Amherst College

Congratulations to Abigail Bowen '27 and Sofía Brege ’27 on being named recipients of the Udall Scholarship! The award recognizes sophomores and juniors committed to leadership and public service in environmental sustainability or Tribal public policy and healthcare fields.

Sofía’s commitment to conservation biology has been shaped by her research experiences and her upbringing in Hawai‘i, where she witnessed the intersections of environmental change, tourism and Indigenous history. A biology and Spanish major, she hopes to pursue a career focused on restoring tropical ecosystems in Latin America through collaborative, community-informed conservation research addressing biodiversity loss and wildlife disease.

Her work has included studying tropical ecology in Puerto Rico through the El Verde Research Experience for Undergraduates, researching climate change impacts on tropical rainforests through the Tropical Responses to Altered Climate Experiment and investigating disease ecology in Professor Hood’s lab at Amherst. She also contributed to community-based conservation efforts through the MassMammals project and was awarded the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Ernest F. Hollings Scholarship.

Abigail, an environmental studies major, is committed to advancing equitable clean energy transitions across New England by ensuring sustainability initiatives benefit, rather than displace, vulnerable residents. Her work focuses on the intersection of sustainability, public service and civic engagement at both the local and international levels. At Amherst, she has researched sustainable governance initiatives in Mexico City and Indigenous-led environmental protection efforts in the Peruvian Amazon. Through her work with the UMass Amherst Community Energy Lab, she supports community-centered clean energy transitions in Holyoke, MA.

Through internships with the Town of Amherst, MA and Congressman Jim McGovern, Abigail has gained firsthand experience in public service, helping launch the town’s first Civic Academy and supporting constituents navigating challenges with federal agencies. On campus, she is an EcoRep with the Sustainability Office.

National Best Friends Day. 💜

College Should Be Way More Fun

“The [Ford Student Center] will be the crossroads of campus life at Amherst,” said Bill Ford '83.

“It is designed to bring students together in the ways that matter most—spontaneously, across differences, in the conversations that no algorithm can replicate. I am proud that our family can play a part in creating that space.”

Read the full announcement: https://bit.ly/4egJd7d

For The Atlantic, President Michael A. Elliott writes about the value of parsing through ambiguity and finding pleasure in the work of deep thinking. https://bit.ly/432dHEB

"What we need now, and will need even more as machine thinking works its way deeper and deeper into the workplace, is the capacity for human judgment—judgment that is human not only because a person made it but also because they have learned to think together with other humans about challenges that have no clear answer or solution," Elliott writes.