Lauren May

Please note that this interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.  

To start, could you tell me a little bit about yourself? 

Lauren May: “I’m a junior studying data science. I’m minoring in Program in the Environment, and I’m also minoring in math – I actually just added that one. I’m an intern for LSA Sustainability, and I have been working here for a little over a year at this point. I am the Co-Lead for the BLUElab Data project team, which is an engineering team that does data science projects related to sustainability, and we’re working with MDining to help them reduce their food waste. So that’s been a cool club I’ve been part of for a couple of years now. I’m also the co-president of Women in Math. We do a mix of professional and social events, everything from resume workshops and grad school panels to making friendship bracelets and watching a movie. I joined freshman year and that’s been super fun. Then I’m also just generally doing a lot of stuff related to sustainability on campus. I’m a Graham Scholar, in the 2024-2025 cohort. My team is working with the Washtenaw 2030 District on their transportation survey. Building managers in the county get this survey and they send it to their employees, who then report their commuting miles and their commuting methods, so you can compute the greenhouse gas emissions associated with commuting. Then we also asked them for feedback on policies that they’d like to see, like electric vehicle charging or bike parking and those kinds of things. Then the district can report to the county on changes that could be made because they’re trying to go carbon neutral as a whole community by 2035, and operationally carbon neutral by 2030. That’s been a cool thing to be part of. I also started doing research this semester with Dr. Rabab Haider. We’re working to understand how data centers influence local energy grids and eventually develop a program to model those interactions.”

What’s one word that you would use to describe sustainability or how would you describe sustainability?

Lauren May: “The word ‘interesting’ would work, but it feels too shallow, I would say. It’s hard because I think that there are so many different ways to look at it. The way that I’ve been kind of trying to look at it over maybe the past few weeks or months, is sort of like diligently working towards the future, even if it’s not a short-term goal. It’s sort of having faith that things are going to turn out okay in the end, but only if you actually work on it. It’s very optimistic, for sure, because if you’re pessimistic, then you’re not going to do anything. But I think that if you look back through time, we’re in a very different place than we were 50 years ago, with water and air and environmental things for better and for worse, but all of them that are for better is because people actually did things. I guess one word would be something along the lines of ‘inclusive’. Because sustainability is inclusive of every single thing in our society, it’s in politics, it’s inclusive of our daily lives, it’s inclusive of all kinds of people with different backgrounds.”

Could you talk a bit about the work that you’ve done as an Intern during the Year of Sustainability?

Lauren May: “Yeah, trying to think back to last January, what I was doing. We were working on the Freezer Challenge. We were doing a lot of like Course Guide work, so trying to map out what sustainability courses were being offered, by who, where, and at what level, and making that much more accessible for students to see and to look through as a resource. Then doing a lot of work over the summer with faculty spotlights. I think I interviewed 10-ish people, 10-ish faculty across different disciplines, all teaching courses related to sustainability. That was very cool to sit down with them for half an hour or 45 minutes, and then write an article that… I think our original idea was 500 words, and I always went way too long. I don’t think any of them got there just because of the pure intelligence and insights in those transcripts, I had such a hard time cutting it down. But that was a really fun project. And then I worked on trying to understand various things related to the university’s greenhouse gases, building carbon footprints, building waste and energy use, purchasing data analysis, and all kinds of things like that. I was able to attend and help plan multiple sustainability events on campus, including a DEI summit and a workshop on AI, which were amazing. Then also just being kind of the student perspective in the room at meetings, of being able to sit in on some very high-level conversations, and sometimes just sit and listen and take it in, and sometimes being able to offer some suggestions or answer some questions, some insights.”

Has there been a topic that has stuck out to you or something that has stuck with you?

Lauren May: “I think that this kind of ties into the last question because a project I forgot to mention was the book clubs. I feel like reading Parable of the Sower, Intersectional Environmentalist, Not the End of the World, and Braiding Sweetgrass – four key climate books that you might not think of as being purely climate change books because they bring the humanistic perspective while also having a scientific backing, and they feel very of the moment with so many core insights. And I feel like all of them include active hope, especially in the case of Not the End of the World. But also the Sci-Fi elements of Parable of the Sower and the ideas of Earthseed and leadership, where people kind of have to take what they want and convince other people, for better or for worse, of certain kinds of ways of seeing the world. Being reminded by The Intersectional Environmentalist and by Braiding Sweetgrass, that my perspective is one very narrow one and there needs to be a lot more people in the conversation. Remembering to question my assumptions about almost any kind of solution that I think is the right or best idea.”

What is a surprising thing that you’ve learned while working here?

Lauren May: “I mean the academia side of things, we would leave almost every meeting and be like, gosh, I didn’t realize that things worked in this way, whether it was faster or oftentimes slower than you thought. Just the level of people and approvals that things had to go through. But that’s going to be the case for any kind of context of trying to do work like this, even if it is corporate or it’s academia or whatever else, where everyone’s going to have their own hesitancies and things they’re advocating for. Seeing staff be part of those meetings and convey those ideas and try to work together, plan for the future, and plan for resistance- the scale of it just surprises me. Especially how much we’re able to get done when you look back, but how in the moment it can kind of feel like nothing, but also everything is happening. The zooming out part of it is a skill that I didn’t expect to learn, but I definitely did.”

If you could imagine a perfect position for yourself, what might it look like?

Lauren May: “I think that one key part of it would be, I’d like to do something technical. I mean, at least technical-ish, I feel like the data science degree here is pretty rigorous, and I’ve learned a lot of programming and a lot of math, so I’d like to use it. I do enjoy those things, but I also don’t want to be working in a bubble, or working just on a technical team. This might not be like an entry-level role, but the dream might be working at a company that’s working on sustainability, whether that’s renewable energy, waste, or it’s water, the Great Lakes if I’m still here in Michigan. But being able to be a technical voice and an analytical voice, who can work on problems and kind of take in big sets of data and then try to draw conclusions from them, which requires the technical skills, but also all of the more nuanced, sort of practical knowledge that I think I’ve gained from this role and gained from other things I’ve been doing here. I find being able to see the full journey of a project very rewarding, being mission-driven, and being able to see things through.”

From a student’s perspective, what is one thing that you’d like to see around sustainability on campus? 

Lauren May: “This is a conversation that I feel is already happening, but just having ways to plug students in early, and not even necessarily early, but just getting them plugged into what sustainability things are available for them to be part of because there’s so much. And I think that if you’re part of that world at all, you kind of know all of it. And then if you’re not, you kind of know none of what’s available, it’s very interesting. If you’re just in a different major and don’t know people in it, even though it’s a big community, if you’re not part of the community, the work isn’t as spread out. So, making that more and more present for students, which I think is definitely starting to happen. Making courses more visible, too, because putting one person in one class could change the whole trajectory of what they want to study.”

What is a piece of advice that you would give to a newer student?   

Lauren May: “I think one thing I would want to emphasize, and as a junior currently looking for internships, it’s very high on my mind and maybe I’ll disagree or agree even more with myself in five years, but everybody is on different timelines and decides to do different things on paper, with their academics, and with their jobs. I know a lot of people who are studying very different things who I think would all be very qualified and good at the same jobs, with their own variety of skill sets. There are so many different ways to get things on your resume and have experiences outside of the classroom. You can kind of fine-tune the classes that you take, the experiences that you have, and the jobs that you have. So I would advise newer students to never say no to opportunities or close down options. You never know where something could go, even if you don’t exactly think that you fit what it is exactly. That could be applying to a club, it could be a job, it could be a class that’s a 400-level class on environmental law. I’ve never taken anything like that before, but hey, who knows where it could lead.”