Greening It Forward

Emily Christian and Sara Reper were among 50 students from 32 universities who participated in this summer’s 10-week Green Teams internship program. Each year, PSEG ISS brings together environmentally conscientious students and organizations to tackle pressing environmental challenges in the community. This year’s students rose to the challenges with which they were presented.

Sara Reper, a senior Sustainability Science major at Montclair State University, passed up an internship opportunity to do outdoor recreation planning in California this summer to participate in the 2023 PSEG Institute for Sustainability Studies (ISS) Green Teams Program. “I’m glad that I did Green Teams instead,” she says.

A junior English major at Montclair, Emily Christian grew up “with a sustainability mindset” near Atlantic City.

Anything we did in the area I grew up in affected the water, affected the plants, affected the beaches. I didn’t know that there was a whole school of thought around sustainability until I received the email about the Institute. So that’s a really big reason why I got involved, because I feel very passionate about it. And I knew that I had skills to bring to the table that aren’t just about my major.

Christian says she wasn’t the only humanities major in the 50-member cohort but she was the only English major. “I would 100% recommend it to anyone but I would say if you’re a humanities major, they need you,” she says. “In order for anything to get done anywhere, you need to make a case for the money. Period. So, if you’re good at persuasive writing, if you’re good at persuasive speaking, if you are good at any type of writing or telling a story, your teammates need you because you’re the yin to their yang.”

Christian used her English expertise to help with writing and editing a script for a short video featuring Montclair pupscot Pebbles for the “Fill it Forward” initiative. She also did the voice-over for the video campaign.

Read the full article on the University News site.