Contact Information
Penn State Sustainability
Land and Water Research Building
University Park, PA 16802
814-865-7488
sustainability@psu.edu
Dr. Peter Buck
peterbuck@psu.edu
(814) 865-7445
Interns
Lara Fowler
Chief Sustainability Officer; Director, Penn State Sustainability; Senior Lecturer, Penn State Law
Lara Fowler is the Chief Sustainability Officer of Penn State University and Director of Penn State Sustainability, as well as a Senior Lecturer in Penn State Law and Affiliate Faculty of the Penn State School of International Affairs. Prior to this she served as an Assistant Director of the Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment (IEE).
Lara is an attorney and mediator who focuses on environmental, energy, and natural resource law, with a specific focus on water related issues. Her work at Penn State Law and IEE has focused on questions related to water, the Chesapeake Bay, and energy. She teaches courses on water law; energy; negotiation and dispute resolution design; and mediation of environmental and public conflicts.
Fowler is a juror for the Stockholm International Water Institute’s Junior Water Prize, a global competition for students ages 15 to 20 who have developed research projects that can help address major water challenges. During the 2019-20 academic year, she was a visiting Fulbright scholar at Uppsala University in Sweden, where her research focused on finding and understanding examples of where cooperation over managing water resources — both water quality and quantity — have played out.
Prior to joining Penn State, Lara was an attorney at Gordon Thomas Honeywell LLP in Seattle, Washington, where she focused on mediation and dispute resolution of complex natural resource issues, as well as representing clients facing regulatory hurdles in the environmental and energy fields. She has worked on issues such as who is entitled to store groundwater in the greater Los Angeles area; flooding issues in the Chehalis Basin, Washington State’s second largest river basin; and energy issues in the Pacific Northwest. Before pursuing a legal career, she was a senior water resources coordinator with the Oregon Water Resources Department. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in Asian studies from Dartmouth College while accomplishing a senior fellowship program on Native American water rights and earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Washington School of Law with a focus on environmental mediation.
Lydia Vanderbergh
Associate Director of Employee Engagement and Education
Lydia Vandenbergh’s mission for the Sustainability Institute is to engage employees in weaving sustainability into all of their decisions and practices. The present approach is through two programs. The Green Teams program supports faculty and staff who volunteer to find new positive ways to make their operations and programs forge a better future for our customers and the University. The second program, Green Paws, is a green office certification program, a tool that anyone at the University can use to learn resource efficient office practices. For the over one hundred Penn State Green Teams, Lydia and her interns create monthly informative newsletters, organize fun learning sessions, and other resources to make it easy for them to build leadership capability and engage others.
Lydia earned her MA in Energy and Environmental Policy from George Washington University and a BA in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Doug Goodstein
Associate Director for Student Engagement
Doug’s role within Penn State Sustainability is to coordinate with internal and external campus partners to create a robust student-centered co-curricular experience with on and off-campus sustainability projects. These experiences will provide meaningful engagements at all institutional levels to promote sustainability, construct sustainable behaviors and advance pro-environmental literacy.
Doug serves as Penn State Sustainability’s primary contact with Student Affairs, working closely with Student Activities, Residence Life, Educational Equity, Global Programs, the Office of Physical Plant, and Housing and Food Services.
As a sustainability focused professional his mission is to ensure that every student understands how social and environmental issues manifest themselves and have the tools to create a more socially just and verdant future.
Doug holds an undergraduate degree in Biology from Franklin Pierce College, a Master’s of Education specializing in Higher Education Administration from Springfield College, and a second Master’s in Sustainability Management from Harvard University. He is currently a candidate for a Ph.D. from Penn State University.
Peter Buck
Co-Director, Local Climate Action Program, and Associate Director of Climate and Sustainability Education
Peter Buck manages academic programming for Penn State Sustainability. He connects and catalyzes faculty, staff, students, and the public to imaginatively integrate sustainability into academics, outreach, operations, and research. He supports programming with competencies-based reviews and revision for majors, minors, courses, and units, guest-teaching, and faculty development, as well as strategic support for emerging initiatives that cross traditional academic and disciplinary boundaries. Over the last two years these collaborations have included high-impact collaborations with the Palmer Art Museum on the Plastic Entanglements exhibition, the Colleges of Earth and Mineral Sciences and Engineering to establish an applied initiative for utility-scale grid-tied solar projects, audits and course development with the College of Nursing, and Penn State’s Research Experience for Undergraduates in partnership with the Project Drawdown. In the coming years, he will continue collaborations, including working on systemic policy changes through Penn State’s Faculty Senate. Peter and his interns also research, catalyze, and support local schooling for sustainability, democratic decision-making in the Anthropocene on campus and in the community, and environmental justice.
Buck has also taught and communicated extensively on sustainability and life in the Anthropocene. From 2016 to 2018, he taught Sustainability 200: Foundations of Leadership in Sustainability as well as a special topics course in Educational Theory and Policy where he holds an affiliate faculty position. He also communicates widely on sustainability, education, democracy, and music in popular and peer-reviewed press. He has appeared in The Washington Post, on the blog of the Yale Cultural Cognition Project, Democracy Works, Citizen’s Climate Radio, and was a speaker at TEDxPSU in 2018 with his talk “What’s the Future Hold? Ask a Metalhead.” His scholarship has most recently appeared in The Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. The International Journal of Ethics Education, Clinics of North America, and in Routledge’s Teaching Climate Change in the United States. In October 2015 his first book of poetry, Heartwood, was published by Mt. Nittany Press and works of poetry and fiction have recently appeared in The Watershed Journal and The Short Edition.
Leadership in professional, governmental, and civic organizations is important to Buck. Until June 2019, Peter served as the Vice Chair and Chair of the Ferguson Township Board of Supervisors, the only township in Pennsylvania to have signed the We Are Still In campaign. Currently, he chairs an intergovernmental solar power purchase agreement working group, serves on the Executive Committee of the Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium, on the National Council on Science and the Environment’s Advisory Board for Drawdown, and on the Board of the Penns Valley Conservation Association.
Peter holds a Ph.D. in Educational Theory and Policy and an M.A. and a B.A. in Music with a minor in Creative Writing. He lives in State College with his wife Hilary and son Sacha.
Ilona Ballreich
Program Manager, SCC
As the program manager for the Sustainable Communities Collaborative, Ilona works closely with faculty, students, and community partners to ensure meaningful, experiential student projects focused on the sustainability needs of the community. Coordination involves strategic goal setting, planning, and ongoing communications between partners, culminating in a student-community exposition.
Ilona honed her skills in community engagement as the executive director of the non-profit Huntingdon County Arts Council, which she led to become one of the community’s major cultural hubs and assets. She has a BS in Industrial Technology from West Virginia State University and an MPS in Community and Economic Development from Penn State. She is also trained as a Blueprint Communities Facilitator through the FHLB and PA Downtown Center and Heart & Soul community development techniques. She is a successful grants writer and administrator, and serves on numerous community organizations and boards.
She resides with her husband in McAlevy’s Fort, in Huntingdon County.
Leslie Pillen
Associate Director, Farm and Food Systems
Leslie coordinates Penn State’s sustainable food systems minor and a student-centered experiential learning farm at Penn State, working with diverse stakeholders, including students, faculty, staff, community members, and alumni to advance both initiatives. She is very excited about developing new opportunities for Penn Staters to learn about sustainable food and agriculture.
She received her MS in Rural Sociology from Penn State in December 2013. Her thesis assessed opportunities and barriers for beginning farmer land access through land link programs in the Northeast US. Her BS is in Horticulture from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Prior to graduate school, Leslie managed a beginning farmer training program and incubator farm at a non-profit in Lincoln, Nebraska. There, she developed farm production and business curricula for beginning farmers, managed a multi-farmer CSA, oversaw farm site development and maintenance, and grew the program through community partnerships and financial development.
Dr. Peter Boger
Assistant Director for Outreach and Engagement
Peter is responsible for helping Penn State Sustainability articulate and implement its vision for community engagement, integrating the university’s sustainability initiatives with the needs and goals of community and campus partners throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He also serves as an initial point of contact for Penn State’s Commonwealth Campuses when working with the Sustainability Institute.
As part of his role, he helps supervise SustainPSU’s public programming, including the:
- Green Gov Council Sustainability webinar series and Sustainability Week in partnership with the Pennsylvania Green Gov Council;
- Colloquium on the Environment in partnership with the Institutes of Energy and the Environment;
- Public Health and Sustainability: Partners by Nature webinar series in partnership with PERC;
- Pennsylvania’s Solve Climate by 2030 programming; and
- Earth Day and other community programming.
He has created and helps guide three film series under the Intersections program that have drawn more than 6,000 attendees over four years–working in partnership with WPSU, the Center for Global Workers’ Rights, and Penn State’s Water Council.
Peter assists in carrying out sustainability engaged scholarship and community-focused programs, such as Penn State’s City Semester Pittsburgh program, which allows students to apply sustainable practices and solutions with community organizations in the Pittsburgh area. Currently, he is helping to create a new Sustainability Coordinator Non-Credit Certificate program with Penn State’s Continuing Education program and working to elevate sustainability workforce development programs in Pennsylvania.
He also sits on the Faculty Senate Outreach Committee and the Outreach Division’s Sustainability Council.
Peter holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a focus on environmental media and history. He also earned an M.S. in Environmental Studies focused on environmental education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as a B.A. in History focused on environmental history from Princeton University. He was a Doris Duke Conservation Fellow in 2006. Previously, he was director of Tales from Planet Earth, the largest free-admission environmental film festival in the U.S. He also worked as special assistant to New Jersey’s Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection.
Dr. Nagwa Elnwishy
Visiting Sustainability Education Fellow
Dr. Nagwa Elnwishy is Herbert H. Humphrey (Fulbright) fellow at Penn State where she is a visiting Sustainability Education Fellow at the Sustainability Institute. She is a researcher at the Institute of Biotechnology of Postgraduate Research Studies at Suez Canal University (SCU) and the former Director of the Research Office at the University of Science and Technology in Zewail City, Egypt. She also teaches several courses in the Environmental Engineering department and in the ERASMUS climate change program. Her research experience focuses on human and environmental interaction.
At the Sustainability Institute, Nagwa co-plans and facilitate curricular development. She crafts and leads workshops with the University Park and Commonwealth Campus faculty to revise and draft new sustainability coursework. She is co-authoring a sustainability curricular development guide to assist unit-level train-the-trainer efforts and develop curricular modules for first-year seminars that can be implemented across disciplines. She is also assisting the SI’s affiliate faculty program with the specific intent of expanding demographic and disciplinary diversity. Finally, Elnwishy is assisting the ongoing efforts to enhance sustainability education and performance in Penn State’s laboratories.
Elnwishy holds a Ph.D. in marine biology from SCU and Lund University, Sweden, an MSc. in agriculture science from the United Nations University, and another MSc. in agriculture from SCU.
Dr. Meghan Hoskins
Director of Operations and Partnerships
Dr. Meghan Hoskins is working to make connections between Penn State Operations staff and Penn State faculty, staff and students who want to understand and improve the sustainability of Penn State operations. She is doing this through developing and facilitating Living Lab opportunities on our campuses and co-Chairing the Sustainability Operations Council (SOC).The SOC serves as a clearinghouse that was established for the purpose of bringing together various operational units to address the University’s environmental footprint through a systemic, holistic and collaborative effort. Meghan is also building partnerships with external entities to build mutually beneficial projects and relationships in sustainability.
Meghan earned her degrees in Engineering here at Penn State and worked for 10 years as a Research and Development Engineer at the Applied Research Laboratory. She is passionate about sustainability and is involved with the Ferguson Township Elementary School Environmental Club and coordinates community tree planting events with local schools.
Katie Chriest
Outreach and Communications for Commonwealth Campuses
Katie is based in Erie at Penn State Behrend. In connection with Penn State Sustainability and the Sustainable Food Systems Program at University Park, she works to build a community of practice across Commonwealth Campuses on food systems topics, with inspiration from the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. She also leads an energized team of interns at Penn State Behrend in managing a campus garden, operating an on-campus CSA, and partnering with other local entities who work to increase food access, literacy and justice throughout northwestern PA. She serves as an initial point of contact for sustainability questions for Commonwealth Campuses in the western half of the state and also works to elevate sustainability efforts at Commonwealth Campuses through communications and outreach work. She writes and edits for Edible Western New York, writes for Erie Reader, and she’s a musician, cyclist and compulsive gardener who loves traveling to foreign farms.
Sierra Keller
Communications Director
As Penn State Sustainability’s Communications Director, Sierra Keller enjoys the privilege of crafting an engaging multimedia outreach strategy that connects sustainability messaging to our many different constituencies. Since her graduation from The Pennsylvania State University, with a degree in Media Studies, Keller’s professional aspirations and personal interests have serendipitously collided through her work with local nonprofits and small businesses, having
previously worked for ClearWater Conservancy, where she continues to serve on the board, and the Centre Foundation. She has been a State College resident for 10 years where she lives with her husband, two rambunctious sons, and a menagerie of adopted animals. When she happens upon a rare moment of quiet, it is usually spent exploring local forestlands, pottering around the garden, or reading a good novel.
Krista Bailey
Sustainable Campus Strategist
Krista Bailey came to Penn State with experience in teaching sustainability and leading campus and community sustainability initiatives.
Throughout their career, they have put their skills in sustainability research, writing, training, project development, implementation, and evaluation into practice. As a faculty member in the Sustainability Studies program, Bailey developed and taught courses for both undergraduate and graduate students, including graduate and undergraduate courses in Sustainable Food Systems and Leadership Strategies. Their engaging teaching style resulted in a Fellowship that recognized their innovative classroom design, research, and active learning approaches.
In addition to work in higher ed, Bailey worked as the city of South Bend, Indiana’s first Sustainability Coordinator under Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Community engagement work has included co-hosted local PBS programs, serving on a city bicycling committee, and working with the Food Access Councils.
In addition to sustainability work in South Bend, Bailey’s experience in community development and environmental education includes directing the Elkhart EnviroCorps AmeriCorps program in Elkhart, Indiana. Under Bailey’s leadership, it developed and implemented scores of environmental education, restoration, and volunteer projects in partnership with local organizations and The Nature Conservancy.
As a lifelong learner, Bailey is working on an Ed.D. in Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University. Their interest in the nexus of health, wellness, and sustainability has focused their research on creating a holistic learning environment for all that will enable learners to put theory into practice.
Outside of work and school, Bailey teaches fitness classes, supports the Penn State Crew club, practices organic gardening, is an active bicyclist, and enjoys spending time with their two children and exploring and doing projects with their spouse.
Jacob Bleehash
Sustainable Procurement Intern
Jacob is a third-year undergraduate student majoring in Supply Chain & Information Systems. At Penn State Sustainability, he is working with the procurement department and Meghan Hoskins analyzing transportation at Penn State and how to transition the fleet into a more environmentally friendly supply chain. Outside of work he is involved with a professional business fraternity Delta Sigma Pi on campus.
Daniel Chadourne
Capacity Building and Policy Intern
Dan is the current Capacity Building and Policy Intern here at Penn State Sustainability. A second-year graduate student in the Master of Public Policy program, Dan is interested in conducting comparative and data-based analyses of current programs and upcoming policies. He also has an interest in applying his data analysis background to help give back to communities both in State College and across the state of Pennsylvania.
Dan has a background in data analysis, applied social sciences, statistics, and software programming from studying for his bachelor’s degree in Social Data Analytics at Penn State. Dan comes to us from Roxbury, New Jersey, and seeks to pursue a career in intelligence analysis in Washington D.C.
Evan Gerard
Community Connections and Programming Student Intern
Julia Burton
Sustainable Communities Collaborative Intern
Julia is a fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in Environmental Resource Management and minoring in Environmental Engineering, Watersheds and Water Resources, and Sustainability Leadership. This is her second year interning at Penn State Sustainability, specifically with the Sustainable Communities Collaborative program. She interned this past summer at Tree Pittsburgh, where she learned more about urban sustainability and how to protect and grow urban forests. She looks forward to the projects she will assist with this school year and hopes to be able to help get communities engaged in sustainability.
Molly Gulden
Showcase Speaker Series Intern
Molly Gulden has been the Student Sustainability Coordinator Intern, responsible for coordinating and facilitating the monthly Sustainability Showcase Series, alongside her colleague, Doug Goodstein. The Sustainability Showcase Series is a speaker series that highlights incredible people whose work is targeted toward addressing the Sustainable Development Goals.
Molly is a third-year undergraduate student majoring in Earth Science and Policy, with a minor in Sustainability Leadership. She is a member of the Penn State EcoReps, a cohort of Student Sustainability Ambassadors who educate students living on campus about sustainable living. Molly is also the Family Relations chair for HEAL benefitting THON.
Sydney Hageman
Social Media Intern
Sydney is a second-year undergraduate student studying Marketing. Sydney enjoys engaging with students and sharing sustainability-related concepts through her work crafting short-form video content for Penn State Sustainability. She is passionate about connecting more of our audience with Penn State Sustainability’s mission so that they can become conscious stewards of our planet’s resources.
Sydney also serves as an Assistant Director of the Retail Division for the Penn State Marketing Association. There, she assists other students in becoming well-rounded individuals who are well prepared to enter the workforce.
Sydney Hageman
Social Media Intern
Sydney is a second-year undergraduate student studying Marketing. Sydney enjoys engaging with students and sharing sustainability-related concepts through her work crafting short-form video content for Penn State Sustainability. She is passionate about connecting more of our audiences with Penn State Sustainability’s so that they can become conscious stewards of our planet’s resources.
Sydney also serves as an Assistant Director of the Retail Division for the Penn State Marketing Association. There, she assists other students in becoming well-rounded individuals who are well prepared to enter the workforce.
Ryan Hall
Sustainable Education Intern
Seungjae Lee
Sustainable Procurement Intern
Sophia Marsh
Intersections Film Series Intern
Sophia (Sophie) Marsh is a fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in Plant Sciences. She is one of the leaders of EcoReps, a student organization of the Sustainability Institute, with a mission to serve as sustainability ambassadors who educate new students on how to live sustainably on campus. She hopes to use her degree, experience with Penn State Sustainability, and position with EcoReps to advance sustainable change throughout her life and career. She loves cats, plants, and living sustainably.
Since December 2021, Sophie has been the Community Engagement Intern for Penn State Sustainability, and has been responsible for planning and managing the Intersections program–including film curation, promotions, and event management. Currently she helps with special projects related to the Sustainable Experience Center.
Everett Miller
Eco-Author Intern
Everett Miller is the Communications Eco-Author Intern at Penn State Sustainability. In this position, he crafts compelling articles for Penn State News that raise awareness for sustainability initiatives, events, and news across the statewide and international footprint of the University. He also profiles researchers and faculty at Penn State who work within the sustainability sphere for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Snapshot series, contributes to the creation of print and digital publications, and compiles news from around the university for the Institute’s e-newsletter, “Mainstream.”
In addition to this role with Penn State Sustainability, Everett is a fourth-year English Major with a minor in Comparative Literature, and intends to continue his education by attending graduate school after completing his Bachelor’s degree. He also works for PseudoPod’s “the Sound of Horror”, as both an editor for the podcast and working on their public domain projects.
Kaylee Richards
Social Media Intern
Kaylee Richards is a social media intern at Penn State Sustainability. A third-year at Penn State majoring in Telecommunications and Media Industries, Kaylee enjoys crafting and communicating the messages of SustainPSU with its social media networks.
Linh Tran
Sustainability and Emissions Data Management Intern
Linh Tran is a Sustainability and Emissions Data Management Intern at Penn State Sustainability. As a third-year student at Penn State majoring in Management Information Systems, Linh enjoys working on data collection and analysis for the SI’s Sustainability Dashboard. Outside of Penn State Sustainability, Linh holds the position of Vice President at The Daily Collegian. She is in charge of managing projects here and regularly holds biweekly staff meetings. Linh’s strength lies in her passion for data science and her proficiency in using Data Analytics software such as Power BI, and SQL to ensure data accuracy and adherence to professional standards.
Anna Yankanich
Sustainable Procurement Intern
Anna is a fourth-year undergraduate student studying Supply Chain & Information Systems. In her role she works closely with Penn State Purchasing to improve sustainable operations by analyzing spending and seeking better end-of-life solutions for equipment and surplus inventory.
Outside of Penn State Sustainability, Anna serves on the THON™ 2024 Executive Committee as the Merchandise Director. THON is a student-run philanthropy committed to enhancing the lives of children and families impacted by childhood cancer.
Brooke Fledderman
Community Connections and Programming Intern
Brooke Fledderman is a fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in Elementary & Early Childhood Education, with a minor in Sustainability Leadership. She is also involved in the Penn State EcoReps, a student organization with the purpose to be ambassadors who educate new students about sustainable living on campus, working as an Assistant Program Coordinator. She hopes to use her degree, experience with Penn State Sustainability, and position with EcoReps to progress the intersection of sustainability and early childhood education in her career. In her free time, Brooke, a native of a small California coastal town, enjoys running and other outdoor activities.
Brooke is a Community Connections and Programming Intern for Penn State Sustainability, alongside Evan Gerard. She works to help assemble and coordinate the Intersections program, as well as assist with any promotional or event oversight.
Jack Rumery
Sustainability Education and Engagement Specialist
Jack is an enthusiastic advocate for sustainability and environmental education, and his passion is evident in his work at Penn State Sustainability. At SustainPSU, his primary focus is to foster education and collaboration among staff across PSU campuses, ensuring that sustainability resources are accessible and utilized effectively. He is particularly dedicated to nurturing existing programs like Green Teams and Green Paws, recognizing their significance as essential starting points for a greener future on campus at PSU and beyond.
More recently, Jack pursued further academic enrichment, earning his M.Ed focused on Science Education from the University of Washington. This included a transformative year with Island Wood’s Education for Community and Environment graduate program, where he further honed his teaching and leadership skills.
