Two St. Mary’s College of Maryland students have been named to the 2023-2024 class of Rachel Carson Campus Fellows (RCC), a highly competitive national program whose mission is to “build and deepen critical connections between campuses, communities and advocates with the goal of advancing environmental health and equitable policy.” Lily Riesett ’24 and Nathan Villiger ’24 are among the 29 students in the 2023-2024 class of RCC fellows.
“Regionally and across the country, the Rachel Carson Council is doing excellent work training, mentoring, and funding undergraduates with a passion for environmental education, organizing and advocacy,” observed Barry Muchnick, associate professor of environmental studies. “Both Lily and Nathan have developed projects for their Rachel Carson Campus fellowships that integrate creativity, analysis, outreach and advocacy in the kind of exciting, interdisciplinary synthesis that reflects the innovative and applied spirit of the environmental studies major at SMCM."
Riesett served as St. Mary’s College’s first Rachel Carson Campus Fellow last year and is a returning fellow this year. With a major in political science and a minor in environmental studies, Riesett is interested in environmental justice and educating and serving rural communities. On campus, she serves as the Student Government Association president, the copy editor for The Point News, an intern for the Kate Chandler Campus Community Farm (Kate Farm) and a member of the varsity rowing team.
Villiger is an environmental studies major with a minor in political science. Passionate about agricultural and food systems sustainability and environmental storytelling, Villiger has interned with the University of Maryland Extension Service, gaining valuable experience in research, data analysis and community outreach. On campus, he is an editor for The Point News and is a member of the Kate Farm’s management co-op. This is his first Rachel Carson Campus Fellowship.
About Riesett’s RCC Fellowship Project: Rural Maryland is known for its rich agricultural history; from oyster farms on Maryland’s coast to chicken production on the Eastern Shore, the state relies on its farming communities. Unfortunately, across Maryland, one group of farmers has been systemically left out of the conversation regarding the history of food production in our state: women. In response, Lily developed a Resilience Garden at the Kate Farm, where St. Mary’s College students interested in sustainable agriculture and environmental justice are able to work on and implement agricultural projects. The Resilience Garden features a rotating variety of plants once cultivated by the working women of Maryland and gives students of all backgrounds an opportunity to farm them. The Resilience Garden honors the lives of forgotten women in agriculture by actively working the land they did, growing the things they grew, and understanding the connections between these concepts and today’s environmental justice issues.
About Villiger’s RCC Fellowship Project: Today, Smith Island, Maryland is unique. It remains Maryland’s last waterlocked community, where, for almost 400 years, the island’s resident watermen have plied the Chesapeake Bay in search of blue crabs, oysters and rockfish. Smith Island is also notable for another, tragic reason. By 2100, rising sea levels will completely submerge Smith Island, making Smith Islanders among Maryland’s first climate refugees. How will we remember these casualties of anthropogenic climate change? Villiger’s “The Smith Island Project” endeavors to answer this question by blending photojournalistic depictions of life on contemporary Smith Island with oral accounts from the remaining islanders to effectively freeze a version of Smith Island in time, one that remains undrowned and unbowed.
