Graduate Student News
The following graduate students have been working at the Center over the past year while pursuing graduate degrees in Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado. Their backgrounds, research interests, and dissertation topics are listed below.
Marilyn Averill has a master’s degree in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government and in Educational Research and Evaluation Methodology from the University of Colorado, and a law degree from the University of Colorado. She is examining the use of science and the treatment of uncertainty in litigation relating to climate change, and the effects these cases may have on law, science, and policy. Her tentative dissertation title is “Who Runs the Greenhouse? The Role of the Federal Judiciary in U.S. Climate Policy.”
David Cherney holds a master’s degree in environmental management from Yale University and a bachelor’s degree in environment, economics, and politics from Claremont McKenna College. David’s tentative dissertation title is “Searching for Greater Yellowstone’s Science Policy: Improving the integration of science and decision making in management.”
Jimmy Hague graduated in 2000 from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill with a B.S. in physics and in 2002 with an M.S. in astronomy from the University of Maryland. He recently completed an M.S. in Environmental Studies and the Certificate in Science and Technology Policy at the University of Colorado.
Nat Logar graduated from Brown University with a B.S. in Geology-Biology. Nat's current work focuses on the how federally funded institutions can fashion science policies that contribute to the benefit of targeted decision makers. His dissertation focuses on science policies in the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, the Naval Research Laboratories, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Its tentative title is “Decision processes, knowledge production, and essential science in federally funded mission agencies.”
Genevieve Maricle graduated from Northwestern University with a B.A. in both Mathematics and Environmental Science. She is working on her dissertation titled "Shaping Science: How to Turn Science Studies into Science Action" and expects to graduate by September 2007.
Elizabeth McNie holds a master’s degree in Psychology-Organization Development from Sonoma State University in California and undergraduate degrees in Marine Transportation and Engineering (minor). Elizabeth’s research interests relate to climate policy and how to facilitate the development of stronger linkages between scientists and policy makers so that scientists produce information that is both needed and used by policy makers in their decision processes. She is currently working on her dissertation titled "Co-producing useful scientific information for climate policy: informing science policy research and decision support." This past year she has been working on the Boundary Organization Project at Harvard and has spent several months in Indonesia.
Shali Mohleji graduated from the University of Virginia with a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Sciences, concentration in Atmospheric Sciences. She received her M.S. in Atmospheric Sciences from Purdue University. Shali’s interests are in the federal budget process, agency management, and science funding. Her research assesses the decision making process for homeland security R&D, specifically decisions on how federal funding is allocated, and the risk assessment and prioritization process used to evaluate science-based threats. Her dissertation topic is “Investigating the Prioritization Process for Homeland Security R&D.”
