Yale Bulletin and Calendar

December 15, 2006|Volume 35, Number 13|Four-Week Issue

Betsy Scherzer

Environmental activist named Marshall Scholar

Yale College senior Betsy Scherzer has won a prestigious Marshall Scholarship for two years of study in the United Kingdom.

In her three-and-a-half-years as an undergraduate, the environmental engineering major from Tampa, Florida, has made a significant impact on the environment at Yale.

A co-chair of the Yale Chapter of Engineers Without Borders, she has led the Yale Biofuel Project to convert used cooking oil into fuel for heating and to run University vehicles, and she has played a major role in the Yale Paper Project, a campaign to increase the University's use of recycled paper. She serves as an "Engineering Tour Guide" to visitors to the Yale campus and is an active member in such student organizations as the Yale Student Environmental Coalition, the Yale Climate Campaign, the Center for Industrial Ecology and Splatter!, a student-run workshop for creative writing on the environment offered to students in the New Haven Public Schools.

As part of the Yale Festival of Arts and the Environment, which she ran during Earth Week last spring, Scherzer organized a "Trashion" show, featuring wearing apparel made entirely from reused materials. These included a dress crocheted out of plastic bags, a gown of bubble-wrap, and skirts made of brown paper bags, teabag wrappers, candy wrappers and bushel-size net potato bags.

The exercise of creating fashion comes naturally to the Yale senior, who loves to sew and designs all her own clothing, an endeavor she likens to engineering. The Trashion show, Scherzer says, offered her fellow students a chance to use their creative talents while becoming more responsive to the environment.

Scherzer's mission to make the world a more sustainable place finds expression in other ambitious projects. With her Engineers Without Borders co-chair, classmate Katherine Rostkowski, she is helping to develop a fiber-optic system for directing sunlight to tanks of oil-producing algae, which become a source of biofuel. She is also working to design a water-distribution system for a remote village in West Africa.

Last year, Scherzer was one of three Yale juniors to receive a Morris Udall Scholarship in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the environment.

After receiving her bachelor of science degree from Yale this spring, Scherzer will head for Oxford University, where she will spend the year pursuing an M.Sc. She intends to use her Marshall Scholarship for the second year to earn a Master's in Sustainable Business at the University of Leeds. She chose Leeds, she says, because it is the only university to offer a degree that so perfectly fits her career goal: to advise businesses on how to adopt environmentally sustainable practices.

Established by the British Parliament in recognition of the Marshall Plan, which helped Europe recover from the devastation of World War II, the highly competitive scholarships are given to outstanding American students for two years of study in the United Kingdom.

As announced in the Dec. 1 issue of the Yale Bulletin & Calendar, five other Yale students recently received awards to study in Britain as recipients of Rhodes Scholarships. (See www.yale.edu/opa/v35.n12/story1.html.)

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

Gift from alumni to expand Grand Strategy Program

State gives Yale $7.8 million for stem cell research

Environmental activist named Marshall Scholar

Yale scientist helps keep museum's trains chugging along

Project will consider how to develop 'pastoral imagination'

Human Resources department to pilot STARS . . .

Yale researchers share expertise with Ethiopian health care . . .

Global Citizenship Initiative awarded Hewlett Foundation grant

Child psychiatrist wins award for contributions to education

Alan Kazdin named president of American Psychological Association

Thomas Steitz honored by Japanese university

The Duke's Men make holiday appearances

SCHOOL OF MEDICINE NEWS

HIV testing should be a routine part of health exams, say scientists

Discovery has implications for treatment of herpes

Study: Cancer gene mutations more common than expected

Aortic aneurysms often run in families, say researchers

Study: Decreased genital sensation likely in competitive women cyclists

Retinopathy of prematurity may be due to genetic factors

Research shows benefits of exercise programs for elderly

Asian Indian men found to be more susceptible to diabetes

Yale School of Medicine joins national consortium