Notes from a Summer Fellow: Lila Nelson

This blog post is written by our 2021 Summer Fellow from UNH’s Sustainability Institute, Lila Nelson:

This summer, I had the great privilege of working with ReVision Energy. Coming from the Midwest, I had never heard of ReVision until I was searching for a summer job and stumbled across the University of New Hampshire’s Sustainability Institute. Every year they search for students looking to go into the sustainability field to work with several host organizations for a summer fellowship program.

This spring, I applied for their fellowship and landed an interview with ReVision. Preparing for my interview, I scoured the ReVision Energy website and was beyond impressed. Impressed with their informational website, impressed that it was a completely employee-owned company, and impressed that it was a B Corporation – something I had learned about in school, being an Environmental Conservation & Sustainability major.

The fellowship was worded as “Climate Change Education and Lesson Planning” and although I hadn’t considered a future in education, I had always been passionate about teaching others about the climate crisis and advocating for future generations. When I got a call saying I had been selected for the job, I was so excited that I’d get to do something fun and meaningful this summer. My experience has absolutely exceeded expectations. I had a fabulous mentor, Brittany Angelo, and was very fortunate to work with the entire Marketing team at ReVision.

We spent the summer creating lesson plans on exciting topics such as an in-depth description of what solar power is and how it works, the environmental effects of renewable resources versus non-renewable resources, the process of composting, and more. I was pushed to apply my knowledge to a field I had little experience in – education. Working with the Marketing team was especially rewarding, because I was able to view all of this information from a completely different perspective compared to the policy perspective I have been learning at school.

As a rising senior at UNH, I look forward to continuing to expand my knowledge on the climate crisis and helping others learn about it as well. I am also very excited to see these lesson plans taken on the road, in the clean energy-powered tiny education center, and with the help of Sunsquatch. I am so excited to see how these lesson plans may help kids become more passionate and vocal about environmental issues and help sustainability programs in K-12 schools expand.

Original Source: https://www.revisionenergy.com/blogs/summer-intern-lila-nelson/