Greta Markey
BS 2022 Civil & Environmental Engineering, Engineering & Public Policy Additional Major, Environmental & Sustainability Studies Minor
When Greta Markey first began her studies at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, the department had yet to add the undergraduate environment-directed major, but she knew she wanted to pursue a more environmental approach to her studies. Markey wanted a curriculum which emphasized interdisciplinarity and would give her the tools to contribute to civil and environmental engineering—a space which, in her eyes, holds a lot of potential and space to make the world a better place. She was able to fulfill that gap with a minor in environmental and sustainability studies. Pursuing the minor gave her a broad range of knowledge when approaching projects and studies in her primary majors. One of the most influential points of her undergraduate career at CMU was when Markey read In Search of the Canary Tree by Lauren E Oakes in Professor Abigail Owen’s Intro to Environmental Ideas class, a core course in the Environmental and Sustainability Studies program. The book details the social science aspect of Oakes’s research on the yellow cedar tree. Oakes did a lot of science-based work on the yellow cedar tree for her PhD thesis but felt that her academic paper could not accurately and fully encapsulate the cultural significance and impact of the tree on surrounding communities. She wrote the book to add interdisciplinarity and subsequently gave Markey perspective on how to approach research with mixed method approaches and how important it is to include indigenous perspectives of issues in research.
Markey’s undergraduate career at CMU was not short of activities and accomplishments. In addition to her double major, she also studied in Washington, D.C. for a semester through the CMU Washington Semester program. The flexibility of the minor allowed her to easily fulfill the requirements though, and she was able to pursue many research projects while doing so. She feels that no matter what someone’s major is, their education at CMU can be enhanced by the Environmental and Sustainability Studies program. The interdisciplinary nature of the program combined with how customizable it is makes for a major space where students can grow and learn. The minor emphasized to Markey how all her projects are connected under one umbrella. She has found a lot of value in the opportunity to interact with non-engineers with similar environmental justice goals as her. “Not one discipline is going to solve all problems, and it's interesting to see how all the disciplines intersect and work together.” Productive discourse with people who have expertise in fields she’s unfamiliar with has opened her eyes to other approaches on how to solve the same issues she’s interested in, and she encourages anyone interested in the program, no matter their previous exposure to the subject, to reach out to the program director, Abigail Owen.
Markey will be continuing her education from 2022-2024 through a Marshall Scholarship. Funded jointly by the US and UK, these prestigious scholarships “finance young Americans of high ability to study for a graduate degree in the UK.”¹ Scholarships are given to less than 50 students to pursue their graduate education within and discipline. Markey will be pursuing her master’s degree in environmental and international development at the University of East Anglia’s Water Security Research Centre (WSRC), which addresses “the theoretical, practical, and policy challenges of managing and governing water for different human, economic and environmental needs from the local to the global scales” for the first year of her scholarship.² She is excited to look into how certain water technologies promote or inhibit equitable access to water on an international scale, spur international conflict, or enable one country to hold power/influence over another and will continue to examine how we can support indigenous voices and representation in the water engineering and technology field.”
¹ “The Scholarship,” Marshall Scholarships, https://www.marshallscholarship.org/the-scholarship.
² “UEA Water Security,” University of East Anglia, https://watersecurity.uea.ac.uk/.