The Proverbial Light at the End of the Tunnel

A cell phone rings loudly in front of me, its owner scrambling frantically to silence the silly ringtone as quickly as possible to avoid further embarrassment. A couple of guys at a desk to my right try to subdue their laughter as they watch a video on YouTube, their efforts as futile as mine as I attempt to tune out the pained, awkward flirting I hear in the background. For a second I wonder if the past year and a half has been a dream, am I still in college? But then reality comes crashing down on me as always. I’ve left the world of academia behind me for now, and I actually have a job, like a real one with money and everything. Maybe working as a writer on contract with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration isn’t all that different from college? There are still assignments, lots of reading, I’m learning new things, and I still feel like the dumbest person in the room. Maybe college did prepare me for the real world.

“Well, good for you,” you might sneer sarcastically, “I’m glad you have a job, but I don’t have one and certainly won’t get one with a liberal arts education and a degree in environmental studies, not with this economy!” And you’d be right of course, at least partially. You most likely won’t find a good job that you like right out of college, I didn’t. If you do please feel free to contact me and rub your success in my face. I won’t be jealous, I’ll be happy for you. What I found, and what you can find too are unpaid internships. Yes, the “unpaid” part of that doesn’t sound too appealing, but we’ll get to that later. The “internship” part sounds good though, and everyone will tell you that you’re “getting your foot in the door” and “building your resume” and “gaining valuable job experience,” etc. And they’re right of course, at least partially. Unpaid internships can be valuable tools with the potential to set you off on a course to bigger and better things, but you’re going to have to work for it. If you work hard you’ll start to stand out and presumably someone will notice you and presumably this person knows people who know people who would like you to do more work but can’t pay you yet. This process may continue for some time, but if you make yourself indispensible enough someone in a position of authority may one day break this cycle and start paying you. That’s the plan anyway…

“Fine,” you say, “that sounds like a good plan, and it worked for you, but I don’t have any job skills. I have a liberal arts education and a degree in environmental studies, remember?” Wrong, you do have job skills; you just don’t know it. Can you write well, communicate effectively, work in groups, and use Microsoft office? Are you familiar with the concept of time management? Have you honed your critical thinking skills to a razor-sharp edge and do have a firm grasp of the social, political, and environmental issues affecting your community, your country, and your world? If you answered yes to all of those questions (and let’s be honest, if you’re a senior about to write your thesis then you better have) then congratulations, you have job skills!

“Ok,” you say, “so I have enough job skills to maybe get an unpaid internship that might start paying me eventually. In the meantime, I would like to eat and sleep under a roof but I can’t do that because I don’t have any money because I can’t find a job.” Wrong again, you can find a job; you just can’t find one that you want to do. Notice that I said “job” not “career” or “successful, well-paid dream job,” I just said “job.” They’re out there. I worked at a pizzeria for a year before NOAA started paying me enough that I could quit, and I have friends who did all kinds of stuff before getting a good job or going to grad school. Would you like to wait tables, bag groceries, babysit, or do weird landscaping work that you found on craigslist? No? Shocking, neither did my friends and I, but we did it anyway because we had to pay for ramen and PBR somehow. Plus, these jobs are rarely full time, so you can spend your free hours looking for better (un)paid internships!

I don’t say any of this to discourage you, but rather to assure you that everything is going to be ok. I’m not saying that the unpaid internship combined with crappy, menial job formula is guaranteed to work for everyone, but don’t get discouraged before at least giving it a shot. All joking aside, unpaid internships are actually incredibly valuable. The experience you gain and the connections you make will someday be worth more than you could ever imagine.

So enjoy the rest of college. Work hard but not too hard, and most importantly don’t worry too much. You’ll be just fine.

Written by Andrew Coggiola, '09

Thoughts on a conservation internship

I spent last summer interning for the conservation department at the Oregon Zoo. It was an amazing experience, overall. I was given opportunities to see firsthand how conservation projects are implemented, funded, and overseen. I even spent part of the summer doing fieldwork for the Zoo’s well-publicized western pond turtle conservation project. I am passionate about wildlife conservation, and I was excited by the work that the Oregon Zoo is doing to make a positive impact on biodiversity both here in Oregon and all over the world.

Most of the conservation department, however, is staffed by conservation educators. These are wonderful, caring people who love animals and spend their days creating activities and programs for children, teaching them everything from native Oregon bird calls to details about the life cycle of a cheetah in far away Africa. This is all well and good. It is inspiring and difficult work. But somewhere, there is a disconnect. Nearly all of these people drive to work on a daily basis. I can’t say that I was shocked to discover this, but it has unsettled me enough to reexamine how I have been thinking about conservation. I found myself wondering on certain days during my internship, is this really the best we can do? We can teach kids about a carbon footprint, but it is wasted energy if no one connects the dots between the plight of polar bears in Alaska and driving two miles to school everyday. It is all too ironic to me that even as educators finish up a lesson on the impending impact of climate change on polar bears, they gather up their things and get into their SUVs to go home.


Surely there are dozens of such disconnects between thought and action in our everyday lives. In some ways our society has constructed this disconnect in its very organization: we live in a culture where academia, critical thinking, and great questions are compartmentalized into classrooms. It would not be hard, for example, to find someone extolling the virtues of organic food on our campus, but found a few days later purchasing the cheaper, conventionally grown produce in the supermarket. Conservation certainly necessitates passionate people like the conservation educators at the Oregon Zoo, working every day to spread awareness, but it also needs action from ordinary citizens. It is possible to imagine a world where consideration for the conservation of our natural resources is an integrated part of American life.


The historical view of conservation as a far away forest where no humans go is just that: historical. It cannot be our contemporary view of what it means to protect the biodiversity that is so important to our health and the health of the planet. In the end, we all need to be conservationists in order for any real conservation to succeed. Each of us is responsible for connecting the dots between thought and action in our everyday lives.

Challenges of Labeling

As an ENVS major focusing on food systems and social justice, connecting the food on my plate to broader processes of production and distribution has become a frequent dinner conversation in my life. One conversation in particular stands out. My companions included a few passionate vegans who were able to list off from memory dozens of unpronounceable ingredients containing animal products and a student involved in the Portland-based Non-GMO project who was able to perform a similar trick with products including genetically modified ingredients. A friend of mine and I rounded out the discussion, attempting holism but clearly most passionate about issues surrounding farm-worker justice and international agricultural imperialism.

This conversation really made me appreciate Real Food Challenge, which is a national student organization committed to leveraging their power as students to demand that the four billion dollars colleges in the United States spend on food each year goes toward food that nourishes consumers, producers, and the planet. I recently returned from a national organizer training with Real Food Challenge that pushed me to look at food issues more broadly than I otherwise would.

Purists won’t be pleased by RFC. “Real Food” is considered fair, local, humane, and ecologically sound, but the standards for many of the categories are not as stringent as single-issue foodies might prefer. Legitimate criticisms have been leveled at the organic, fair trade, and humane certifications that the Real Food Calculator is based on. As a member of the 2010ENVS Symposium Planning Committee, I’m trying to ensure that each of these labels is considered with a critical eye.

Just because something is labeled fair or organic or real doesn’t make it nature’s perfect food. I know that. Knowing this has left me even more motivated to work with Real Food Challenge. An example is in order: For my ENVS 330 final, I researched fair trade coffee commodity chains. (Check out Brewing Justice author Daniel Jaffee at Symposium!) Producing coffee is hard work, and the people on the ground have a hard time making ends meet. As it turns out, this is often true even when the coffee carries a fair trade label. Research for my ENVS thesis will likely involve researching the complexities of the fair trade label, including the complexities in negotiating with large organizations, the cost of certification, and the fact that farmers still receive a fraction of the end price.

In contrast, my work with RFC surrounding fair trade will mostly involve educating others about the difficulties in conventional coffee production and trying to mobilize students to increase consumer demand for fair and direct trade. I understand that fair trade coffee isn’t perfect, but I also understand that it is better, and that convincing corporations to switch from conventional coffee to individual, direct, and equal relationships with each producer is perhaps out of the range of immediate possibility.

As imperfect as labeling practices are, they are certainly better than the most common alternative, which is no consideration at all. For example, though it is possible to buy coffee from Central America where the producers have a guaranteed minimum price, strawberries purchased from a grocery store carry no such guarantee. When I buy strawberries or broccoli at the grocery store, I have no way whatsoever of finding out whether the workers were allowed to unionize, what their living conditions were like, or even how much they made. This is true even if the produce is certified organic and was grown within 100 miles of my house. The only thing more confusing than labels, it appears, is not having them at all.

I would love to see a food system where all connections between producers and consumers were direct and fair, as well as a food system based on connections to the land that could be sustained for centuries to come. This is what I’m working for, but I recognize that it can’t be achieved overnight.

The philosophy of Real Food Challenge is about not letting our desire to make the food system perfect get in the way of our ability to make it better. The role of academia and critical thinking in all of this is about not ignoring the devilish details (how much more do fair-trade producers make, exactly?) in the name of progress. I think that both approaches are irrelevant without the other, so I’d like to figure out a way to make activists and academics more directly accountable to one another.

With respect to our upcoming ENVS Symposium, this will mean pushing speakers who have dedicated their lives toward promoting change to reflect on how they could be doing better. It will also mean pushing speakers who specialize in deconstructing imperfect solutions to be as specific about their visions for change as they are about the flaws in the action plans of others. It will mean challenging all involved to recognize that there are no easy answers, but that it is this very fact that makes responding both intellectually and actively to the challenges in our modern food system so important.

[Written by Tara Brown]

A Response to PSU's Eating Animals Roundtable [Discussion?]

We, the Lewis & Clark College Environmental Symposium lead chairs, thought it would be worthwhile to attend Portland State University's Eating Animals Roundtable Discussion so as to research related school sponsored discussions regarding food and to gain insight for the content and tone we want to set for our upcoming symposium "Following the Food Chain." We left the event jarred by the discussion and discourse that transpired which has led to the following charged response. We recognize that this is a strongly opinionated article and we hope that in taking such a critically firm stance we will light the fire of controversial debate for our own symposium.

The Eating Animals Roundtable Discussion was intended to be a, "lively discussion of what is increasingly being recognized as one of the most vexing set of issues of our time" (Portland Center for Public Humanities). It was meant to be a forum in which panelists and audience members could discuss and contemplate the nature of eating animals and our role as animals that eat. Unfortunately, this event was anything BUT a roundtable discussion. Discussion is defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary as, “[the] consideration of a question in open and usually informal debate.” Eating Animals was certainly informal yet seriously lacked the diversity of debate characteristic of an intellectual panel. Speakers Camas Davis, Kathy Hessler, and Ramona Ilea represented a variety of perspectives. Camas the ethical butcher, Kathy the animal lawyer, and Ramona the foodie philosopher should have all butted heads throughout the two hour long roundtable, and still the event felt more like a kumbaya, hand-holding, vegan indoctrination presentation. Where was the controversy, the scrutiny, the questioning? Well, let us back up a moment, there were questions…there was a whole hour dedicated to audience questions…but the questions did not probe, pry or press with substance or style suited for the setting.

This PSU event had groundbreaking potential to hit on ideas we commonly accept and take for granted. Why do we eat meat? Are we a part of the Darwinian food chain and if so, is eating meat merely a nutritious necessity? As carnivores, do we stand above and removed from the rest of the animal kingdom to be deemed an exceptional breed? How do morality, justice, and ethics apply to our dinner plate? When considering these ideals, can the solution be found along the grocery aisle or must the solution go beyond the consumer to grander and greater decisions. THESE are the questions we wish we had heard. We did not need to hear about Joe Schmoe from the back row's life saga as a vegan. We did not want to hear about how it makes Cindy Lou in the front row cry at night to think about the beakless baby chickens. These were supposed to be debate-oriented questions, not emotional appeals for vegetarianism. There is nothing constructive or effective in approaching these issues in that manner. To be honest, we all blew it. We brought together three fascinating panelists with wonderfully different specialties. We had over an hour in which we could have picked their brains, gained perspective, and formulated knowledgeable opinions yet we spent that time blabbing and pointing fingers. In particular, the arguments of Camas Davis were simply ignored and discredited by some of the most outspoken members of the vegetarian audience. Little meaningful discussion was raised since those who asked questions came forth with pre-conceptions and self-praise that defined the event in a one-sided fashion.

Despite how disappointed we were with the ineffectiveness of the roundtable, we did gain a lot of valuable insight as to qualities and practices we want to replicate (or steer clear of) when producing the 13th Annual Symposium on Environmental Affairs “Following the Food Chain." Most importantly, we have vowed (for the sake of both panelists and audience members alike) to ensure that questions raised actually end in question marks. In addition, the event allowed us to get in contact with some of the panelists involved; Kathy Hessler has already been helpful in providing provocative ideas worth debating in our panels. Lastly, we believe Camas Davis’ Portland Meat Collective is a great example of an alternative food movement in the Portland area that is trying to change the way our food system operates. In an attempt to remove meat consumers from the snare of the American meat industry, she proposes a local “relational” economy in which meat eaters have an emotional relationship with the animals that produce their meat and dairy. It is just a shame that people, even in Portland, cannot look past their own engrained beliefs and recognize that such an attempt to go against the status quo is valuable, even if it means meat is still part of the daily diet.

We encourage any comments or questions so please feel free to contact us (Claire Cummings and Ben Mitzner) at clairec.lclark@gmail.com and bmitzner@gmail.com

Abroad in India: Reflections from My Fall Semester

Almost two years ago in Environmental Studies 160, my good friend Rosanne Wielemaker and I chose to do a small research project on the Navdanya Farm in Dehradun, India. Little did I know at the time that my interest in this organic farm would lead to a second situated research proposal in India, an application for the Lewis & Clark study abroad program in India and an independent field study on third world environmentalism. This fall, I was able put my two years of theoretical research on India into a real cultural experience by spending three and a half months traveling and studying the country with twenty-four of my fellow classmates. While I was there, I had the opportunity to learn about India’s history and culture from two brilliant university professors—Sunil and Nita Kumar—as well as a host of other native lecturers and local townspeople. In addition, Rosie and I were able to conduct an independent study on waste management and environmentalism in India.

From September 1st to December 14th, I lived in about five of India’s major metropolises and dozens of other small and rural areas. We began the program in Delhi where—under the guidance of Sunil Kumar—we studied medieval and modern India through field trips to monuments, mosques, shrines and temples as well as through projects that forced us to navigate the city on our own. From there, we went to Dehradun, Rishikesh and Haridwar before finally settling in Varanasi for the month of October. I was fortunate enough to be in Varanasi during the major Hindu festival of Diwali, which meant plenty of sweets, firecrackers and parades. Unlike a developing economic and political capital such as Delhi, Varanasi is a city in which India’s social and ecological problems are more apparent. The city’s significance in Hinduism, old infrastructure and large handicraft industry make Varanasi an incredibly unique place to study environmental issues such as waste management, pollution and urbanization. Consequently, Varanasi was where I situated my independent study.

In the spring of 2009, Rosanne and I decided to collaborate on an independent study regarding waste management practices in India. After a semester of intensive research and planning, we submitted our project proposal to the ENVS steering committee and waited anxiously for the fall to begin furthering our investigation. However, research projects do not always go as planned, especially in new and foreign countries. Despite the many drawbacks that we faced in attempting to follow our original proposal, we were able to create and accomplish a new project, using the data and contacts that we had already established through another, separate assignment in Varanasi.

With help from the Nirman School, I spent nearly two weeks learning about Hindu philosophy on humans and nonhuman nature from Dr. Veer Bhadra Mishra and his colleague R.K. Mishra of the Sankat Mochan Foundation. As the high priest of Varanasi and a former professor of Civil Engineering at Benaras Hindu University, Dr. Mishra—more commonly known as Mahantji—combined his faith and knowledge of science to form the Sankat Mochan Foundation, an organization that works to raise awareness of pollution in the holy Ganga river. While it is considered the Mother Goddess in Hinduism, the Ganga River is incredibly polluted and many Hindu residents in Varanasi refuse to accept this objective fact. In Varanasi, I listened to these local Hindus talk about their love for Gangaji and then watched them throw plastic bottles into their beloved river. During these two and half weeks, my main objective was to look at the significance of religion to an individual’s actions towards the biophysical world. In finishing my assignment in Varanasi, I was able to gather a tremendous amount of data for my independent study, which I will continue to analyze this spring.

From Varanasi, we headed south to Bangalore, Mysore, Penukonda, BR Hills and Nagarhole to learn about other issues of environment and development in India. My visit to the Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra (VGKK) organization in BR Hills was one of the most eye-opening and humbling experiences that I had throughout my stay in India. VGKK is an organization formed by Dr. Sudarshan that aims to protect the culture and livelihood of tribal peoples in the state of Karnataka from the effects of technological development and wildlife conservation. VGKK provides these tribes with health facilities as well as education in both academic studies and organic agriculture. In BR Hills, I was able to witness the benefits of this program: the preservation of biodiversity and local knowledge.

After spending three and a half months in a third world country, I have had a rough time transitioning back into my previous lifestyle knowing that the same issues that I saw and people that I met still exist 8000 miles away. At the end of the day, I am grateful for choosing India two years ago as my situated research site in ENVS 160. Because of that small choice, I am now returning to my studies at Lewis & Clark having gained a tremendous amount of inspiration and knowledge from my experiences and travels in India.

Posted by Emily Nguyen '11

The Images and Politics That Resurface

A year and a half ago, I wrote in the conclusion to my senior thesis: “In an increasingly stateless and transient world, place still matters. Place and place-attachment is neither static nor nostalgic. The contextual processes of how refugees form attachments to place can inform not only the dominant stereotypes of refugees, but also how environmentalism reveres a localized and singular place attachment.” A lot has happened in the time since I wrote that—I graduated in the Spring of 2008 and wanted nothing to do with academia, so I got my EMT (Emergency Medical Technician), and a job as a ski patroller. When the snow melted, I realized (amazingly enough!) that I had enough funds for a trip overseas. So I spent the past three months traveling: first to Sweden where I met two friends from LC for three weeks of rock climbing and mountaineering in Northern Sweden and on the Lofoten Islands off the Northwest coast of Norway.

From Scandinavia, I headed to India, where I spent three weeks studying Tibetan Buddhism and climbing in the high Himalayan plateau of Ladakh. From there I traveled south to the northern plains and visited the more touristy sites of Jaipur in the Rajasthani desert, Agra to see the truly magnificent Taj Mahal, and Varanasi to see the Hindu holy city. I also went to Dharamsala, the home in exile for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Government, and a large population of Tibetan refugees who have recently escaped from Tibet. I have been interested in the political situation in Tibet for a long time, but it always seemed as something that was handed to me, rather than something I sought out on my own. In middle school, my best friend’s mother would host monks and rimpoches who came to give teachings in the town hall, in small town Vermont. I fell into Tibetan culture by cooking momos (dumplings filled with vegetables or mutton) and tingmo (a steamed bread) for the teachers and being told we had to go give khatas (ceremonial scarves and a sign of respect) to the lamas. But in Ladakh, in the high Himalayas, it became my own. I was traveling to 1000 year old temples tucked into the barren hillsides offering khatas again to 25 foot tall carved wooden Buddhas, or going to festivals in ancient monasteries where dancers retold traditional Buddhist folklore.

Similarly, Dharamsala stirred my academic work and interests that I had moved away from. I fell quickly into teaching English to Tibetan refugees and began asking questions about the dynamics of displacement for the students that I was tutoring. I decided that while I enjoyed ski patrol, this was where I wanted to focus when I returned to the states. So when my hulking, heaving plane touched down, the only job that was remotely interesting was working as a Paraeducator in an ELL (English Language Learning) classroom in Burlington, Vermont. I love it. The students are amazing. They are endlessly optimistic, engaged, and hilarious. They are also challenging, with the gamut of English proficiency, learning differences, family situations, trauma, etc. They are predominately Somali Bantu, but also Nepalese who are being evicted from Bhutan, some from Burma, China, and a smattering of other African countries.

In my spare time, I continue to study Hindi and Tibetan languages. I also try to process and explore my experiences, with the hope of returning in the next two years. My memories of India are complicated: it is an intense country, which has really shaken the foundation of my thoughts in Environmental Studies. The images that linger behind my eyes are of the people, negotiating an overwhelming population, poverty, and the rapid push for modernization. It seems as though industrialization has happened in thirty years, and the infrastructure for its debris is still non-existent. In Varanasi, the holy Ganges River flows through the city, parts of it black from where the sewage flows straight into the river. Nearby, young boys are fishing... in many ways, India was incredibly disheartening. The job seems even more overwhelming, even more unattainable, in a place where the vast majority of people are struggling to meet basic needs. Yet, at the same time, there is a momentum in that: that if people depend on the river intimately for their sustenance, its vulnerability is almost more compelling. I try to sift through my frustrations and find pockets of optimism.

I find that I am more oriented toward social considerations as a result of my job—I go home and research the conflicts that have given rise to the displaced populations I am working with, I read mostly about racism in school environments, and sociology books about modern India. But Environmental Studies has given me the framework to think about human migration in a wider context than the social dynamics. My thinking continues to be situated in a conversation about place-attachment and what influences that, whether environmental or social.

If you have questions or thoughts, I am always interested in what current students are working on, as well as the reflections of other alumni. alexa.m.schmidt(at)gmail.com

My Experience as a 2006 ENVS Graduate

I graduated with a BA in Environmental Studies from Lewis & Clark College in 2006, and was fortunate to have a summer job lined up after graduation working as a Crew Leader with the Youth Conservation Corps in Yellowstone National Park. I had been a student in the program for two summers in high school. The program was challenging for me, but it felt good to be sharing the outdoors with 30 high school students and drawing on a lot of things I had learned in college in our daily environmental education sessions.

I knew that I was going to take at least a year off before applying to grad school because I wanted to get more work experience, so I returned to Portland in August where I spent the winter of 2006 bouncing around a few jobs. My first job was working for a photo lab, which was at best motivation to find a better job. After 6 weeks, I quit and started working for REI (part time) and an Intellectual Property law firm (full time). I was probably working too many hours, but in January my hours went down at REI, so I started looking for a part-time internship because I wanted to do something more closely related to my degree and my interests. I wound up interning at a Portland-based climate change consultancy that I learned about from a lunchtime talk given by its founder at Lewis and Clark in 2005. In March, I decided to return to Yellowstone in Summer 2007 by way of a five-week hiking trip across Spain.

While I was in Yellowstone, I was offered a Research Assistant position with the consulting firm and started on Labor Day 2007. I know that I probably would not have gotten that job had I not interned 10 hours a week earlier in the year. This job was a great opportunity for me because I was able to provide research support and gained a lot of experience conducting greenhouse gas inventories, drafting reports, and helping to develop a few Excel based models. I also helped author a short paper on carbon market opportunities for public transportation organizations with a colleague. In October 2008, I started the GRE and application process because I wanted to start a graduate program that would combine my climate change experience with my other interests in public land management.

Which I guess brings us to the present. I am in my first semester of a 2 year MS in Resource Conservation program at the University of Montana. Ultimately, I am glad that I waited to apply to grad school. I have a better idea of what I need to study, and I think that I also gained a lot from my work experiences. One other thing, if anyone wants to contact me, my e-mail is crankypants374@hotmail.com. Just kidding, it is matt.ehrman (at) gmail.com. If you have one, ditch the stupid handle. I have seen people arbitrarily toss out resumes for that and stupid fonts.