I was drawn to the Environmental Studies degree because at the time I was just studying Geoscience and I wanted to supplement all the science classes I was taking with some more social science-based classes in the environmental field. EVST helped me learn how to apply technical knowledge to contemporary social and environmental issues, and made everything I was learning a bit more practicable. I am currently working as a Catastrophe Risk Analyst for Homesite Insurance In Boston. In this role I use tools like ArcGIS, SQL, and catastrophe models to analyze homeowners’ risk to various natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, etc. This has been a great role for me because it combined my background in geoscience (natural disasters, spatial data) with my background in environmental studies (environmental effects on people and business). I recommend the catastrophe risk/modeling industry to people who are interested, it’s relatively new but growing! Most insurance companies have similar teams and there are also companies who work directly on the models we use, so there are lots of opportunities out there. I am hoping to attend grad school in the Fall (still waiting on decisions, fingers crossed!) in the disaster management/community resilience field so I can do similar work but for the benefit of people, not a private company, and I think my current career as well as the environmental studies program at UConn were major factors in this decision.

I participated in the Climate Corps organized by Juliana Barrett and Bruce Hyde. I don’t have any pictures but this was a really awesome, uniquely hands-on experience that I can’t recommend enough to current students! I also did an alternative break at the Avery Point campus that focused on coastal environmental issues and involved a beach clean-up and dune restoration, which was another great out-of-the-classroom experience.