Samantha McGraw worked with Michele Betsill and Linse Anderson on an internship
project involving climate policy and New Jersey cities that have signed the
United States Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. She looked to see what
progress has been made by cities toward developing and implementing climate
action plans. Her research consisted mostly of browsing the internet to see
what information was available on municipal websites, and then conducting phone
interviews with the guidance of research/interview questions. She then began
reorganizing her data, and developed a small sample of cities to conduct a more
in-depth analysis of climate action plan statuses.
In this analysis she examined five hypotheses as to why a municipality may be
more or less likely to have some form of climate action plan than another. She
found two of the hypotheses were good indicators, while the other three produced
no reasonable conclusions.
With all of the research and findings complete, she wrote a report, and made a
power point presentation
and poster.
She learned a lot from this internship, including the fact most of New Jersey is
not taking steps toward creating climate action plans, and some of the reasons
why this might be the case.
She also worked with Lucinda Smith in the City of Fort Collins Natural Resource
Department on the Community Climate Challenge. This project aimed to find ways
to get the community more involved in climate protection actions, and what
changes they can do specifically. She did many different things from typing up
meeting minutes, attending meetings about marketing, sending e-mails, and
offering advice and input needed. It was a really great learning experience,
and by the time she left they had developed a marketing strategy and the slogan
for the campaign. She learned it takes a lot of time to get policy ideas pushed
through government. Both of these experiences confirmed her thoughts that
climate/environmental policy is what she wants to pursue in graduate school.
Sam enjoys many sports including softball, basketball, soccer, badminton, tennis
and volleyball. She likes music, dancing, singing, riding roller coasters and
shopping!
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