Tackling Environmental Issues

By Alexandra Mahoney, English Faculty

The temperature gauge on the car read 111 degrees and the air was heavy with smoke from Montana wildfires as I crossed the border from Montana into Idaho. I was joined by my husband, NA English Teacher Von Rollenhagen, and our dog Maggie on our cross-country road trip during the summer of 2021. Just beyond Lewiston, Idaho, we pulled into the Nez Perce National Historic Park site along the Snake River to visit my former student Carley Stein ’13 — aka “Ranger Carley.”

After Carley showed us the grounds, we were able to catch her ranger talk, “Let’s Go Fishing,” about traditional Nez Perce fishing techniques and how the tribe now manages its own fisheries while working alongside government agencies to support salmon populations.

An Oberlin College graduate in environmental studies, Carley was inspired to pursue a career as a public servant for the National Park Service (NPS) after working on trail crews with the

Student Conservation Association during her time at NA. She describes those experiences as “key moments in which I enjoyed the work, the environment, the atmosphere and the commitment to service and trail building.”

That work sparked her interest in learning more about the National Park System. As an International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma candidate at NA, Carley examined early 20thcentury attitudes toward land usage that helped birth the NPS in 1916 in her Extended Essay, a required independent research paper. Still, at the time, she wasn’t clear on all of the opportunities today’s NPS has to offer.

In fact, at the time “it just seemed like a bear wearing a hat was working at the National Parks,” she joked in reference to the park rangers’ iconic “Smokey the Bear” broad-brimmed flat hat that she now rocks!

Carley’s journey from 2019 to 2022 involved temporary positions in four different parks, including Lassen Volcanic and Joshua Tree in California. Recently, she has settled into a permanent position at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, North Dakota. On the heady topic of “careers in the environment,” she says that being an environmental studies major teaches you “to be versatile about how you can jump into more intangible roles” in fulfilling the “three fundamental pillars of sustainability: the social, the economic and the environmental orders.”

While not all is rosy with the NPS (she apologizes if you’ve recently experienced long lines to enter the parks and urges you to write to your representatives in Congress so the NPS can improve its practices), Carley notes overall that “it’s cool to serve the country and to do fun work helping the visitors.” While being a guide for visitors is one aspect of working for the parks, and while “having a job in which you get to do tactile things in addition to paperwork is a dream,” in truth a parks job requires the flexibility to take on a variety of roles.

Currently, Carley’s work at Theodore Roosevelt involves more operations and facilities maintenance duties, like ensuring park compliance with employee and safety regulations. Despite the challenges and frustrations that working for a government agency entails and the need to continually reevaluate the efficacy of conservation methods, Carley remains passionate about the value of a career that gives back to the environment and the community. “I believe the initial mission to conserve the land for the enjoyment of future generations is vital in our evolving world,” she affirms.

Predicting Power Grids of the Future!

After witnessing the amazing conservation work Carley takes part in at the NPS, I caught up with another former student of mine working toward a more sustainable future, Marty Schwarz ’10, who works at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory near Denver, Colorado.

“My job lies at the intersection of technology, economics and engineering,” explains Marty. While his paycheck comes from the nonprofit, he does have a .gov email since NREL is a laboratory of the United States Department of Energy.

A New Director of Sustainability!

Neil Stourton, longtime NA English teacher, former English department chair and current International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IB) coordinator, will step into a brand new role this fall as Newark Academy’s director of sustainability. Neil will work with a range of constituents to lead and support NA’s sustainability efforts both inside and outside the classroom.

“It’s been an honor running the IB program for 17 years. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know each cohort of students,” Neil says of his work, which included tripling the size of the IB Diploma program and expanding its course offerings. “Now I’m thrilled to take that experience of building a program to position sustainability at the center of everything we do here at NA, preparing the next generation of students to be leaders in imagining and ensuring a sustainable future.”

From crafting innovative educational experiences on “going green” to the implementation of green building and waste management techniques, Newark Academy plans to remain committed to eco-conscious living and learning under Neil’s leadership. To learn more about sustainability at NA, visit newarka.edu/about/sustainability.

Marty spends his days conducting research to inform models for electricity power grids of the future — not in the next few years, but in future decades, out to about 2050! “Most of our studies revolve around trying to predict what the grid will look like in the future based on market trends, different policies, incentives and tax credits that have certain dates,” he says. “We run models to predict what the operations of the grid will look like in 20 or 30 years.”

Despite what seems — at least to a non-scientist like me — to be a relentless string of nightly news stories of scarcity, extremity and doom, Marty is optimistic about the future because he is constantly “meeting people in the industry who aren’t political — who are technical or who are deeply involved in how the grid actually works.”

Marty, who graduated with a physics degree from Carleton College, has been interested in renewable energy since he was young, when he built little solar-powered battery chargers at a summer camp in Maine. In college, he became more interested in the grid and the engineering problems that result from the complexity of shifting systems. The technical nature of these challenges and “the connection to something that I think actually matters in our future — that nexus is why I’m pursuing this field,” Marty explains. Right after college, Marty spent a handful of years as a ski instructor and fisherman in Alaska and as a backpacker in New Zealand while solving technical shipboard problems aboard tall ships. Marty then earned a Fulbright Fellowship to India— a global leader in decarbonization— which launched him into the world of engineering research, an experience that led directly to his current job at NREL.

When he’s not predicting the future of the nation’s power grid, Marty satis- fies his nomadic needs by challenging himself with new endeavors in the outdoors. He finds intellectual stimulation in the technical angles of mountaineering and skiing, gaining skills through a Crevasse Rescue Course or an Avalanche Rescue Course. These new challenges are extensions of a lifetime of outdoor exploration. At NA, Marty spent a semester at High Mountain Institute (HMI) in Leadville, Colorado — the state he now lives in — through the Off-Campus Study Program. HMI “gave me a foundational comfort with backcountry travel … with planning and being isolated for a time.” There’s “so much benefit to being out there in those wild remote places,” he attests, “and in getting out of your comfort zone and then expanding that comfort zone. That’s what growth is all about.”

The Fight for Environmental Justice

Inspired by my visit with Carley and chat with Marty regarding the work they are each doing — despite being in vastly different fields — to implement and advocate for sustainable practices, I wanted to connect with other Newark Academy alums working toward the same goal. That’s when our Office of Alumni Relations introduced me to Sharon Thornton Wells ’76, who works for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Upon graduating from New York University Law School in 1983, Sharon didn’t expect to begin a career in the environmental field. In fact, her concept at the time of what “environmentalism” amounted to revolved around the “save the whales” and “plant a tree” movements. Nonetheless, she accepted a job at the EPA right out of the gate and has been there ever since.

For the first 22 years, Sharon — living in Boston with her husband and growing family — worked at EPA’s Region 1 Office of Regional Counsel, which serves the six New England states, using her experience to direct operational facets of the agency, overseeing the legal requirements in the construction of sewage treatment plants and other projects. Afterwards — somewhat reluctantly at first, but then enthusiastically — she agreed to head the Office of Civil Rights within EPA Region 1, which at the time included the Environmental Justice Program.

About this seismic move within the agency, Sharon says, “I became the client.” As such, she invested herself much more intimately in the mission of the EPA to “protect human health and the environment” — one that remains a constant amidst the shifting priorities of different administrations. Despite her vast experience, Sharon hadn’t previously thought as much about the “human health part of the equation” — that she might be able to weigh in on the impact of wood stove usage in Vermont, for example, and how it affects the air people breathe.

In implementing the agency’s policies around environmental justice, Sharon has sought to prioritize “capacity building” — the ways in which people can learn about the decisions being made in their communities and understand how issues and concerns can be brought to decision-making bodies. Her outreach in the region has included offering small grants to help communities educate and organize themselves, providing a “tip line” for people to leave messages about concerns, and creating fact sheets in different languages to inform those who may be impacted by a decision.

“We need to understand the demographics of the communities we’re working with, so we can give them information in a way they can best understand it,” she says. “We need to be cognizant of the daily lives of the people in a location so that a meeting can be wellattended. One thing communities hate more than anything else is when we (or any organization) are not looking at things holistically. We have to see beyond the specific issue to listen and understand that there is a whole litany of circumstances in play.”

To this end, another major initiative under Sharon’s leadership is a commitment to “collaborate with other agencies and entities that have a role in what we’re all trying to achieve,” she says. “We’ve been able to be a convener for different issues, bringing together all the appropriate agencies in order to address a problem. It’s never a situation where ‘it’s not our job’ — it is our job to figure out whose job it is and to make sure those people are present at community meetings.”

As one of only two students of color in her class at NA, Sharon credits her experience in high school for giving her “the perspective of being able to feel comfortable in any kind of situa- tion around anybody.” A student during the “responsible learning era,” Sharon adored her history class with Lee Abbey, although math was her favorite subject. NA “prepared me very well for Trinity College,” where — in another predominantly white institution — she felt like she was “always being the change agent.”

Sharon explains how she willingly and patiently fielded questions from peers who had never had a Black person in their classes. Being a boundarybreaker and prizing difficult conversations are among the many qualities that have enabled Sharon to flourish. These characteristics are vital in her work to craft regional programs intended to empower residents with the knowledge and agency to ensure community health amidst environmental progress.

Though she didn’t share this tidbit with me, I also learned that Sharon has received numerous awards including EPA’s highest honor, a Gold Medal for Exceptional Service for systematically transforming regional operations to incorporate environmental justice principles, and for achieving dramatic results in environmental justice communities. In close to 40 years of service — and while raising three children and becoming a grandmother of one — Sharon has brought her indefatigable and measured energies to her role as a public servant, fortifying the EPA’s commitment to environmental justice. Whether it’s evaluating conservation efforts in National Parks, predicting the future of power grids or empowering citizens to be informed on local environmental issues, I’m so proud to have connected with just a few of the many Newark Academy alumni who work each day to pave the way for a more sustainable and environmentally just future.