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Highlight on Students

Students in the Environmental Sciences and Policy come from a diversity of backgrounds and career paths. Here is a small sampling of our accomplished students.

Reuben Baris

Reuben Baris

Where do you currently work/intern?

I currently work at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in the Office of Pesticide Programs, within the Environmental Fate and Effects Division.

Are you/Have you participated in or completed any compelling research relating to your degree?

No, not yet

What year do you intend to graduate?

2009

What is your favorite part of the Environmental Sciences and Policy Program?

I enjoy the realism that the professors bring to the classroom. For the most part, they are the practicitioners in the field and provide anecdotal information that help students apply theory and techniques learned in the classroom to real world problems.

Why did you choose to get your Masters Degree from Johns Hopkins?

Hopkins has many world renown degree programs, the name is important, but the convenience and applicability of the material learned in class to real world situations is invaluable.

What is your most memorable experience from the program so far?

Field excursions (field trips) provided much more valuable learning experiences than a whole semester in the classroom. I tried to take as many courses that related to ecology and water to get out in the field. Wetlands ecolgoy made giving up your saturday for class an enjoyable experience. The days can be long, hot, infested with insects, but they are invaluable for emphasizing the important "take home" points of any course. You are out there actually doing the work, sifting through soil with your hands, gettting dirty, rather than taking notes on it.

What do you plan to do once you have finished the program?

I plan to stay in my current position

Anthony Derzko

Anthony Derzko

Where do you currently work/intern?

Over the last ten years, I built a successful career in the investment management industry. As a Vice President at a global fund of hedge funds, I was charged with discovering novel and esoteric investment opportunities. In the course of executing this charge, I directed my firm's investment into one of the world’s first private sector carbon funds. After ten years in finance, the time had come for me to pursue my passion for developing solutions to global climate change more directly. I moved from New York to Washington DC and am currently interviewing for a fellowship position on Capitol Hill.

Are you/Have you participated in or completed any compelling research relating to your degree?

Not yet. However, I am working with contacts in both the public and private sectors to design a research project that will not only be interesting to me but will also contribute to their needs.

What year do you intend to graduate?

2009

What is your favorite part of the Environmental Sciences and Policy Program?

The class discussions, whether in a physical classroom or online, occur at a very sophisticated level. This is a testament not only to the quality of the faculty, but also to the intelligence and real-world experience possessed by the students. AAP students are working professionals, and, as such, they are deeply passionate about the subject matter. (Anyone who undertakes a rigorous Master’s program like this one while pursuing a full-time career must be both committed to and very passionate about learning.) Many of my fellow students work in the environmental field and readily share the knowledge they’ve derived from their day-to-day work in the classroom. They also, by virtue of the AAP’s distance learning option, can and do live all over the world, and therefore bring a wealth of perspectives to classroom discussions.

The faculty is no less impressive. Owing to its proximity to Washington, DC, Johns Hopkins is able to attract some of the world’s foremost policy experts to teach its courses. Somehow, these professors are not only extremely gifted scholars and practitioners, but are also gifted teachers, who genuinely care about helping their students to learn.

Why did you choose to get your Masters Degree from Johns Hopkins?

Johns Hopkins' Advanced Academic Programs offered a very high level of academic rigor, and coupled with it the ability to obtain a degree on a part-time basis while completing the majority of the courses toward one's degree online. A demanding career that required that I travel frequently left me with little choice but to pursue a Master’s that did not demand that I participate at a specific place or time. Johns Hopkins’ AAP was unique in its ability to offer me both a rigorous course of study and the flexibility to pursue it.

What is your most memorable experience from the program so far?

My most memorable experience to date was an intensive three-week course entitled Environmental Policy and the European Union that was taught in Berlin and Brussels. My fellow students and I studied a full session’s worth of material in three weeks, and met with numerous representatives from government, NGOs, and industry. Our meetings immersed us in Europe's markedly different environmental policy-making culture, and delivered not only a practical understanding of environmental policy in the EU, but also an enhanced understanding of and perspective on US environmental policy.

What do you plan to do once you have finished the program?

The climate policy that is developed in the United States over the next five years will launch the world on a path to carbon neutrality, or may speed it toward potentially catastrophic climatic change. Which of these two outcomes is realized will depend not only on popular and political will, but also on the creativity of the policies that are designed. My intention upon completing the program is to work in government and contribute to the development of creative and intelligent policies that will ensure the former outcome.

Eirc Hartge

Eric Hartge

Where do you currently work/intern?

I currently work with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.  My position is the Program Manager for the Baltimore Harbor Environmental Education Program

Are you/Have you participated in or completed any compelling research relating to your degree?

I am currently working on my Independant Graduate Project which is a Life Cycle Analysis of the role of algae in biofuel production.

What year do you intend to graduate?

Spring, 2009

What is your favorite part of the Environmental Sciences and Policy Program?

I thoroughly enjoy the material.  Each class becomes more interesting as my knowledge of the foundations of environmental work broadens.  The faculty and students are very knowledgeable with applicable real world experience which allows for very interesting discussions.

Why did you choose to get your Masters Degree from Johns Hopkins?

I found the program at Johns Hopkins to be very flexible with my schedule.  This has allowed me to continue to work while I study at a top research institute.

What is your most memorable experience from the program so far?

The most memorable experience must have been through the Natural Resource Economics course.  From that class, I began to really understand what decision makers are truly weighing when they are evaluating environmental policy. 

What do you plan to do once you have finished the program?
 
After the program, I may continue to work in the non profit sector for environmental protection and restoration or continue my education in a PhD program in environmental resource management.

Pamela Lesser

Pamela Lesser

Where do you currently work/intern?

I am a consultant who wears a few different hats.  I have a client (Craig Lawson & Co., LLC) in Los Angeles that I continue to do entitlement work for.  In addition, I am the “national policy analyst” for ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability.  Finally, I am a Fellow at the Ecologic Institute in Washington, DC, which is the US office of the Berlin-based Ecologic Institute for International and European Environmental Policy.

Are you/have you participated in or completed any compelling research related to the degree?

I am not sure I would describe my research as compelling, but it certainly does encompass everything from real estate development in downtown Los Angeles to my work for ICLEI, which consists of analyzing federal policy and legislation that comes out of Washington and evaluating its effects on local governments.  My work with the Ecologic Institute has mainly been to help them officially launch the Washington office, which is due to take place on Earth Day 2009. 

A paper of mine will, however, be published in the Spring Edition of Mediterranean Quarterly.  The paper originates from the final paper written for a summer class (Environmental Policy and the EU taught by Eileen McGurty, Associate Chair of the Environmental Science and Policy Program) that was based in Berlin and Brussels.

What year do you intend to graduate?

The ironic thing is that the program has been almost too helpful in allowing me to change my career path.  At the rate I’m going, it probably will be two more years before I graduate.  I’ve been so busy with work it’s been hard to find the time to squeeze classes in.

What is your favorite part of the Environmental Sciences and Policy Program?

I am a very new student to the program, so it is hard to say what my favorite part is.  The only thing I can say now is that I really appreciate the flexibility the program offers, including the array of courses and the ability to take the majority of them online. 

Why did you choose to get my Masters Degree from Johns Hopkins?

I have a Masters Degree in Urban Planning from UCLA and have worked in the field for 17 years now.  A lot of my work was in environmental planning and I have always wanted to continue working in ways that were at least linked to the environment.  Over time, my interest in policy grew and combining the environment and policy seemed a natural segue from the land use work I was doing.  Moving into the climate change arena really has come about as a result of this program, and in particular, the summer class in Europe. 

What is my most memorable experience from the program so far?

Given my rather limited experience of the program,  there aren't a whole lot of memories to choose from.  That said,  the most memorable experience – hands down – comes from the class based in Europe.  It’s somewhat hard to explain, but all of us in the class were on a fieldtrip to a conservation area about 1 ½ hours outside Berlin.  We stopped for lunch at a place that was half restaurant half working barn.  Apparently that day also was the annual crowning of the harvest princess (I think I may be getting the details slightly wrong so forgive me).  But what was really special, or so all the locals touted, was the swim in the milk bath the princess was supposed to take.  Dressed in a full length gold embroidered gown, which we all assumed the princess would change out of in favor of a bathing suit, she proceeded to sit down and dip her toes into the milk bath.  That was it.  It was pretty hard to resist laughing given our expectations.  But it really was a wonderful moment and a wonderful day.

What do you plan to do once you have finished the program?

I plan to continue along the same trajectory I am on now.  However, I have to admit I have always dreamed of getting a doctorate.  If the opportunity arises I think it would be hard to turn down.

Deborah Salamone

Deborah Salamone

Debbie Salamone just started a new job with the Pew Environment Group, part of the Pew Charitable Trusts. She's communications manager for Pew's campaign to end overfishing in the southeast. Her friends joke about how she is now defending fish after having been attacked by a shark in 2004, which severed her Achilles tendon. But Debbie, an avid ballroom dance competitor who recovered from her injury, remains a defender of all ocean creatures.

Debbie served for more than two decades as a nationally award-winning investigative reporter and senior editor at the Orlando Sentinel newspaper. Her passion for the environment and her enrollment in the JHU program lead her to a new career path.

International classes in China and Europe were the highlight of her studies and her favorite experiences. Other than those trips, she has taken the program completely online and has never stepped foot on a U.S. Hopkins campus. That will change this summer when she signs up for the ecology class, which intimidates her since she's used to just palms, pines and oaks in Florida. She hopes to continue with Pew after graduating later this year or in early 2010.