Alumni Profiles

Tricia Mynster

Flexible Program
In UNLV’s School of Environmental and Public Affairs, Tricia Mynster found an environmental studies master’s degree program flexible enough to blend environmental policy studies with the social sciences. She had already worked for the U.S. Forest Service and for the NASA Globe Program; she already had access to national research groups, scientists, and teachers. She wanted to learn more about environmental communications and find out how educators are helping people understand that environmental issues are relevant to their lives.

Practical Experience
After earning her undergraduate degree in earth systems science and policy from California State University Monterey Bay, she worked as a liaison between scientists and teachers in the NASA Globe Program. She then worked as an interpretive ranger at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation area before returning to higher education. Mynster has been teaching undergraduate environmental studies courses part-time at UNLV for the past eight years. She earned her MS degree in environmental science at UNLV in December 2005, and worked as an organizer for a clean energy campaign with the Sierra Club as well as an education program coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service before deciding to pursue her Ph.D., also in environmental science at UNLV.

Current Project
Currently, Mynster is a graduate teaching assistant with funding from a National Science Foundation grant on climate adaptation, mitigation, and e-learning. The project permits integration of her three key research interest areas: environmental studies, communications, and education. The project also allows her to use data sets and satellite images to map trends as she helps develop a wiki web site targeted toward undergraduate professors and other educators who teach climate change.

What’s on the horizon at the completion of her program? Mynster says she’s set her sights on teaching at a higher education institution as well as possibly consulting with other groups that allow the public to learn from different perspectives and vantage points.