Furthered zero waste goals by being a resource for the UNH community for sustainability.

Compiling place-based curriculum for K-12 public school teachers in the Lamprey River region.Teaching place-based lessons to visiting school groups and summer camps.

The summer of 2022 I volunteered as an AmeriCorps member at Teton Science Schools in Jackson, Wyoming. From May into August I worked alongside TSS staff to develop and lead place-based education, totaling 500 hours of service. I taught from ages five to fifteen in small groups or managing groups of 200+ students who came to TSS through school groups, summer camps, and other educational programs. My primary role was to teach ecology and foster community while exploring Grand Teton National Park and surrounding areas. I not only managed students in day-to-day affairs, but assisted staff in other logistical matters, taught academic lessons in the field, and fostered social skills in the students (many of which had barely returned to school, and therefore peer interaction, since COVID-19). This summer was a phenomenal experience: I absolutely loved teaching the students, especially middle school boys, as I had to work extra hard to creatively engage them in learning and community building. “Difficult” students were a welcome challenge that I will remember forever. Beyond teaching, I also created blog posts and social media content for the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance during that same summer. Since then I have strengthened my communication skills with creative nonfiction and climate reporting classes, and am now publishing in multiple news outlets. My goal is to create my own Environmental Writing minor to demonstrate my skills and significance of science communication.

In late 2021, after working a semester for the UNH Sustainability Institute (SI), I was asked to transition into the role of Trash2Treasure (T2T) Student Coordinator. Trash2Treasure is a student enterprise that has been taken under the wing of SI. The spring 2022 semester was the first that a student intern (working outside of their normal course load) ran the program. T2T is a program that collects unwanted items from students at spring move out and sells them to incoming students during fall move in. T2T has diverted over 170 tons of waste over 10 years, and last spring was certainly no exception. T2T was on pause because of COVID, so we were left with four shipping containers full of donated items. I coordinated the sorting, donating, and selling of all of these items throughout four months. I contacted local charities to select items that they could use, coordinated volunteer sorting and “mini-sale” days to further empty the containers. I coordinated the recruitment of volunteers, marketing of mini-sales, and speaking at events to advocate. Emptying the containers by May was critical because four whole more containers’ worth of donated items would flood in over two weeks in May. I not only coordinated the two-weeks of four-shift days with over a dozen volunteers and multiple “core-team” members, but made sure that everyone was trained, involved, empowered, and aware of the resources available to them. I took extra shifts that others dropped, on top of the multiple shifts I was working daily. I coordinated the sorting of items before they went into the containers, dealt with the array of problems that large undertakings encounter, and was the main point person for the T2T program. I was away during the summer, but I jumped right back in to assist in running the main T2T sale in August. The massively successful sale was successful because I ensured that problems were solved, questions answered, and hard deadlines met - above and beyond what was required.

Sustainability Interns play a critical role in supporting the University of New Hampshire’s Task Forces,advancing the goals of the Sustainability Institute, and strengthening peer-to-peer outreach efforts. Theylearn about the complexities of making change and supporting sustainability outcomes in a largeorganization and work with dedicated colleagues to contribute tangibly to UNH’s sustainability leadership. This Zero Waste internship involves outreach work in the UNH and regional community about composting and organic waste diversion. This includes research, an educational campaign, and infrastructure planning with outside groups.

I worked to synthesize and compare UNH, ORCSD, Durham, and Lee, NH's waste management data to inform a potential future regional composting program. I researched successful community composting efforts, interviewed leaders who are running community composting initiatives, and gathered missing data points from this region. This culminated in a 30 page research report with recommendations of “next steps” including a community waste educational campaign and an eventual expansion of existing compost hauling service programs. I worked with the Regional Compost Working Group which was composed of representatives from each of the four member entities all of whom contributed vital information.

I was a barn hand at the UNH horse barns during the fall and spring semesters of my freshman year and through winter break. I worked between 8 and 20 hours a week cleaning stalls, grooming, feeding, and turning out horses, and completing other barn chores.

I was an assistant propagator who worked to increase the output of plants in the nursery, properly ship and categorize shipments, and care for plants inside greenhouses and outside in the field.