From the president
Jane Scanlan-Emigh, a third year student at Agnes Scott College, is a student leader in the classroom and on the cross country course. Over the last year, she worked closely with college departments and community organizations to engage and lead initiatives in climate justice and community resilience to create positive change. Jane established the city of Decatur and the college's joint Climate Resilience Plan Task Force's first extreme heat response implementation plan. Her efforts were in partnership with the college's office of facilities who will pilot the program during the summer of 2025. Her work will positively and exponentially impact our surrounding community and region through proactive measures of reducing health impacts experienced by our most vulnerable community members.
Personal Statement
I’m a child of the Northeast. Four distinct seasons gave my childhood rhythm of anticipations—of the first snowfall, then of first daffodils, of the first thunderstorms, and of the first yellowing leaves. As I grow older, I watch the boundaries between seasons become blurred. Ninety-degree April days and February flowers induce a dizzying sense of imbalance. There is a personal grief that comes with this imbalance, and an understanding that it is part of a web of broader, infinitely more painful climate change-caused losses. Grounded in this knowledge that climate justice work is an underscoring calling of our time, I’ve been driven to work with several environmental advocacy organizations on a variety of environmental issues, including community-based solar, collective eco-grief processing, and extreme heat emergency response.
As I continue to seek to be a part of practical, immediate, climate solutions, I’m also inspired to be part of the cultural reframing of humans’ relationship to Earth necessary for a lasting, just, and liveable future.