Description of the video:
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So the McKinney Climate Fellowship is a
program that allows students to become
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partnered with different organizations
that have a sustainability aspect in mind.
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Not only is it great for preparing you like
professionally and like learning those skills,
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but also just kind of seeing the different
ways you can go in the environmental sector.
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You learn a lot of stuff in
class and you ask yourself,
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"Okay, what does this actually look like?"
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Having that real-life experience and
seeing how do I put these skills that
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I've learned from books into real world
is something that this Fellowship offered.
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I worked directly in the Department of
Public Works with the City of South Bend.
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I was taking concepts that I've learned in
class like data analysis and reporting and
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really putting them to work in the real world
and getting real-world experiences out of them.
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I was really excited to work
for Sycamore Land Trust.
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It's something that's been on my
radar since I entered grad school,
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just because I really think that land trusts are a
really beneficial way to go about land management.
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Being able to really have an
applied ecology position was
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something that really brought me a lot of
excitement to work for Sycamore Land Trust.
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I knew that I wanted to do something
with urban green infrastructure,
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and so this internship was
really a perfect match for me.
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I was placed with the City of Terre Haute,
and I was working under their urban forester.
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I got to shadow her as she drove
around the city and checked on trees,
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and just like all the knowledge that
she gave me through that that I really
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couldn't have gotten anywhere else was fantastic.
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The McKinney Fellowship is important to our
organization because it provides us with
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students that are able to dive right into our
projects without having to have much training
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or background information on the nature of the
business or what's going on within the company.
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It was almost like having a third-party consultant
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being able to help us with all of
our different projects and tell us,
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for instance like an ESG report
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with other organizations within our industry,
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what's fake, what's not, what's good, what's bad,
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as we consider doing the
same with our own company.
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These students need opportunities, and I think
we have an obligation to provide them with that
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because they're the future leaders and
future workers and we want them to come
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away from the experience being very
positive and gaining better knowledge
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and I think it'll help direct their
path in the future and so I want to
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feel that we've made a small contribution to that.
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The Environmental Resilience
Institute is impressive.
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It's impressive what the students are doing,
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and we're here because we believe
that ERI is the partner to really
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make an impact in the state
of Indiana for all Hoosiers.
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Indiana University is the
premier institution in Indiana.
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Everything that we've asked them to
do and that they've promised to do,
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they've come through on it
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and they do it better than we expect.
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One thing I learned about myself through
my involvement with the Indiana Climate
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Fellows is that your voice always matters,
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no matter if you're a woman in the workplace,
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no matter if you're a college student
in a professional environment,
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you always have something to bring to the table.
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I would say that if given the opportunity,
any environmental sustainability,
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or just environmental student, should
do the McKinney Climate Fellows program.
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It's a fantastic program to really get on-the-job
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or on-the-field training
for whatever you want to do
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or even something you might be interested in.
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It ends up being this huge tie in of everything,
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and along the way you get to benefit a
community, and you get to be passionate, and
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you get to be creative, and you get to do these
projects that are going to make a difference.
Effective Communication
Feasible Solutions
Accurate Predictions