University of Connecticut Student Goes Global

This rock, locat­ed on cen­tral cam­pus, was paint­ed this week to protest cli­mate change on campus.

In this inter­view, I sat down and talked with Junior envi­ron­men­tal stud­ies and jour­nal­ism stu­dent, Aman­da McCard. Dur­ing her time at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, McCard has become deeply involved with mul­ti­ple envi­ron­men­tal activist groups on cam­pus. How­ev­er, recent­ly she has had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to extend her reach even fur­ther beyond the bounds of Storrs, Con­necti­cut. Through a pro­gram run by the Uni­ver­si­ty, she will be in atten­dance at the 28th annu­al Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties, run by the Unit­ed Nations. This episode will focus on McCard’s envi­ron­men­tal work both local­ly and globally.

 

Tran­script:

 Emi­ly Markelon: Hel­lo, my name is Emi­ly Markelon. Thank you for tun­ing in. Today, I had the priv­i­lege of talk­ing to and learn­ing from a fel­low stu­dent, Aman­da McCard. McCard is involved in many extracur­ric­u­lars here on cam­pus with her main focus in envi­ron­men­tal­ism. I dis­cussed with her about her involve­ment on cam­pus and how she tack­les impor­tant issues. Most impor­tant­ly, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss with her more about her expe­ri­ence as one of 12 stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut who has been giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to attend the 28th annu­al Con­fer­ence of the Parties.

Aman­da McCard: My name’s Aman­da McCard. I’m study­ing Envi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies and Journalism.

Emi­ly: In her first three years on cam­pus, McCard has kept her­self busy and has been able to get involved in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent ways. Besides being involved in dif­fer­ent envi­ron­men­tal-based extracur­ric­u­lars, She also writes a vari­ety of arti­cles for a club called Her Campus.

Aman­da: I’m part of Her Cam­pus, which is like UCon­n’s chap­ter of a nation­al online mag­a­zine for col­lege women. Um, I’m part of the out­ing club where we go on some hikes and do some fun out­ings. I also work at UCon­n’s Office of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty. And I’m a direc­tor of Ecopo­sium, which is an envi­ron­men­tal sym­po­sium at UConn.

Emi­ly: While McCard believes her class­es are a great way to build her skills, her involve­ment on cam­pus has helped her to get more hands-on expe­ri­ence in the com­mu­ni­ty. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, with its stu­dent body of about 20, 000 stu­dents, has a pletho­ra of extracur­ric­u­lars that can be tai­lored to any stu­dent and their spe­cif­ic inter­ests. It is up to the stu­dent to fig­ure out how to use these skills learned in the class­room and strength­en them out­side of class, and McCard has done just that.

Aman­da: I def­i­nite­ly think my extracur­ric­u­lars have kind of sup­ple­ment­ed all the things I study. I have a lot of envi­ron­men­tal-relat­ed class­es, because that’s one of my majors, also jour­nal­ism class­es. And then extracur­ric­u­lars that tie into both of those, which kind of all tie into my goal of being an envi­ron­men­tal jour­nal­ist. But it’s real­ly fun to get involved with the envi­ron­ment in dif­fer­ent ways on cam­pus because there’s a lot of dif­fer­ent, like, avenues you can take toward, like, environmentalism.

Emi­ly: Accord­ing to an arti­cle pub­lished by Stephanie Reitz, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut spokes­woman, the uni­ver­si­ty plans to become car­bon neu­tral by the year 2030. This lofty goal took the uni­ver­si­ty com­mu­ni­ty by sur­prise when it was announced in late 2022. Although this goal may make the uni­ver­si­ty look good, many envi­ron­men­tal activists on cam­pus Believe these state­ments are mere­ly per­for­ma­tive. McCard voic­es her per­spec­tive on this top­ic as well.

Aman­da: Um, yeah, it’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing I real­ly care about and real­ly hope to see UConn do. I’m not super direct­ly involved with a ton of activism for that par­tic­u­lar­ly, but def­i­nite­ly through my job and then some clubs I’m in, like we def­i­nite­ly all care about that goal a lot and are hop­ing to see. a lot of change in that area and I def­i­nite­ly also want to become more involved in some direct activism and like call­ing on UConn to make the changes it’s promising.

Emi­ly: Although McCard is not direct­ly involved in this large-scale type of activism, she does work in a lot of what she con­sid­ers to be behind-the-scenes type work. This type of work is equal­ly as impor­tant. With issues as com­pli­cat­ed as cli­mate change, it’s impor­tant to start at the root of the cause. Try­ing to achieve lofty goals with­out a strong foun­da­tion will not be as effec­tive as work­ing at the ground lev­el. Small-scale out­reach and edu­ca­tion, although it may seem triv­ial, is some­thing that McCard is involved in on cam­pus. She takes great pride in this aspect of her activism because she under­stands the impor­tance of edu­ca­tion when it comes to hold­ing author­i­ty fig­ures, like the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, account­able for their actions.

Aman­da: Through my work, we do a lot of kind of small­er-scale actions to make UConn more sus­tain­able. Like for exam­ple, I work on Bee Cam­pus and Tree Cam­pus USA, which is like a set of stan­dards uni­ver­si­ties have to meet to be like friend­ly toward pol­li­na­tors and also trees. And we also plan a lot of events to kind of get stu­dents more involved in envi­ron­men­tal­ism, so I’m pret­ty active in that space. I guess just like the edu­ca­tion­al and out­reach com­po­nent through my work at Ecopo­sium because our goal is just to edu­cate peo­ple about envi­ron­men­tal issues and hope­ful­ly encour­age them to take action as well.

Emi­ly: Because of the fact that McCard has been so impact­ful in her activism on the local lev­el due to her involve­ment in extracur­ric­u­lars. McCard has been giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to extend her reach beyond the town lines of Storrs Mans­field. At the end of the year in Novem­ber, she will be attend­ing the 28th annu­al Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties with 12 oth­er Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut stu­dents, as well as stu­dents from oth­er universities.

Aman­da: Yeah, so, um, I’m going to COP 28, um, which is the annu­al U. N. Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties. This year it’s in Dubai. I found out about it through my job at the Office of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty, um. Our office is pret­ty involved in the plan­ning and like adver­tis­ing of the pro­gram, but it’s a real­ly incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty. I’m going to be able to go with about, I think, 12 under­grad and maybe one or two grad stu­dents. Yeah, but I just applied because, you know, it’s some­thing I’ve nev­er done before and it’s a real­ly cool, big, world­wide event.

Emi­ly: The appli­ca­tion for this pro­gram allowed McCard to show­case her extracur­ric­u­lar involve­ment on cam­pus through her resume and pro­fes­sor rec­om­men­da­tions, among oth­er materials.

Aman­da: I think the appli­ca­tion was like an online form that includ­ed I think one or two essays, a bunch of short answers, and then like a resume, and then two let­ters of recs from pro­fes­sors. Yeah, and I just like wrote about why I want­ed to be a part of this, why I care about envi­ron­men­tal­ism at UConn and also like globally.

Emi­ly: Upon her accep­tance into the pro­gram, McCard showed her grat­i­tude and hum­ble nature by explain­ing how excit­ed she is to be a part of such an amaz­ing part of history.

Aman­da: I guess it was my boss that noti­fied me first, but like kind of unof­fi­cial­ly because he was­n’t on the selec­tion com­mit­tee but he like, knew them I guess. So, he found out and he called me over the sum­mer and he actu­al­ly like told me, he was like, Oh, I’m so sor­ry. I have such bad news. And I, like, I fig­ured he was just telling me I was­n’t going to make it and I was okay with that. But he was like, the bad news is you’re going to be on a plane to Dubai. But then I got the offi­cial email and we’ve had a few meet­ings to pre­pare us and we have a few more before we go, but I was real­ly like sur­prised that I got it because I feel like I’m like, it’s such a huge event and I feel like it’s crazy that I’m going to be able to go. But yes, we’re going in November.

Emi­ly: McCard explained that this pro­gram would take place this year in Novem­ber, a noto­ri­ous­ly busy month for col­lege stu­dents. This left me won­der­ing how McCard would man­age bal­anc­ing this trip and fin­ish­ing up her class­es. Would her pro­fes­sors be under­stand­ing? How much work would she miss? Would this impact her final grades in her classes?

Aman­da: Uh, yeah, I told most of them, like, either in the begin­ning of the semes­ter, or a few of them I just told a few weeks ago. Pret­ty much all of them are, or actu­al­ly all of them are very sup­port­ive, and they all think it’s a real­ly cool oppor­tu­ni­ty. Also, it’s like the very last week of class­es, so it does­n’t seem like I’m going to miss all that much, except like some reviews for finals, a few dead­lines I’ll have to turn in a lit­tle ear­li­er, but noth­ing too major.

Emi­ly: Being a young col­lege stu­dent at this heav­i­ly impact­ful con­fer­ence, with many high­ly pow­er­ful peo­ple, there is a lot of pres­sure for McCard to per­form well. This is a once-in-a-life­time oppor­tu­ni­ty that she will remem­ber for the rest of her life. This is a learn­ing expe­ri­ence that not many peo­ple get to go through, so she wants to make the most of it and share her knowl­edge with the rest of the com­mu­ni­ty, no mat­ter how heav­i­ly she may influ­ence the out­come, if at all.

Aman­da: So we have, like, observ­er sta­tus, so obvi­ous­ly we’re not gonna be, like, doing any­thing at the con­fer­ence, like, impact­ing it in, in any way. Except I do think all the, either observers or, like, every­one there with a cer­tain type of insti­tu­tion, like, is tech­ni­cal­ly on this board that gets to, like, have one rep­re­sen­ta­tive that kind of, like, has one vote. So, like, we have a very, very… Very minor impact on the events, I guess, but most­ly we’re just there to learn and then after­wards we’re gonna like do some projects to kind of share what we learned with the UConn com­mu­ni­ty. And I’m also hop­ing to make some con­tent for the Office of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty’s like social media and blog and stuff while I’m there. Most peo­ple just like either at UConn or just like in the broad­er com­mu­ni­ty like don’t get the chance to go to this and it’s impor­tant that every­one knows what’s going on because it affects all of us.

Emi­ly: The mere fact that the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut is able to send stu­dents across the world to Dubai to par­tic­i­pate in this con­fer­ence is an amaz­ing feat. How­ev­er, it made me think about whether or not oth­er schools have sim­i­lar pro­grams as well. Not only would this pro­vide an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for many col­lege stu­dents to learn about cli­mate nego­ti­a­tions, but it would also be an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for stu­dents around the world, across mul­ti­ple uni­ver­si­ties, to col­lab­o­rate with one another.

Aman­da: I don’t know how many uni­ver­si­ties do it, but… There def­i­nite­ly are oth­er uni­ver­si­ties send­ing peo­ple. This week­end, actu­al­ly, I’m going to a con­fer­ence put on by the Yeah net­work, which is like, I guess, a bunch of dif­fer­ent schools that, like, all send peo­ple to COP. Um, so, I know some peo­ple from, like, some Col­orado uni­ver­si­ties, some Mass­a­chu­setts uni­ver­si­ties, I don’t know which, but I think a hand­ful of oth­er uni­ver­si­ties have sim­i­lar programs.

Emi­ly: Cli­mate change can be a very daunt­ing sub­ject to cov­er, because the news tends to make it seem very dis­heart­en­ing. How­ev­er, McCard gave her insight into how she is able to bal­ance her own emo­tions that may come out dur­ing this conference.

Aman­da: I hear that it’s pret­ty, like, depress­ing being in the nego­ti­a­tions because it’s just, like, so much argu­ing, and, like, it seems like so lit­tle progress is made, but I also hear that, like, all the activists and pro­test­ers who gath­er out­side the con­fer­ence are, like, real­ly inspir­ing, and it’s real­ly great to hear about all the, like, small­er changes they’re mak­ing in their own com­mu­ni­ties. So, I think it’ll be, like, a whirl­wind of emo­tions, but it’ll be real­ly exciting.

Emi­ly: Despite these strong neg­a­tive emo­tions, that may arise in McCard dur­ing this conference,there are many aspects of it that she is look­ing for­ward to as well.

Aman­da: I’m real­ly look­ing for­ward to just meet­ing a bunch of peo­ple who real­ly are pas­sion­ate about mak­ing envi­ron­men­tal change and like doing so in so many dif­fer­ent ways.

Emi­ly: It is clear that this con­fer­ence will pro­vide McCard with oppor­tu­ni­ties for emo­tion­al matu­ri­ty in a way that she would nev­er have imag­ined. Addi­tion­al­ly, attend­ing a major event like the Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties will enable McCard to take one step clos­er to achiev­ing her per­son­al career goals after grad­u­a­tion. Not only will this oppor­tu­ni­ty pro­vide McCard with impor­tant prepa­ra­tion for cov­er­ing oth­er envi­ron­men­tal events in her career, but it will also give her an oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn from and con­nect with oth­er pro­fes­sion­als in her desired field, mak­ing this oppor­tu­ni­ty a once-in-a-life­time event.

Aman­da: Um, after col­lege, I’d like to be an envi­ron­men­tal jour­nal­ist and kind of, hope­ful­ly, Trav­el and report on dif­fer­ent envi­ron­men­tal issues and like ini­tia­tives around the world so COP I think will be a real­ly good like learn­ing expe­ri­ence for that I’ll get to like first of all just see such a major envi­ron­men­tal event. Um prac­tice like talk­ing to all dif­fer­ent peo­ple and learn­ing from them and like telling so many dif­fer­ent sto­ries that I’ll learn at the event and then also I think it’ll be a great net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to find like the jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing it and learn­ing from them as well.

Emi­ly: Being able to par­tic­i­pate in this type of geopo­lit­i­cal event on such a time­ly top­ic at such a young age gives me hope for future gen­er­a­tions. McCard, as well as myself, want to spread this news about cli­mate change around the world in hopes to make steps towards a more sus­tain­able future for us all because it starts with us.

Aman­da: Yeah, I think it’s def­i­nite­ly impor­tant for peo­ple to know just because cli­mate change is some­thing that will affect like every per­son in the world. So every­one def­i­nite­ly has a stake in it, and it’s unfor­tu­nate that only such a select group of peo­ple will ever be able to expe­ri­ence the like inter­na­tion­al nego­ti­a­tions, which real­ly will have an impact on every­one. So I wish there was a way to make it like a lot more acces­si­ble. But yeah, I do think it should be Maybe like even like pub­lic schools like high schools and mid­dle schools should teach more about what’s hap­pen­ing like inter­na­tion­al­ly in terms of cli­mate change leg­is­la­tion and just I hope it’s made more acces­si­ble because every­one like deserves a chance to know what’s going on.

Emi­ly: For any cur­rent UConn stu­dents who are inter­est­ed in apply­ing and want to know more about this oppor­tu­ni­ty, McCard encour­ages all stu­dents to keep an eye out for the appli­ca­tion and apply because you nev­er know what might happen.

Aman­da: Like, any­one who’s even remote­ly inter­est­ed should apply because it feels very, like, daunt­ing, I guess, to go, but, like, you don’t even have to be an envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence major or any­thing like that. Like, like I said a mil­lion times now, but every­one has a stake in it, so, like, every­one deserves to be able to go, so you should try to if any­one wants to.

Aman­da: In sit­ting down with McCard for this inter­view, I was not only able to learn about her expe­ri­ences in envi­ron­men­tal activism at the uni­ver­si­ty, but it also gave me an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reflect on my own choic­es with­in the com­mu­ni­ty as a whole. Envi­ron­men­tal­ism is not just about attend­ing these large-scale events, like the Unit­ed Nations Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties. It is also equal­ly as impact­ful to take the time to advo­cate for small changes. For some­one like me, who does­n’t know where to start when it comes to envi­ron­men­tal­ism, because these large scale con­fer­ences seem too daunt­ing, Activism can seem dis­heart­en­ing. How­ev­er, hear­ing McCard explain how she is involved in mul­ti­ple lev­els of activism, local­ly, region­al­ly, and soon glob­al­ly, it helps to show me that not all hope is lost.I want­ed to thank you all for tak­ing the time to lis­ten to this episode, and I hope you learned just as much from McCard as I did. Final­ly, I just want­ed to leave you all with a quote from a jour­nal­ist, Fin­ley Peter Dunn, that I think sums up the les­son that I learned from inter­view­ing McCard from the lens of envi­ron­men­tal jour­nal­ism: “The job of the news­pa­per is to com­fort the afflict­ed and to afflict the comfortable.”

 

 

Links to fur­ther research:

UConn Aims to be Car­bon Neu­tral 2030

Pic­ture Credits:

No More Fos­sil Fuels Rock: Tak­en By Me

Jonathan No More Fos­sil Fuels

Cov­er photo