Title: Finding a New Home in the Environment & Sustainability Program Downtown

When Phoebe Opler (C’27) took her first environment and sustainability class at Georgetown, her heart started pounding.

It was the same feeling she had when she took a marine biology class in high school and visited Georgetown for the first time. Something clicked.

“I felt the excitement,” she said. “Being in that class, I just felt at home.”

After taking the course, Opler enrolled in Georgetown’s new Environment & Sustainability major, a bachelor of science in which students spend their first two years on Georgetown’s Hilltop Campus and their last two years on its Capitol Campus, with a front-row seat to how local and global environment change is made.

The program has since taken Opler to the seas off a Greek island, and, this fall, to downtown Washington, DC, where she’ll be part of the first cohort living and taking classes on the Capitol Campus.

“I’m very excited to build a new community with people I’ve never met before … and get a new start, especially in the city,” she said. “It’s definitely going to feel like real life.”

Growing Up Outside

Opler spent her childhood immersed in the outdoors. She hiked and fished in Wyoming while visiting her grandparents, and cruised the waters of Concord, New Hampshire, as a coxswain on her high school crew team.

As she got older, she began noticing subtle changes in the environment: less snowfall, rivers drying up, wildfires in Wyoming. She’d fill her phone’s Notes app with questions about why and ideas for research topics or environmentally friendly inventions.

At Georgetown, Opler joined the crew team and began studying biology. But something didn’t feel quite right. She wasn’t as interested in molecules and chemistry as she was in the environment and the communities that shape it, she said.

In her Environment & Sustainability 1 course, Opler discovered complex answers to the questions she had once asked and found she had more complex questions. This felt right. And so did the Environment & Sustainability major (BS-ES), with its interdisciplinary focus and multiple tracks to specialize in.

Still, Opler hesitated in making the jump from biology to BS-ES. She would be moving to the Capitol Campus her junior year, and as a student-athlete, the commute to practice would be longer.

“I was nervous, but at the end of the day, it’s something I really wanted to pursue as a major. In that class, I found my passion, and I don’t think any other major would suffice,” she said.

After finding support in BS-ES’s faculty and staff with her schedule, Opler made the leap.

A Summer in Greece

This summer, Opler jumped on another opportunity: Earth Commons’ new hub in Greece, which offers experiential learning and research opportunities. She took a course on climate change and marine science in Athens from Professor Jesse Meiller and a professor from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) alongside students from Georgetown in Qatar and other international students from NKUA. She lived in an apartment in Athens and navigated the city on her own.

Through the course, Opler visited the Greek island of Andros, where she met with a local cheese producer and visited a sustainable farm. She took samples of phytoplankton off the coast of Andros and toured an ancient temple in Athens. And she learned how to write a scientific report as well as researched and presented on monitoring ecosystem recovery in the Black Sea from space.

After the course, Opler interned with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Greece, where she worked to improve the user experience of the organization’s website and contributed to a government proposal on eliminating cigarette butt pollution. Working alongside such driven people from different research, policy and legal teams sparked a new career possibility in NGOs, she said. 

“Seeing just how driven people are in NGOs helped me see that being in just the field may not be something that I want to do. When I’m surrounded by people who are as driven or as passionate about making just environmental change, that’s very inspiring and keeps you going,” she said.

Studying on the Capitol Campus

After Greece, Opler is preparing for her move to the Capitol Campus. She said she’s looking forward to meeting new students, including the first undergraduate majors in the university’s new undergraduate public policy program, who will also be living in her residence hall.

“I’m excited to build a new community with people I’ve never met before,” she said. “And I’m excited to make new friends.”

She also said the move will help her focus more on time management, particularly as she’ll have an internship and classes downtown and crew near the Hilltop campus.

“It’s going to be a lot to juggle, but there’s a huge support system out there, and everyone else is in the same boat of moving down there. We’ll be in it together and can have a good time figuring it out.

“I’m excited to get a new start,” she said.