By: Julia Lin

Hello everyone! My name is Julia Lin, and I am a junior and journalism major in USC Annenberg. I feel so lucky to have joined the Wrigley Institute as part of this summer’s environmental communications internship program.

Growing up in Seattle, Washington, I was raised to think about sustainability and my impact on the environment, but when I moved to Los Angeles for college, I felt disconnected from this aspect of my life. Joining the Wrigley team was a unique chance to be in community with other members of the Trojan family who share this same desire to learn and give back to the planet.

Sharing (virtual) space with so many different people who have a similar passion for combating climate change has been truly refreshing, and it is so affirming to know that spaces like this exist both at USC and in Los Angeles. Even though we’ve been entirely remote, this program has given me such a great chance to connect with professors, students and industry professionals all sharing the same goal of tackling one of the biggest challenges of our generation.

My work this summer has been focused on developing a website and social media strategy to bring the complex research Dr. Megan Fieser and her lab in the USC Chemistry Department does to the forefront. I have always been curious about how I could use my passion for writing and storytelling to support the environmental movement, so when I saw Professor Fieser’s lab work on plastic pollution and connecting communities with the critical information to educate about environmental issues, I knew I had found a promising pathway.

Making environmental information accessible to all is one of the most important things we can do to spread awareness and increase widespread action, and that is exactly what this project with Professor Fieser was all about. This work gave me the chance to combine my passion for environmental justice and education in a truly concrete way.

I spent my time this summer breaking down complex research about plastic pollution into digestible pieces, creating content to help learners process the information and learning on my own! From engaging with different types of science to facts about climate change that I had never heard of before, my understanding of the complexity of this issue has truly developed in the past few months.

Beyond that, we got to hear from so many incredible speakers who offered diverse and interesting perspectives on the many opportunities to participate in environmental communications. For me, seeing other women of color in journalism, environmental science and communications was so exciting.

This internship and this summer have shown me that there is work at the intersection of writing, communication and environmental studies, and I am so excited to carry that learning with me wherever I go. Thank you, Wrigley!

You can watch a video I made about the Fieser Lab here. Enjoy!

By: Gloria Jin

Hello everyone! My name is Gloria Jin and I am a second year at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, where I study Public Relations with a minor in Environmental Studies. This summer, I got the amazing opportunity with the Wrigley Institute’s Environmental Communications internship, where I worked on The West on Fire project with Professor Bill Deverell, the director of The Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West!

I Zoomed virtually for this entire year, so no Catalina Island photo. Here is one from the Texas winter storm (the next few days were definitely not as happy as I was in this!)

My work with the ICW’s The West on Fire project was to create visuals for the questions and conversations surrounding fire and how we use it today. With the guidance of Professor Deverell and his colleagues at the ICW, Dr. Elizabeth Logan and Dr. Jessica Kim, I created a social media post series, trawled the internet’s image archives for images to supplement a podcast, created my own illustration, and made a video!

The illustration’s initial draft.

After doing a lot of reading and watching webinars, I learned just why and how The West Is On Fire. An explosive combination:
• historical suppression of any and all fire leading to the current societal stigmas
• erasure of Indigenous historical and cultural usage of fire
• ecological effects of the build-up of flammable timber and shrubbery
• and many more

It was all of this that fascinated Professor Deverell, and that’s exactly why he wanted to engage in discussion about fire, and to change public opinion on it. By raising awareness about how fire has been and still is beneficial, we can pave the way for a better tomorrow. Los Angeles knows the dangers that fire brings intimately, but there is hope that one day that it will eventually become a healthier coexistence.

The illustration’s final draft.

This illustration was inspired by and remixed from a late-1800s painting by John Gast called American Progress depicting Manifest Destiny. I wanted to capture the same temporal shift, or progress, through my illustration.

From left to right, it’s the original coexistence of nature and fire, followed by looming dark clouds of deforestation and urbanization, as well as the extreme opposition to fire and the eventual resulting debris flow (landslides/mudslides/rockslides). Finally, brought by a revitalization of fire practices such as prescribed fire, a new shining hope has been brought back to the landscape.

Visualizing a podcast episode.

Throughout my time at this internship, I’ve gotten to speak and listen to so many experts across both the environment and communications fields, and I have learned so much from them. I could not thank my mentors at the Wrigley Institute or the ICW enough for what a great opportunity this summer has been. I had the chance to fulfill my passions for engaging audiences through social media and art, all the while advocating for a better environment and a better tomorrow. I’m so grateful that I got to meet my amazing peers and mentors through the ICW and the Wrigley Institute, solidified my confidence in my career choice, and even got to develop my video-editing skills. My journey at USC and in the environmental field is far from over. I can’t wait to see where it goes!

To learn more about the ICW, and to see the video I made for the program, watch here!

Sincerely, someone who has never made their own video before (until now!) – Gloria