Alex Kutsupis was a dual-degree student at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) and the School of Information (UMSI) before graduating in December 2025. He specialized in Geospatial Data Sciences (GDS) at SEAS.

What did you do before coming to SEAS?

I went to Stony Brook University on Long Island. I changed my major several times but ended up graduating with a degree in environmental design, policy and planning.

What drew you to SEAS and the GDS specialization?

I had a gap year where I helped collect and analyze data for small businesses in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, as part of the Crown Heights Commercial District Needs Assessment. I was doing a lot of work in Google Sheets and ArcGIS, and I enjoyed it, which helped me figure out that I wanted to become an environmental data scientist. I started looking at graduate programs and found SEAS and the GDS specialization.

There are two sides to the answer of why I chose SEAS, both of which are important. The first side was the opportunities and the academics, and the second side was affordability considerations. SEAS has very strong faculty and academics. You can do one or multiple specializations, and you can take electives from all over. The professional development, community building, and workplace skills development were particularly strong, like SEAS Professor Steve Yaffee’s class on negotiation tactics, for example. It was one of those classes that really prepares you for the kinds of decisions that will be high stakes when you encounter them in real life. 

I could also tell that SEAS had a good community. Just the design of the Dana Building means you run into people you know all the time. And I really liked the way orientation was structured with the camping at the U-M Biological Station, plus the fact that the people I met that day are going to be lifelong friends.

The other side was cost consideration. Ann Arbor can be relatively affordable with a roommate and a student employee salary. U-M has scholarships available, and I was offered one from SEAS and one from UMSI. There was also the opportunity to become a GSI and have my tuition covered that way, and I was a GSI for two semesters. I don’t think that getting all of that support would be repeatable, but it worked for me.

What has your SEAS experience been like?

I was taking a mix of SEAS classes and UMSI classes from the beginning, then realized I wanted to do more of the latter, so I applied to UMSI and became a dual-degree student in my second year. I was straddling these two communities, but I felt very connected to SEAS even when I was spending an entire semester at UMSI. What I really like about SEAS is that it has a very strong community. It’s not cliquey; it’s very welcoming. Community-building is really one of SEAS’ greatest strengths, and it has a lot of events to bring people together. 

In my second year, I was a GSI for a SEAS class, so I got to meet and get to know all of the first-year GDS students through that course. I also worked with the Office of Campus Sustainability, which has a lot of SEAS people working there, and helped to clean up waste at the Big House and educate the volunteers who do stadium vending on how to manage their waste so that our composters and recyclers are happy. 

I also was a Dow Sustainability Fellow, which is very similar to the SEAS capstone program, in that you work with an interdisciplinary team, you have a client, and you work with that client to create deliverables over the span of a year. It was a cool experience, and everyone was able to contribute. We partnered with the Western Lake Erie Basin Coalition to create a public database and interactive maps that tracked nutrient pollution projects in western Lake Erie. 

I also want to highlight that at the end of my first year, I had a summer internship with LimnoTech, an environmental consulting company in Ann Arbor, which also was a great experience. I got to deploy a buoy on the Great Lakes and build a data quality validation system for the buoys and weather stations that they’re responsible for, which includes things like monitoring the Toledo and Cleveland municipal water intakes to make sure there isn’t excess phosphorus. I wouldn’t have been able to get that internship without SEAS (I found out about LimnoTech and applied to work with them through the SEAS career fair). Without that internship, I would not have been able to become a Dow Fellow because my Dow Fellowship project involved tracking these types of projects and putting them together into one dashboard so that people at LimoTech, for example, can see what other projects are being worked on with regard to Great Lakes nutrient pollution reduction.

Would you recommend SEAS to prospective students?

Yes, I would absolutely recommend SEAS to incoming students, and I have encouraged students to do a dual degree with the School of Information or take School of Information classes. It’s an unofficial dual-degree program, so it’s self-led and you have to completely manage both programs and their requirements on your own, which can make the logistics more challenging, but it’s worth it.

What are your future plans?

Until recently, I worked as a full-time data analyst for the U-M Office of University Development, but I’m now searching for data analyst roles in the New York area, where I’m from, that will allow me to be closer to family and friends. I’m also an instructional assistant for SI 644, a School of Information course called Advanced SQL and Databases.