Sonja Pieck’s book about Germany’s Green Belt, the once-militarized Iron Curtain border between the former East and West Germany, begins with the �ֲ���ý professor back in her homeland, walking with an ornithologist along part of the huge conservation corridor.

As they walk, she turns and notices a cluster of crosses fashioned into an ad hoc memorial beneath a small stand of oak trees. A wooden sign at the memorial explains that it commemorates the lives of two border guards who had been killed there. 

At that moment, Pieck had an epiphany: If not for the Green Belt’s management approach, the formerly militarized corridor would have simply reverted back to forest, and the deaths there could never have been honored in this way. The simple memorial had created a narrative about the lives that had been lost there, and the loss and pain that connected others to this spot.

“Somebody had written a poem to remember the dead and put it under glass, right next to a carefully arranged wreath of flowers” recalls Pieck, the Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies at �ֲ���ý. “That was perhaps one of the pivotal moments of my research, where things just fell into place. It deeply moved me, this relationship between love, grief, memory, and conservation.”

Last month, Pieck’s book about the Green Belt, Mnemonic Ecologies: Memory and Nature Conservation Along the Former Iron Curtain (MIT Press, 2023) earned a PROSE Award in the category of Environmental Science and a higher-order award for excellence in physical sciences and mathematics, one of just four “super-category” winners in the Association of American Publishers’ annual awards program.

Pieck sets aside industry jargon to turn the book with the heady name into one that reads like a good novel. From the start, Pieck said the goal was clear: To get the book’s overarching message that conservation on wounded land must engage with memory — the memory of humans, animals, and the Earth — beyond academia to the international conservation community.

“At its core, it’s a story about people and their love for the land,” says Pieck. “I wanted to speak to the practitioners and conservationists, but also broadly to historians and artists and even people who are coming in from the mental health side — professionals who are thinking about questions about truth and reconciliation or about repair work more broadly.” 

Her message in Mnemonic Ecologies already has resonated beyond academia. In June she will speak on a panel of scholars about the Green Belt effort at a world heritage preservation symposium co-hosted by UNESCO and the Critical Global Studies Institute in Seoul, Korea.

In Korea, the demilitarized zone is about 160 miles long and 2.5 miles wide. There, too, nature is taking back the built environment. As in Germany, the Koreans “have experienced the sort of ecological irony of endangered species settling in and near the demilitarized zone. They want to take a similar conservation approach. So they’re in discussion with German conservationists, and drawing on people like me to help think about history, memory, and heritage in the age of ecological crisis.”

Much of Mnemonic Ecologies is an in-depth case study of how the Green Belt aided in Germany’s larger nationwide reckoning with its decades-long partition, socialist dictatorship, and challenging reunification. In creating the 866-mile swath of open land with the nation’s history in mind, the effort demonstrated how conservation, when approached as a community effort, can protect threatened species and habitats as well as serve as an opportunity for reparation and healing after civil unrest and war.

Done well, she said, conservation can create space for psychological well-being by embracing a sense of place, and what that place might mean to different groups of people, as Pieck explains in her book: 

“Working the terrain of grief need not be the sole responsibility of the conservationist but rather should be facilitated by broader coalitions than usual. Science-based conservation NGOs are used to working with local partner organizations, but especially in landscapes of post violence, it is time to draw in new allies such as historians, post-war documentation centers, mental health professionals, pastoral care workers, victims organizations, museums, artists, theater groups, storytellers, poets, and peacemakers — in other words, those who understand how to care for the living by honoring their dead.” 

Pieck identifies broad lessons from the German Green Belt experience  that might be applicable to other projects worldwide, including the United States. “I think one can argue that the entire United States consists of wounded land, given the history of land theft, genocide, and slavery,” Pieck said.

At the end of the book, a chapter on global mnemonic ecologies looks at wounded land more broadly, including at some of the most biodiverse places in the world that also have been arenas for some of the worst conflicts of the 20th and 21st century, places like the Balkans, Colombia, and Cambodia. Pieck said these places also are facing the tension between memory, memorialization, pain, grief, loss and the need for conservation to protect rich biodiversity. “Local communities need to decide how best to do that based on their unique situation. There are inspiring examples worldwide where people are already engaged in this kind of care-work.” 

Pieck’s research spanned nine years, including six summers in her native Germany doing fieldwork along different stretches of the Green Belty, which became a gratifying and enjoyable experience.

From there, the writing flowed easily. “I had thought about this topic for so long, and I had accumulated so much evidence and so much scholarship on it that the writing process itself felt good,” she said. 

 “It is a story of ecological revival. It’s beautiful that something healing could come out of the pain. That gives me so much hope.”

�ֲ���ý has announced five faculty promotions, including tenure awards, effective for the 2020–21 academic year.

Promoted from assistant to associate professor with tenure are Brett Huggett of the Department of Biology and Geneviève Robert of the Department of Earth and Climate Sciences.

Promoted from associate to full professor are Meredith Greer of the Department of Mathematics, Therí Pickens of the Department of English, and Sonja Pieck of the Program in Environmental Studies.

The promotions were recommended by the faculty’s Committee on Personnel and approved by the �ֲ���ý College Board of Trustees.

“The words shared by each of these five superb scholars tell a collectively compelling story — of full and intense engagement with the world, with their students, and with the life of the mind, all underscored by great devotion to our college community,” says Malcolm Hill, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty. “The cycle of their creativity — teaching energized by scholarship, and scholarship energized by teaching — is displayed in their myriad contributions to �ֲ���ý College.”

Meet the five newly promoted faculty members, and learn a bit about what being a �ֲ���ý professor means to them.

Associate Professor of Biology Brett Huggett

Appointment year: 2014
Doctoral institution: Harvard University
Fields of research: Physiological and morphological adaptations and/or responses among tree species to stress, plant physiology, plant water relations, carbon allocation, xylem structure and function.

What it means to me to be a �ֲ���ý professor:

From my early years as a jazz musician, to a naturalist for Massachusetts Audubon Society, and now as a �ֲ���ý professor, I have always found immense joy in teaching and inspiring curiosity in others.

In the community of faculty, staff, and students at �ֲ���ý, I have found an incredible place to incorporate my passion for plant biology into teaching and research. Working closely with the talented students at �ֲ���ý — in the classroom, lab, and field — I am continually inspired to innovate my teaching and to pursue new questions in biology. The natural surroundings of �ֲ���ý have allowed me to center many of my courses in field-based learning. When not in the classroom or lab, you will find me out and about in the beautiful woods of Maine.

Associate Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences Geneviève Robert

Appointment year: 2014
Doctoral institution: University of Missouri
Fields of research: Rheology, viscosity, silicate melts, experimental petrology, volcanology.

What it means to me be a �ֲ���ý professor:

It’s about empowering students to view themselves as scientists. It’s about learning from my colleagues. And it’s about working towards a common goal.

I love that students come to class with an open mind, ready for a challenge. Working with �ֲ���ý students in the classroom and the lab has made me a better teacher and mentor, and I am constantly challenged, surprised, and impressed by them. �ֲ���ý students have helped me build my experimental petrology research program every step of the way. Together, we’ve assembled and calibrated specialized instruments. We’ve synthesized lava at 3000 degrees Fahrenheit. We’ve measured how fast lava can flow and have co-authored papers. I could not do what I do without �ֲ���ý students, and I feel lucky to be a part of their journey.

I’m lucky to work alongside and learn from brilliant colleagues —in my own academic unit, through research collaborations, and in every single committee I’ve been a member of. There is such a strong culture of support, of sharing resources and expertise, and of community at �ֲ���ý. And what I’ve learned from day one is that staff make this place possible for all of us. I’m grateful everyday for their expertise, help, and support.

Professor of Mathematics Meredith Greer

Appointment year: 2002
Doctoral institution: Vanderbilt University
Fields of research: Applied mathematics, mathematical biology, mathematical ecology, mathematical epidemiology.

What it means to me be a �ֲ���ý professor:

It has always been about the people. I chose to work at �ֲ���ý because of the people I met when interviewing here — every single one was friendly, intellectually curious, helpful, and excited about what we could learn together. That has stayed true throughout.

Students regularly go above and beyond the call. On projects, they bring in experiences, coursework, and interests that form combinations only they could have developed. When challenged by new math topics, they inspire me by their engagement, time invested, willingness to try new study strategies, and overall devotion to learning. They build communities and support each other, in the classroom and beyond.

Faculty and staff here are also amazing. There are so many examples of dedication to excellence, solving complicated issues, and taking care of each other. Being surrounded by such enthusiasm and commitment helps my teaching every day. It really is all about the people.

Professor of English Therí Pickens

Appointment year: 2011
Doctoral institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Fields of research: 20th- and 21st-century African American / Arab American literature, African American literature and cultural studies, Arab American literature and cultural studies, Black feminism, cognitive impairment, disability, disability studies, gender studies, literary theory, mental health, physical impairment, spectacular fiction.

What it means to me to be a �ֲ���ý professor:

In the scholarly community, we often wrongly pit research and teaching against each other. I firmly believe that the two are synergistic. In my career, I find that being an engaged scholar allows me to be a better teacher.

In the years between receiving tenure, in 2016, and promotion to full professor, I wrote a book called Black Madness :: Mad Blackness (Duke University Press, 2019); edited a collection, Arab American Aesthetics (Routledge, 2018); edited a special issue of African American Review, “Blackness & Disability” (2017); wrote five articles; and gave dozens of presentations at academic conferences and at colleges and universities the world over. All of that work — centering the theories, ideas, and creative endeavors of Black people, Arab Americans, disabled people — pressed me and others to think more explicitly about how to make a just world.

In doing this work and listening to people in various settings, I became even more convinced that the study of literature, and the humanities writ large, is vitally necessary to our world. These are lessons that we need desperately as we seek to tell better stories about, and do better work in, our current global situation and for what lies ahead.

Professor of Environmental Studies Sonja Pieck

Appointment year: 2007
Doctoral institution: Clark University
Fields of research: Biodiversity conservation, ecological restoration, environmental history, environmental movements, environmental politics, human geography, international development, memory studies.

What it means to me to be a �ֲ���ý professor:

The interdisciplinary spaces of the liberal arts are deeply appealing to me because I love drawing connections between different perspectives, theories, scales, places, interests, groups, and species. I believe environmental problems at their core derive from uneven power relations — among humans but also between human and non-human communities — and we need multifaceted and synergistic approaches to understand them and develop effective solutions.

And my students make some of the most interesting and creative connections of all. They bring curiosity and compassion to the classroom, along with a desire to do good in the world. It is an honor to partner with them in class and on thesis projects and help them become more informed, critically engaged people.

As an interdisciplinary scholar, I’ve long been interested in international and transnational environmental politics. I’ve worked in Latin America exploring environmental activism, especially in Peru and Ecuador, where I spent formative years of my life, and am now focusing my research on Germany, my country of origin. Throughout, I’ve felt supported in my work by the college and by smart, kind, and generous colleagues.

�ֲ���ý continues to be an energizing and inspiring community of students, staff, and faculty.

In the September heat, a line of �ֲ���ý students stood outside Commons, talking about this and that. As they waited to board a yellow school bus, they waved to their friends and passed around sign-making materials.

Members of the Environmental Coalition, the �ֲ���ý student group that works to raise awareness of climate and sustainability issues, walked around calling the names of those registered to take the bus to Portland, wondering how everyone would fit.

Students gather outside of Commons before boarding the bus for Portland. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The �ֲ���ý students heading to Portland were among the millions of people worldwide who went on strike on Sept. 20 to demand climate action ahead of the Sept. 23 United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York City.

“I don’t understand how people can actively oppose this,” said Matt Suslovic ’21, sitting at the back of the �ֲ���ý bus. Around him, students crammed three to a seat recounted protests they’d attended and brainstormed slogans to put on their signs.

“I’m striking because at the end of the day I don’t feel confident about anything in my future,” Suslovic said. “I don’t feel confident that I or anyone in my generation will make it to retirement.”

A crowd of 2,000 gathered outside of Portland City Hall for the Youth Climate Strike. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“I do believe that strikes work, especially if you get a critical mass to send signals and make institutions respond,” said Sonja Pieck, associate professor of environmental studies. “I’m in solidarity with people who are younger than I am and will have to sit this out in a different way.”

For some of the �ֲ���ý professors in attendance, joining the event reflected their identity as an academic.

“I talk a lot about the importance of getting engaged and organizing,” said Francis Eanes, visiting assistant professor of environmental studies. “It’s not good enough to just talk about issues and solutions — we have to really get involved. I personally would feel like it’s the antithesis of what I’m teaching if I’m not willing to make space for that in my life.”

Alexis Hudes ’20 of Owings Mills, Md., holds a sign as she stands with Francis Eanes, visiting assistant professor of environmental studies, at right. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

As the bus rolled up to Portland’s City Hall, activists already crowded around the building began to cheer. The �ֲ���ýies who had driven their own cars and vans cut through the crowd to meet up with their friends, who took in the crowd with wide eyes.

The crowd numbered some 2,000, joining others worldwide: 1.4 million people in Germany, 250,000 in New York City, and a handful of researchers in Antarctica.

Organized by several Maine-based environmental organizations, the event had a strong �ֲ���ý vibe thanks to the Environmental Coalition’s connections with statewide groups. Of the dozen or so speakers, two were �ֲ���ý students: Muskan Verma ’21 of Shimla, India, who is the Lewiston hub contact for the Sunrise Movement, and Environmental Coalition president Dianna Georges ’22 of Clifton, N.H.

“I’m not from this country,” Verma said from the steps of City Hall, “but that shouldn’t matter. This is affecting us all. And whether we like it or not, we have to take action.”

Muskan Verma ’21 of Shimla, India, addresses the crowd gathered in front of Portland City Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

, Georges told the audience that “climate change is the greatest crisis facing humanity, period. Period. …It will affect the lives of people from every part of the world, from every economic class and from every ethnic group.”

Though the speakers’ discourse was aimed primarily at their peers, they reprimanded older generations for their failure to act. They spoke about how climate change is already challenging communities around the world and won’t relent unless citizens, governments, and corporations come together to bring about change.

The Portland protest was “a lot more justice-oriented than the past climate actions that I’ve been to,” Maggie O’Shea ’20.

“People are talking more about equity and inclusion in this, and their signs aren’t just like ‘We love grass and trees.’ It’s about clean air and clean water for all, and that’s super exciting.”

Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Sonja Pieck congratulates students after the strike. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

When the speeches ended and the crowd dispersed, some of the �ֲ���ý folks made their way to Lincoln Park to enjoy some pizza in the shade and debrief each other on the event. Students also caught up with some of their �ֲ���ý professors who had attended the event.

Notwithstanding the somewhat disappointing outcome of the UN’s Climate Action Summit a few days later, Pieck remarked on the positive vibe of the Portland strike. “A lot of the climate discourse is very negative, and so it’s cool that we can rally and be really positive and optimistic about change. You could feel the youth.”

“We were part of the largest climate mobilization in U.S. and global history,” added Georges. “To me, that represents how much people are caring and noticing this issue. But we can’t rest now: There is so much left to do.”

�ֲ���ý students, faculty, and staff pose for a group photograph after the action at Portland City Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

From 1945 to 1989, the border between East and West Germany was a painful site, a physical manifestation of the Iron Curtain that divided capitalist and communist Europe during the Cold War.

Soviet-dominated East Germany heavily fortified its side of the border with fences, guard towers, and land mines. Entire villages were forcibly removed from the border, and hundreds of people died trying to cross to West Germany.

The militarization of the 866-mile border had an unintended consequence: Because it had been emptied of human habitation, the meters-wide border strip became a safe haven for more than 1,200 rare plant and animal species, including wild cats, otters, and orchids.

Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Sonja Pieck is studying the Green Belt, the once-militarized border that separated the former East and West Germany. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Sonja Pieck, an associate professor of environmental studies at �ֲ���ý, has spent several years studying this unique product of history and nature.

When the border opened and Germany subsequently reunited, environmental groups jumped at the chance to conserve what came to be called the Green Belt, part of a continent-wide effort to create nature preserves at Cold War-era borderlands.

In some areas, the German conservationists succeeded. In 2018, the state of Thuringia declared its section of the Green Belt a National Nature Monument, recognizing its importance as both a historical and an environmental site.

As the 30th anniversary of the opening of the border approaches, Pieck has traveled to the Green Belt numerous times, examining policies and promotional materials and talking to conservationists and people who live near the former border. She is writing a book on the history of the conservation project, the connection between nature and memory, and the role of nature in German national identity.

Pieck, who recently published an in Cultural Geographies, spoke with us about the importance of the Belt to German identity, and what the stories we tell about the former border leave out.

How did you become interested in the Green Belt?

I’m originally from Germany. My mother was born in Berlin right before the war, and as the war ended they fled the Red Army and made it out of the East just in time.

I was born in West Germany and grew up with very little knowledge of the German Democratic Republic [East Germany]. It was considered basically to be a foreign country. I had never seen the border.

Running from lower left to upper right, this section of the German Green Belt, between the states of Bavaria and Thuringia, is starkly visible against sections of farmland. (Wikimedia Commons)

When the wall came down, I was astonished at how emotional everybody was. I couldn’t get a real, felt sense of the border crashing down. It’s always been a blind spot in my education, and it’s always irritated me. I was not taught any of this history. If we focused on the postwar history, it was the economic miracle of West Germany, not what was happening in the East.

Now the idea of the Green Belt is affective. I have a real emotional response to it. It’s something that was — as the general narrative paints it — a “death strip,” and now it’s become a “lifeline.”

I realize that this is a simplified narrative, but I’m taken by the notion that a space where you can still see gravestones and memorial markers becomes something that gives non-human life a chance in a country that has not left a lot of room for that. It’s something that makes me hopeful.

What’s it like to visit the Green Belt?

The Green Belt looks so different in different places, and not all of it is even visible as such. You might be in a wooded area, and somebody tells you, “Actually, we’re about 20 feet from where the minefield is, so don’t step over there because there might be some stuff still in the ground.” You want to go with people who know where you are.

When Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Sonja Pieck visited the Green Belt, she saw remnants of the old militarized border, such as this sniper hideout. (Courtesy of Sonja Pieck)

You walk on the old patrol road, which is these concrete slabs, and you know there were GDR border guards there back in the 1980s. In many cases all of the fencing has been removed — you get occasionally a watch tower, but it’s sometimes really hard to imagine that just 30 years ago, this was an active militarized zone.

Beyond that, if you take binoculars with you, if you pay a little bit of attention, if you pause, if you listen — between the cranes and the sea eagles and the otters — it’s quite something. It’s been a lot of fun to be out there. You can ride your bicycle, you can go hiking. The Green Belt also crosses waterways, so you can go canoeing. Some people will go horseback riding.

The Green Belt advocates are trying to make it a touristic sort of experience that merges biodiversity with memory. To what extent are they successful? They’re trying — some of the signage is amazingly good where that merging happens.

Why is the Green Belt controversial?

This conservation project is the same space where hundreds of people were killed trying to escape East Germany. The border space is evocative of trauma and loss and repression, so it’s a complicated one to protect.

The conservationists who want to do so run up against people who want any kind of trace of the border gone — a Green Belt is still a boundary line of some kind, and they don’t want that there.

Many Germans believe a nature preserve is an appropriate way to memorialize those who died trying to cross the inner German border; others want any trace of a border removed. (Courtesy of Sonja Pieck)

Others are totally in favor, because what better way to memorialize the people who died than by creating a living legacy to them?

The Green Belt is something that its advocates say should be used, should be seen, should be traveled through, should be felt. It’s a memorial to the partition, it’s a memorial to what has happened, to our history. It’s trying to merge biodiversity goals with living memory.

Then there are farmers whose lands were expropriated when the border was created, both in the East and the West, who don’t like this conservation project now occupying spaces that were family lands. There are multiple things happening here. It’s a very interesting space to research.

What stories do conservationists tell about the National Nature Monument in Thuringia?

One narrative is that the border space was crafted by the GDR border police. Meadows were cut and mowed, and there were minefields in place — but the ecological resurgence is an accident of that. It was not a policy. Nobody tried to bring in species; they came anyway. So the storyline is one of ecological rebirth in the face of war and state violence.

The other narrative is about rurality. The Green Belt runs almost entirely through rural backwaters, and they’re backwaters because the border was there, and because the villages and people were removed.

There are areas that are actually quite impoverished, again in part because of the partition. As the narrative goes, traditional forms of land management like sheep herding or traditional small-scale farming are still in place. That is partly true.

Whose voices do the stories leave out?

The largest resistance to the Green Belt tends to come from property owners who lost land to the partition, or farmers who are renting the property from others and who see that their farming activities are threatened by conservation.

They don’t like the usage restrictions that come with conservation — they’re worried that, for instance, you can’t rehabilitate a wetland right next to your field. It doesn’t matter if you technically own that field, that field is now lost to you because you need it drained in order to produce anything.

“The big slogan of the Green Belt is ‘Borders separate, nature unites.’ Ironically, the Green Belt creates a lot of the division.”

Farming does not generate a lot of profit. A lot of farmers are hard up against it, and when something comes that threatens people’s livelihoods, that’s a problem.

The conflict is so polarized between conservation and agriculture that there’s very little effective conversation between the two sides. Farmers, many of whom use industrialized methodology because every market incentive tells them to, feel completely unrecognized by conservation.

The big slogan of the Green Belt is “Borders separate, nature unites.” Ironically, the Green Belt creates a lot of the division too. The divisiveness among conservationists and agriculture is getting deeper in a way that doesn’t benefit anybody.

What would a more just or inclusive story about the Green Belt look like?

Right now the Green Belt has some really effective signage that talks about resurgent nature. We have very evocative language around the suffering that people have had to endure, people who lost their lives, people who lost their land, people with the harrowing escape stories, people who made it. Those stories are effectively done.

While many elements of the border have been dismantled, patrol roads still run through much of the Green Belt. (Courtesy of Sonja Pieck)

A more-just discourse would talk about what farming looks like today and what the pressures on the farmers are. It would say that farmers have in fact also lost land, and they lost land to the Green Belt, and they made concessions to make the Green Belt what it is.

There seems to be a very strong anti-agriculture bias among environmentalists — which I think is understandable, but to render invisible people who have sacrificed is not productive.

There’s also an anti-state feeling in the East, and they’re beginning to identify conservationists with the state. They’re not the same thing, but if you get the federal state of Thuringia declaring the Green Belt a National Nature Monument, of course conservation is coming together with the state in a way that some East Germans find concerning.

A number of conservationists have realized this and are adapting their work accordingly. Most recently, local Green Belt workshops have brought different generations together to talk about the past, the GDR, and the border, as a way to preserve the stories, pass them on, and see that the Green Belt preserves them along with the biodiverse landscapes that are considered so ecologically valuable. That work inspires me.

Pieck, co-recipient of the 2011 Kroepsch Award for Teaching

Sonja Pieck, assistant professor of environmental studies at �ֲ���ý College, offers a lecture titled Teaching (and Learning) as Transborder Activism at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 30, in the college’s Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Pieck was one of two �ֲ���ý faculty members to receive this year’s Ruth M. and Robert H. Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching. The other was Nancy Koven, assistant professor of psychology. �ֲ���ý students and recent alumni nominate faculty for the award, and a committee of previous Kroepsch recipients selects the honoree.

The lecture is open to the public at no cost. Refreshments precede the talk, at 4:15. The event is co-sponsored by the Kroepsch Award Selection Committee, division chairs, Information and Library Services, and the Dean of the Faculty’s Office. For more information, please call 207-786-6066.

Pieck is giving the lecture in connection with the Kroepsch Award. A geographer by training, she researches local-to-global struggles over natural resources, with a regional focus on Latin America.

She is the social-science faculty member in the environmental studies program, which is broadly interdisciplinary at �ֲ���ý. Her courses explore the human-environment relationship through topics like social movements, NGOs, indigenous politics and environmental justice.

She is particularly interested in transnational social movements, focusing on Latin American indigenous activism and its intersections with U.S. environmentalism. Pieck is also developing a new research project examining state rule and networks of civic resistance to regional integration initiatives in South America, especially Peru.

Before coming to �ֲ���ý, she was a postdoctoral lecturer and research associate in environmental studies at the University of Chicago.

“Her enthusiasm, passion and commitment toward [environmental] issues resonate in her well-structured and interesting lectures,” says Teresa Cooper, a 2011 �ֲ���ý graduate from St. Albans. “Her class opened my eyes to so many environmental issues that I had never even heard of before, and as a result I found myself changing aspects of my lifestyle.”

“Sonja’s a great listener and is always ready and willing to learn from students,” adds Desmond Mushi, a junior from Mwanza, Tanzania.