Student Profile
Aubrey Miller '09
I am an environmental policy and international relations double-major. I am completing a senior honors thesis in environmental policy, which started as an independent research project my junior year under the direction of J. Timmons Roberts and continues to morph and grow. My research examines the role of the U.S. Forest Service in managing ecosystems as the effects of climate change continue to threaten ecosystem services and functions. The ultimate goal of the thesis is to create new parameters from which to conceive of and implement resource management policies to assist ecosystems in adapting to the effects of climate change. I have spent the last three summers working for the forest service in Leadville, Colo., as a wilderness ranger and as half of a two-man trail crew. After graduation, I will return to the mountains of Colorado to work for the forest service on a different district as the leader of a trail crew and overseeing volunteer projects. After a year of brief reprieve at home in Colorado, I will be attending graduate school. I will be pursuing a Ph.D. in either environmental science or geography with the intent to focus my research on human-environment interactions and especially how dynamic that relationship is in the face of climate change. With any career I follow in the future, I would like to focus on more effective translation and incorporation of hard-science into policy prescription. Eventually, I would like to teach at the university-level.
