In the Media

Three University of Michigan students, including two from the School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), have been named Wyss Conservation Scholars for 2023-2025.

Funded by the Wyss Foundation, the program supports students at six universities who seek to become future leaders in nonprofit and public sector conservation in the United States.  

Since 2007, the Wyss Foundation has generously provided SEAS with more than $3 million to support 46 graduate students as Wyss Scholars. 

The 2023-2025 Wyss Scholars are:

• Grace Carbeck, a joint landscape architecture and ecosystem science and management student at SEAS. Carbeck graduated from the University of Michigan in 2016 with a degree in anthropology and environmental studies. Before returning to graduate school, she taught ecology to elementary school students in Maine, Virginia and Utah. As a northern Michigander, Carbeck takes her design and conservation inspiration from the northern lakes and the people and wildlife that gather around them. She hopes to work for a land conservancy in a rural area in the upper Midwest to help them best utilize and conserve wild places.
• Molly Russell, a SEAS environmental policy and planning student, who also is pursuing a dual degree in public policy at the Ford School. Her undergraduate degree in environmental studies and history is from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she graduated in 2020. Russell has worked for the Wisconsin Governor’s Office and has served as a program manager at the Vermont Environmental Law School and as an environmental educator. She is interested in land conservation policy, most likely in the upper Midwest, including Wisconsin, where she was raised. 
• Jessie Williams, a second-year law and urban and regional planning dual-degree student. She received her undergraduate degree in environmental studies and communication and media from the University of Michigan in 2022. Williams is an associate editor of the Michigan Journal of Environmental and Administrative Law and a board member of the Urban Planning Student Association. Her scholarship focuses on land preservation, farmland conservation and zoning law, in pursuit of preserving the agricultural and forest land of her home in northern Michigan, where she plans to practice land use law post-graduation.