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Caring for the Environment and Timber Communities

Meet political science major Abigail Durrant.

October 1, 2024

Hometown: Grants Pass, Oregon

Thesis adviser: Prof. Chris Koski [political science and environmental studies], who is the bomb.com.

Thesis: “Out of the Woods: Land Use Allocation and Timber Regulation Changes on Oregon and California Land”

What it’s about: I compare the land use allocations and timber regulations in the 1995 and 2016 resource management plans for the Bureau of Land Management in Western Oregon.

What it’s really about: How do we balance caring for the environment and caring for communities that have harvested timber for decades?

In high school: I was a competitive athlete with big hopes and an even bigger to-do list!

Influential Professor: Chris Koski’s assignments and lectures gave me permission to explore parts of environmental politics and policy studies I would not have normally.

Groups or clubs: I was the programming assistant for the Elections and Voting Information Center (EVIC), working on two surveys, a book, and many academic articles. I was also a barista at Paradox!

Cool stuff: I was the coach for a fifth grade girls basketball team, and helped out with a few clinics and camps for middle and high school players. I was also an intern for Senator Ron Wyden!

Concept that blew my mind: I took a class called Tolkien and Lewis with Prof. Michael Faletra [English and humanities] where we read The Lord of the Rings. Michael taught me how to have personal feelings about a subject while studying it objectively.

Influential book: Charles Perrow’s Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies. I read it in Global Catastrophic Risks, a course taught by Prof. Alexander Montgomery [political science] that looked at ways civilization can end. I cited Perrow in almost every paper I wrote after this class.

Help received along the way: I wouldn’t be at Reed without financial aid. Financial aid shows that Reed is willing to invest in you, and that you should invest in yourself.

Awards, fellowships, grants: I received the Career Advancement Fund (CAF) and the Alta S. Corbett research fellowship.

Special projects: I represented Reed at the Student Conference on U.S. Affairs at West Point.

What’s next: I will be attending Vermont Law School in the fall, where I intend to study environmental law.

Tags: Academics, Students, Thesis, What is a Reedie?