Why you should take every opportunity that comes your way, (and have good friends who’ll push you to take them)

Dr. Laureen Elgert‘s research focuses on the complex interface between knowledge, policy, practice and outcomes in environmental governance with an empirical focus on protected areas, sustainable commodity certification, farming systems and agriculture and sustainability indicators. She examines themes such as the politics of sustainability, environmental expertise and evidence-based policy, and, the trade-offs and synergies between local livelihoods and global environmental outcomes. Dr. Elgert is assistant professor of environmental studies and international development at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is trained in anthropology (BA, Trent University, Canada), public health (MSc, University of Alberta, Canada), and international development studies (PhD, London School of Economics and Political Science).

Hannah Uebele: What got you interested in this particular field and how did you get started?

Laureen Elgert: I started out in psychology because everybody did. It was the only thing that I knew existed in school, because I came from a family that did not go to university, I grew up in a very small town. So I went to psychology because it was the only thing I kind of knew of. Then I got there and I changed majors about 7 times and finally ended up in anthropology. I had been traveling a lot and it seemed to be not a regional study but a way I could harness my experience and my interests.

Uebele: What would you say to students wanting to get involved in your field of work now – what kind of path should they follow?

Elgert: Well interestingly enough I work in an engineering university. There’s a huge demand for STEM in international work, but what I’m trying to do with some colleagues at our school is make sure that those STEM students that are in demand abroad…(have) global awareness, competency, and humility. As North Americans we need to maintain a humility that I think doesn’t come naturally and so that’s what I think – getting the training in history, politics, critical thinking, is really really valuable alongside those technical skills and to look at the limitations of the STEM fields. Different situations call for different implementations. I think that STEM fields are great, but colleagues and I are really working with our engineering students to develop that sort of sensibility, the humility, the critical thinking, what we’re calling global competency. But not just in a way that you can speak another language or adapt to somebody’s customs, but a deeper competency in understanding your place in the world, relationships, politics, history. We need STEM people that have that because STEM is so vital right – STEM professionals build the world and critical scientists sit back and critique it, but we need to come together better. It still often doesn’t happen and it’s very difficult because its two completely different epistemologies, two worlds, two planets. But we need to work on bringing the critical discussion into the practical applications and to get really fundamentally changed responses to things. As we see, our approaches to global poverty, approaches to global disease, approaches to war are not working, so we need technical skills married with the social and political.

Uebele: Can you tell me about a moment in your life or a decision that you made in your life that was crucial in getting you to be where you are in your career today?

Elgert: So I did a master’s and I was working in public health research after. I got an email one day (from a former classmate) saying, ‘What are we all up to?’ and somebody responded and said, ‘I’m doing a master’s at London School of Economics.’ So I went to coffee with a friend of mine and I was like, ‘This friend of mine from undergrad is now doing a master’s at the London School of Economics isn’t that amazing?’ and she was like, ‘You could do that if you wanted.’ I said, ‘No way, no way I couldn’t do that.’ It’s just not where I saw myself, I just thought, ‘I don’t belong there.’ So she said, ‘I bet you 100 dollars you could do a master’s at LCE if you wanted,’ and I said ‘Well I don’t want another master’s’ and she says, ‘Well go do a PhD there then.’ She challenged me to apply, and I applied, and I got in and it was amazing. It was a total turn in my life that I did not see coming and it changed everything because I never saw myself as an academic, never saw myself as a professor and a researcher. So two things: don’t determine your future too soon you know? And when opportunites arise, you just take them, don’t overthink them, don’t think, ‘Oh I gotta write 10 thousand miles of pros and cons and analyze this to death,’ just take anything that comes along. Take any opportunity that comes along, and have good friends who tell you that you can do stuff when you don’t think you can. Don’t accept these sort of boxes that you’re excluded from. And if it doesn’t work out you can change. So it certainly wasn’t this linear sort of road leading to, ‘where I am today’. Where I am today, it’s a nice place I tell you, I’m happy I like what I do I’m interested in my work and that for me is success. But I was all over the place and I feel like in the end, working in the bank was as important to who I am, what I know, how I relate to people, and what I understand about the world, as going to LCE to do a PhD. I really do, its just all part of it. If something doesn’t work out, you can always leave, but I just think seizing opportunities is really important because you just don’t know how things are going to be. You can’t anticipate, you can’t predict because you take an opportunity and it leads to somewhere you never would’ve dreamed.

Uebele: Looking back is there anything that you would do differently that you would want students now to be aware of?

Elgert: No, and not to have regrets I think is so important. I wouldn’t do anything differently. It’s not that everything’s worked out perfectly or anything, I just feel like you can’t anticipate, so then why look back and wish you did something differently? Just always follow your heart, do follow your gut, follow your intuition.