Nichola Clark (‘12)
Nichola conducts a TCI Survey of an area of the ocean floor
*This article is part of an ongoing series,”Why Declare PBPL?,” which highlights the diversity of the major through students’ own accounts.
I am the type of person who makes lists—from grocery lists, to things-to-do tomorrow, to my life goals. So, by the end of my freshman year, I was more than a little worried that I had no idea what I wanted to major in. I felt that my interests would lead me either to a major in biology or legal studies. I decided that the best way to decide on a major was to look at the class requirements and evaluate which major offered the most interesting courses. In the end, I realized that I would enjoy every class that the Public Policy major required (and certainly not every class that was required for the Biology major). About the same time that I was deciding my major, I was also looking into doing a summer study abroad. I made a compromise with myself: since I had decided upon majoring in public policy, I would have my last ‘hurrah’ in science by pursuing a marine-science course in the Turks and Caicos Islands. I anticipated this trip to be a fun ‘good-bye’ to science before I became an adult and entered the real world in which I would be pursuing public policy. Though the only pre-requisite for the Turks and Caicos study abroad experience was a course in Biology, I decided to get SCUBA-certified so that I would be able to make the most of my experience on the island. I was going to live on a rural island in the middle of the Caribbean (and traveling there via an incredibly tiny propeller plane) where the water supply came from the rain, so I would be limited to one shower per week. The course would be rather science-intensive—what if I was the only non-science major and was woefully unprepared for the course? In spite of these lingering questions, I boarded the plane to South Caicos. At that time, I had a major that was chosen on logic but without much heart. When I landed back in the USA, it was with a clear idea of not only my major, but also a career goal and a new passion in life. The course that I studied was “Marine Resource Management: Techniques and Policies” and it introduced a world of environmental policy that I had never considered. After some preliminary background coursework on identifying fish, coral, and algae species, the class began conducting research on the effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). I learned that MPAs are only one of the many policy methods used to address one of the many problems that face our oceans today. Ocean acidification, coral degradation, biodiversity loss, fishery collapses—all problems in which public policy plays a vital role to a solution! I did not have to choose between science and public policy, all that I needed was to find the right way to combine them. I realized that one of the emphases in which one can specialize within the Public Policy major is Environmental Policy. This option is an absolutely perfect choice for me, for indeed, I learned in Turks and Caicos that my real passion is in marine policy. The major is well designed—it has provided me with the essential background and foundations of public policy, but it also allows me to have the freedom to pursue the specific policy that I find most interesting.