while getting my Bachelor’s degree in Honolulu, I found that the important lessons are learned in the mountains and in the ocean in Hawai’i because the mountains and ocean are the only thing that all of the cultures have in common. My background lies in the wide range of mountains that stretch the world over from the rocky mountains of Utah to the volcanic peaks of Hawai’i.
I grew up in Salt Lake City and spent my childhood summers in the canyons and desert of southern Utah. I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Studies and Political Science from Chaminade University of Honolulu, Hawai'i. I am a writer at heart and sought the Environmental Humanities program because of its interdisciplinary approach and emphasis on writing. Currently, I am a writer for an environmental website and an educator at the Utah Museum of Natural History.
I am fascinated with sustainability in practice, renewable energy, alien and invasive species management, the positive and adverse effects of tourism on the environment, environmental policies and law, ecofeminism and the role of gender in environmental issues, the deficit of nature in modern children, E.O. Wilson’s concept of biophilia, and environmental creative writing.
Upon completion of the EH program, I aim to further my academic efforts as a doctorate student, teach at the college level, and continuing my development of environmental children's books. Personally, I aspire to lead by example by living my life with the lightest ecological footprint possible. I aim to be a role model for all members of my local and global community, both young and old, by living a lifestyle that incorporates a sustainable future, both for humanity and for our planet. I will always be an advocate of wellness, natural home births, attachment parenting, and being politically active.
Ben Cromwell
I recently moved to SLC for this program, but I am unabashedly in love with the west and have been for many years. I love the desert the same way some people love their pets or children. It is kindred to me. And so I’ve come to this program after sojourns in the east and in the pacific, where I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, not so much because the research is interesting or the subject intrigues me (though both are true), but because there is redrock in my blood and bones that I wish to come to terms with.
Ross Sequoyah Chambless
I grew up in Salt Lake City and developed both a natural appreciation for the surrounding desert, and a concerned awareness with the rapidly changing physical and social landscape along the Wasatch Front.
After earning a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001, I have worked as a freelance producer for public radio. I have enjoyed exploring new technologies and environmental topics, producing stories about drought, wind energy, Japanese talking appliances, CO2 sequestration, and most recently curbside recycling. I also work as a media/communications consultant and teach English to international students.
My childhood household always included one or two foreign students and this upbringing profoundly affected my perception of the wider world. My parents, still now, regularly host visitors from around the world and appreciate different cultures and languages. My younger sister does human rights work in Thailand. I spent four years working for Matsumoto City, Japan, Salt Lake’s oldest Sister City. In 2008 I produced a traveling exhibit about the history of these two Sister Cities after Word War II, documenting how our two different cultures found peaceful understanding after that violent conflict. I also met my wife in Matsumoto and maintain many friendships across Asia.
I am now drawn to the Environmental Humanities program because of a growing concern for environmental education and awareness. I see the program as an opportunity to be personally changed and professionally enhanced. After graduating I hope to build a career through either private nonprofit or government work.
Catherine Ashton
Catherine Ashton is a poet, naturalist, and native of Utah. She obtained her BA in English from the University of Utah and joined the Environmental Humanities Program in 2007. She is currently working on her thesis in Eco-pornography, dealing with the graphic representations of Earth, celestial bodies, and natural seduction.
I first came across the Environmental Humanities program while attending the Ecology of Residency program held in the Grand Tetons at the Murie Center in Moose, Wyoming. The program's interdisciplinary curriculum, intimate colleague base, and environmental focus were the major factors in my decision to join the program. I came to the Environmental Humanities program, also, in hopes of developing my poetry and writing through the benefit of interdisciplinary collaboration and the exploration of the natural world.
After graduation I plan to continue my research in Eco-pornography and to pursue a Ph.D. in English with an emphasis in poetry conservation and sustainability.
Desiree Beaudry
I was born and reared in Houston TX (yee-hah!). My path to EH was long and crooked. I chose EH because questions haunted me. I am finding answers and more questions.
Be prepared to read and write, a lot. Take advantage of the incredible resources at the U. The teachers and staff want to help you. Use them.
Diane Fouts
My sense of place focuses on the Intermountain West-I was born and raised in southern Idaho, graduated from Utah State University in Logan, and have spent long periods living in Salt Lake City, Moab, and back in Salt Lake City again.
I am currently a professional writer and editor in the health care arena. I've been a camper and hiker since childhood. I am a lover of wild places and one with a strong response to the natural world. My readings and personal writings have always centered around nature and human interaction with it.
I chose the Environmental Humanities program as a way to move to the next phase of my writing career out into the world outside. I'm excited about the interdisciplinary approach of this program because it provides broad horizons for intellectual exploration. As for a goal after graduation, I suspect that it will be to bring the book that has lurked at the edges of my consciousness for the past couple of decades out into the full light of day.
My advice to new students: The best way from one place to another is not a straight line. You need to be flexible to reach where you want to be. This program offers plenty of flexibility; take full advantage of it.
Brandon Hollingshead
I came to the Wasatch Front from the cypress sloughs of the Western Everglades and sandy beaches of Southwest Florida, where I earned a BA in environmental communication from Florida Gulf Coast University. My studies in the Environmental Humanities program are a nice extension of the interdisciplinary work I did at FGCU and continue to do with the Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education. I've been privileged to work on some exciting research projects documenting international sustainability activism, collecting literary responses to sustainability declarations, and most recently, a volume on the intersection of youth, education, and sustainable development.
My interests are all over the map, but my thesis-in-progress is a rhetorical analysis of the Earth Charter, an international declaration of shared values for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful future. It was drafted following a decade-long civil society initiative that included folks from all walks of life who wished to express the aspirations for a sustainable planet. I think the document and the drafting process that created it can serve as models for generating a wider conversation about sustainability and sustainable development.
I'm not sure what the future holds after U of U... More grad school? Work with an NGO? Teaching? Writing? Activism? Whatever happens, it'll probably be back east...and eventually overseas.
The Environmental Humanities program is wicked awesome for folks like me with academic ADD and no real sense of direction. I'm amazed at the range and depth of the projects my peers are engaged with...it's such a fantastic community in which to research and write!
Cheng-yu (Ryan) Jung
I came from Taiwan, Republic of China. In the 35,801 sq km island territory, the country has rich biological, geological, and cultural diversities, spanning from sea level coast to 3,952-meter alpine landscape.
I have been living in my country for my entire life and going abroad for higher education has been one of my ambitions. My fields of interest are ecological discourse, ecopoetry, Taiwan Indigenous and Native American oral traditions, and their environmental thoughts. When I found that this humanistic oriented program is available in the University of Utah, I decided to apply, expecting to enlarge my perspectives of studies.
I have been a reader of tribal stories and legends for a long time. I also write essay or prose about our landscapes and people. I chose Environmental Humanities because I believe the program would offer me a solid training, helping me develop a deeper literary-cultural understanding toward the environment so that I can write more stories about my place.
I have many goals. If possible, I wish to continue my studies. But I have a great passion of teaching. Working as a teacher in a remote tribe is an item on my life to-do list. Serving as a volunteer interpreter in our national parks is one of the plans. Most importantly, I am also interested in working as a translator- -translating both of Taiwanese and Native American literary writings into English and Chinese.
As an international student of EH program, studying in Utah provides me a profound opportunity of experiencing landscape in the West, various dimensions of environmental thinking, and local culture. Come and extend your global views!
Katy Savage
I am a desert rat from southern Utah, currently raising honeybees and ducks in Salt Lake City. After earning a BA in English and philosophy from Brigham Young University, I was drawn to the Environmental Humanities program due to its interdisciplinarity and the simultaneous freedom and support its faculty gave me. My thesis research is focused on sheep, posthumanist theory, and deconstruction: I am exploring how ostensibly stable categories and binaries can be subverted in surprisingly mundane spaces, and how this affects the power relationships between species. After completing the program, I plan to pursue a Ph.D. in cultural studies and/or begin farming dairy goats.
Lilly Steinberg
Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, I am a recent transplant to Salt Lake City, learning to adjust to the dry life of the Intermountain West. I received my bachelor's degree in English and Spanish from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. My Spanish major took me to Ecuador and an environmental conservation course that sparked my interest in a wide range of environmental studies. I am particularly intrigued by the way personal and cultural worldviews affect individual and societal interactions with the environment. I hope to use the flexibility and interdisciplinary nature of the EH program to bring me to a broader and deeper understanding of how those different approaches can and should be incorporated into environmental policy and education.
Drew vonLintel
I am from various places around the West with my current 'from' place being here in Salt Lake City. I am fortunate to be able to say that I have lived in most of the western states and my basis for conservation and sustainability stem from these life experiences. The crooked path that led me to the Environmental Humanities program began in my undergraduate career at Northern Arizona University where I studied Interior Design. This field provided a basis for understanding the human indoor environment, but my interests lie in the outdoors. After a hiatus in Germany teaching skiing and golf to American Service men and women, I decided to pursue my passion for the natural environment which led me to the Environmental Humanities program.
I am drawn to the multi-disciplinary approach of the Environmental Humanities program. The broad basis for study and understanding is both exciting and intimidating. Where else do you have the opportunity to study the 'environment' with a philosophical, linguistic, communicative, historical or english based focus?
Upon graduation, I plan to enter the field of environmental education or sustainability in the university campus setting.
Nicholas Webster
I have two Bachelors' of Science degrees - Biology and Environmental Studies.
The emphasis upon the social implications of environmental issues stimulated my interest in the E.H. program. I began my study of Biology because I felt that an adequate understanding of biological systems would facilitate an appropriate environmental ethic, yet I came to understand that environmental issues do not arise from a lack of environmental knowledge, rather from societal constructions of identity.