Generations Uniting to Address Climate Change

By Jessica Wilson

This past year, I interned with the Gunn Group to plan the Generations Uniting to Address Climate Change Symposium. The Gunn Group is an organization that focuses on the intersection between climate change and national security. In 2019, the Gunn Group partnered with Virginia Wesleyan University to organize the first climate symposium.

Given that Hampton Roads is the region most impacted by climate change in the U.S., I was very excited for this opportunity to engage with students and the community on climate action. My main tasks for this internship included researching potential speakers and event offsets, organizing the green fair, and carrying out other event logistics.

The Batten Honors College prepared me for this role by providing a strong interdisciplinary understanding of the climate crisis that emphasized the need for collaboration among disciplines. For example, in the Contemporary Environmental Issues honors course, students compared various strategies to reduce pollutants including collaborative and regulatory approaches. Students were given the opportunity to engage with experts from multiple disciplines, including Skip Styles who leads grassroots advocacy efforts with Wetlands Watch in Hampton Roads. I researched and ranked potential speaker options in multiple categories of policy, scientific, non-profit, and other backgrounds so that students could gain a holistic understanding of the climate crisis’ evolution from multiple perspectives.

I also applied the lessons I learned from my study-away course, Environmental and Cultural Sustainability in Haines, Alaska. We learned about different strategies in climate messaging, including the importance of the messenger. In my internship, I recommended that we have a student on our panel that the audience could relate to. The symposium will focus on providing actionable opportunities for students where BHC students will be equipped with the tools of how to apply strategies we have built throughout our classes!

This internship provided the opportunity for me to build project management skills. This is crucial given my interest as a corporate sustainability officer in my future career. I gained experience developing weekly objectives, creating budgets, offset calculations, and thinking through other sequential steps. I was the liaison between over ten outside organizations and offices within VWU, strengthening my professional communication skills. I am walking away from this internship with confirmation of my passion for sustainability along with a focus on project management.