Michelle (Mickey) Aldridge (MS ’08)

Planning Officer, National Forests in NC, USDA Forest Service

Asheville, North Carolina

What did it mean to you to be named a Doris Duke Conservation Fellow? What were some of the activities and opportunities that held the greatest impact for you?

It was an honor to be recognized in graduate school as someone who had the potential to be a leader in public or nonprofit conservation work. It reaffirmed that I was on the right career path. I especially valued the retreat we had at the National Conservation Training Center and that time to reflect on conservation leadership. It was fabulous to meet students from around the country there who were also focused on public and nonprofit conservation work and to know that we were all working toward the same goal from many paths.

Some of the other DDCF students and advisers encouraged me to apply for federal positions following graduate school, and I’m now 14 years into a career in federal public land management. I am sure that my Doris Duke Conservation Fellowship experience—the fellowship itself, the internship the fellowship supported, and the leadership skills I developed through the fellowship program—made me more competitive for landing an incredible position following graduate school. I am grateful and challenged that I get to work each day on tough issues facing our public lands.

The fellowship certainly helped me to afford the overall impact of graduate school at the University of Michigan, which was at the time the most expensive public school in the country. The tuition support was substantial. As a result, I was able to focus on finding the right fit for me following graduate school rather than chasing a salary. My student loan payments were able to be paid off more quickly because of the support, and my stress level during and after school was dramatically reduced.

The fellowship also helped support a small internship between the first and second years of graduate school. I was able to take an unpaid six-week internship at a land trust and develop skills and experience in conservation tools without feeling the pressure of needing to make money during the summer.

Can you tell us about your SEAS experience? How did it help you advance in the conservation field?

I went to a land-grant university for undergrad, earning dual degrees from the open-air classrooms of the forestry school and the screen-filled hallways of the journalism building. I enjoyed both programs, but was not fully at home in either. In my undergrad natural resource program, I remember being the lone person who raised a hand when my professor asked, “Who wants to work with people?”

At SEAS, I was no longer the odd one out. My educational background and my job experience all swirled together in an interdisciplinary way that was natural and supported. SEAS thrives on the integration between disciplines to solve 21st century challenges. There were guide paths for scientists, policymakers, business professionals, educators, communicators, and everything in between. I appreciated the integration and the explicit focus on social sustainability as well as ecology, and the deep learning on contemporary issues such as climate change and sustainable fisheries. Many concepts I learned at SEAS are now part of my daily paradigm. A few examples stand out: game theory role-playing that we did in the lab for the social sustainability class; stages of a negotiation and best alternatives to a negotiated agreement from the negotiation skills class; mindfulness from environmental psychology; the concepts of ecological resilience and tipping points we learned in ecology…the list goes on. I remain in touch with peers who are making a difference in natural resources all across the country, and I find an instant connection when I meet SEAS grads in my career world as well. Following graduate school, I felt well-equipped to enter the conservation career field and find my way. There are no closed doors.

What kind of changes have you observed in land conservation in the U.S. over the course of your career?

I graduated in 2008 during an economic downturn when it was very difficult to find positions; I was very lucky and landed a dream job. Today I feel like the career pathways for conservation fields are growing—there are a lot more avenues to apply interdisciplinary careers. And there is a surge of interest from young people all over the world to spend their professional work making a difference in natural resources—that is certainly something to be encouraged about.

Challenges of our time? The short attention span that the general public has for consuming information makes the challenge of managing complex systems more difficult. In the interest of wanting to help, individuals rush to values-based solutions that may not actually address the root cause of natural resource issues. For example, solving climate change is not as simple as planting trees. Not all active management is bad. Everyone wants to protect the environment, but that means different things to different people. When the political environment gets polarized, people are quick to believe what they see on social media or to click on information that supports their paradigm without exploring the complexities of managing natural systems. The desire for fast solutions that individuals can support indirectly perpetuates mythology and misinformation, and makes finding actual solutions to complex problems even more difficult.

Note: Prior to 2017, the School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) was known as the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE). References to “SNRE” have been updated to “SEAS” to reflect the name change.