Like many of her fellow Tar Heels, environmental studies major Abby Overby turned to EcoStudio when searching for a sustainability-related internship. This semester, she is a residential stormwater education intern with the Town of Carrboro, creating a documentary to help Carrboro residents understand the town’s ongoing stormwater management improvement.
“It’s been really cool to find connections between what I’m learning in class and this job,” she said.
EcoStudio helps match Carolina undergraduate students of all majors with environmentally focused, client-based internships at local and national organizations like The Nature Conservancy, Triangle Land Conservancy and Patagonia.
Overby said the encouragement from other EcoStudio interns is one of her favorite aspects of the semester. “We’ve all formed this support system, this network of people that we know we can rely on, count on and check in with for inspiration.”
This opportunity for experiential learning in the field coupled with peer-to-peer learning in the classroom was exactly what its founders had in mind.
“We have a mix of students, from first-years all the way up to seniors,” said EcoStudio co-director Brian Naess, geographic information system analyst and lecturer at the institute. He co-founded the EcoStudio program with Jaye Cable, senior associate dean for natural sciences in the