- Campus:
- IU Bloomington
Zolboo, you mentioned the fellowship you’re doing this summer. Could you tell us more about that?
It's been an enriching experience. Over the summer, I got an opportunity to be a part of McKinney Climate Fellow which is run by IU Environmental Resilience Institute. It is an experience to work with local governments, non-governmental organizations, and businesses to work on their climate and sustainability efforts. I have been part of its Resilience Cohort, which has eight local governments participating this year from Indiana. My fellowship was at the City of Columbus, home to beautiful architecture, and my focus has been on their climate resilience and vulnerability assessment. My job involved researching climate trends in the past, projections for the future, and community characteristics in Columbus and surrounding areas. Then identify and assess the city’s vulnerable communities, areas, infrastructure, and resources with local experts based on multiple criteria, who or what is at risk, the potential severity of the effect, and what capacity is in place to protect them.
I'd love to know how you came to IU and how you came to find the Center [of Excellence for Women & Tech] and join the Center.
I came to IU because I found an interdisciplinary curriculum. I remember that one of my mentors advised me that I should fall in love with the curriculum when choosing graduate studies. When I saw the Master of Public Affairs degree had a concentration in sustainability within the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and availability to take classes from other departments like the Kelley Business School, I came to IU. Also, Bloomington is a very calm and green city. It is a very small town compared to where I'm coming from, the urban Capital City of Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. It was quite different in the beginning. Now I'm getting used to its differences and find it lively and vibrant as most of the population is students at Indiana University. That’s how I ended up at IU.
About the Center, I was working in the technology field before starting graduate school, which is why I was following the Center information early on and started getting involved in crash courses and networking events as soon as I started school. As I was interested in exploring the intersection between technology and sustainability, and there were no specific organizations, I thought the Center should be the trailblazing place to launch it and shared my idea with Michelle, our director. She was very welcome to have a new alliance team, and that is how we started this journey to launch the team within the Center.
And I would love to know what your plans are for this year and this semester with your team.
My team at the Center has two new members right now, Tracy and Shreya. We are very excited to work on our ideas! Our main goal with this team, just like any other CEW&T team, is to build a learning space because I want to learn too, to explore how different technology and innovations are out there to help us use natural, social, and environmental resources more efficiently and equitably. Also, we are building partnerships, organizing skill-building workshops, and conversations with sustainability experts.
What advice do you have for students or women early in their careers?
I've seen students going to their masters too soon. Because now I'm in the master's program after six, seven years of being away from school and I realize pursuing a degree full-time is a big investment of time and resources. I think having work experience to really find out what area we would want to pursue and giving ourselves time is important to see hands-on experiences with different fields that we’re interested in, changing, and trying different things. Because a few years ago, I thought I wanted to do my master’s in a totally different area, and I wasn’t accepted to that program. I’m kind of glad that didn't work out at that time.
Another point that I always try to embed in my life is giving a try to different things that interest us. Before taking this path of sustainability and doing my master's degree, I thought of becoming a software engineer—liking the idea of earning a good salary and working in innovative big tech firms after talking with my friend who has been working in tech. Then I started my trial process by meeting different professors at multiple schools and going to a coding class. However, I figured that was not really for me at that moment.
Lastly, I think it's okay not to be okay. There are times that I would feel like “Oh, I'm not doing good enough”, and ‘I'm not in the right field.” I feel this especially now, as I'm pivoting my career and not coming from an environmental science background. There are many other women like me who want to change their careers into other fields such as technology or sustainability and might be having the feeling of being behind others. However, it just takes time for us because I believe that not everyone is starting from the same starting line. Some people might have their background in a totally different field, coming from a developing country, growing up as a non-English speaker, it could be anything. That’s why how we learn is different. I think acknowledging that and being a little easy on ourselves is needed. Also having those good friends and family to tell you, “I'm proud of you.” Those things mean a lot.