Alyssa Jones WoodAlyssa Jones Wood joined CES in April of 2016 as a graduate research assistant.
Alyssa holds a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from FAU's Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College and a Masters of Science in Geosciences concentrating in Human-Environment Sustainability from FAU. Alyssa has worked in environmentally-minded jobs in the public, private, and non-profit sectors, but currently serves as the Sustainability Manager at the City of Tumwater in Washington State.
I knew I wanted to work towards my master’s degree in geosciences: human-environment sustainability and it was Dr. Polsky's focus on environmental social sciences that brought me to CES. Most other programs and research centers I found were heavily focused on traditional environmental science or sociology without environment, and this was the sweet spot where I found exactly what I was looking for.
I earned my B.A. from the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College at FAU and my M.S. from FAU.
I have always been concerned with the human aspect of environmental change- what we do as humans and human-dominated systems, how people are harmed, and how we can take action to reduce that harm and revolutionize those systems to better work for all living beings. I wanted to be part of the change and having a well-rounded education in social science, environmental science, economics, and public administration was necessary for me to feel comfortable being a change-agent.
I worked as a research assistant at CES through my master’s program. I focused on the Coastal SEES project using qualitative research methods to examine the cultural ecosystem service values to people living near salt marshes up and down the eastern seaboard. I also helped as needed on other projects such as the Artic Florida Summit and residential lawn research.
My thesis focus was comparing focus group discussion and key-informant interview research methods in eliciting cultural ecosystem service values on the coast of Georgia.
Before we went into the field for our Coastal SEES research, our lab did quite a bit of reading about the topic of ecosystem services in many different areas of research. My favorite memory of this is working on a concept map with my colleages on the lab whiteboard and having passionate discussions about gaps in the research, terminology we found to be counterproductive or confusing , and how our work could be designed to help fill those gaps and clarify the terminology.
I am the Sustainability Manager at the City of Tumwater in Washington State. I work to implement our regional climate mitigation plan which has over 70 great actions to help us reduce our community-wide greenhouse gas emissions. This work has been very fulfilling and its great to work hand in hand with the community to implement solutions.
I encourage students to keep an open mind to figure out creative solutions to climate change. In some jurisdictions, even implementing the basic climate actions can find resistance and this is where being creative comes into play. Embrace your creative side to imagine out work-arounds, different angles to propose projects from, voices that might be left out, and who you could bring to the table to increase pressure to do the right thing. Everything helps and everyone benefits when new solutions are thought of and modeled.
I enjoy spending time outdoors in the beautiful nature that I'm grateful to live in. I especially love doing this with my partner and my dog. I also read a lot of fantasy/cli-fi and engage in kitchen projects like fermenting and canning.
