A Guide to Green Mountain College’s
4 Premier Online Graduate Programs

Kathleen “Kat” McCarthy grew up in upstate New York and developed an early sensibility to the notion of sustainability, before the word became part of the lexicon.

“Like a lot of families, we approached it from an economic standpoint — it just made sense to conserve fuel by turning the thermostat down a notch. So the idea of conservation as part of the triple bottom line — people, profit, planet—has has always been in the background for me.”

Growing up, Kat was interested in taking small actions to improve the environment. She attended Ithaca College, earning a degree in environmental studies and working for Mark Darling, one of the first campus sustainability officers in the country.

While Kat knew she wanted an advanced degree to advance her career, she didn’t want to leave a great job to attend a traditional residential program. Then she found out about Green Mountain College’s MBA program.

“I was specifically looking for a program that connected my experience in sustainability with a stronger business mindset—our organization really focuses on the triple bottom line, although I hadn’t directly thought of it that way.”

Kat also valued the flexibility of the green MBA. It allowed her to continue her studies on her own time and gave her the background to teach or pursue a leadership position in any organization.

“The degree has given me a lot of tools, and a lot of possible directions for the future,” Kat says.

Food has always played an important role in Lisa Trocchia-Balkits’ life, beyond the purely nutritional necessity. Growing up in an Italian-American family in rural southeastern Ohio, meals were a source of cultural connection and shared experience.

Over the years, Lisa’s view of food and the role it plays in society was shaped by her experience as a mother, a baker and a chef, a market gardener, and her work with community-based, non-profit organizations. She has lived for the last eighteen years in Athens, Ohio, which is often referred to as the “local food capital of the U.S.”

She began to look for a graduate studies program that reflected her own mindset — one that valued systems and network thinking — and discovered a description of the MSFS degree online.

“I was attracted to the fact that the program is interdisciplinary and systems-based in its approach. There wasn’t really anything else out there that spoke to me.”

She also embraced the online curriculum, which allowed her to stay in her off-grid home in the Appalachian foothills.

“GMC understood that those involved in food systems work were likely to be ‘place-based’ and that really resonated with me. I spent years cultivating trusting relationships in my local food community here. I just wasn’t enamored of the idea of moving to a large urban area like New York or Boston to study about local food systems when I was embedded within a vibrant one already.”

Lisa found the online environment an excellent way to learn about the food systems and networks represented by her cohorts, who were located throughout North America. She utilizes these perspectives in her current work doing curriculum development and teaching as an adjunct faculty member for GMC’s graduate programs.

As she worked towards her master of science in resilient and sustainable communities at GMC, Erin Willett likens her education to box of crayons.

“The program has really sharpened a lot of my skills, and added a whole lot of new colors and tools that enable me to accomplish my goal of changing the world. I feel empowered by this program.”

Erin is an international sustainability consultant based near Geneva, Switzerland. She works with businesses and communities to find local, sustainable solutions to their energy and agricultural problems, while making them more resilient and adaptive to change.

She grew up in Boston and earned dual political science and anthropology degrees. After a stint in the pharmaceutical industry she founded “Smaht Fahm” in Boston, and then moved operations to Ohio, an enterprise that became a nine-year experiment in sustainable agriculture.

The more she learned about farming, the more firmly committed she became to raising local, sustainable food. It was a deep dive: she raised chickens for eggs and meat, raised honeybees to make chemical-free wildflower honey, and learned how to make her own bread, cheese, yogurt and butter. She raised alpacas for homemade fiber and learned to process the fiber herself—carding, dyeing, spinning and plying yarn. Friends and neighbors sought her out to learn about her methods and she began teaching informal sustainability courses. She discovered she was a natural educator. She also found herself on a “sustainability slope” that she couldn’t get off.

“I never meant it to go this far but I’ve never been this fulfilled,” she said. “I started out in the MSFS program at GMC — then I became intrigued by the leadership emphasis in the new MRSC program.” Her capstone project on thorium energy ties in neatly with some of her current energy consulting work.

Shannon Westlake is a self-described “tree hugger” going back to her childhood growing up in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State.

Today she’s interested in the connections between habitat management, species preservation and healthy food. After graduating from Green Mountain College’s Master of Science in Environmental Studies (MSES) program, she plans to pursue a doctoral fellowship at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Miss.

When she began her search for graduate programs in biology and environmental studies, she read about the MSES program and realized she could continue her education online without giving up her job.

“The favorite thing for me about the GMC program is the bioregional approach. I did my thesis work in the area where I grew up, but the project gave me a whole new understanding of the place I’d called home for 26 years.”

Shannon explains that much of the food we eat — about one-third of our food plants — depend on bees, butterflies, bats and other pollinators. “Having a healthy ecosystem means fostering plants that support local pollinators. For instance, monarch butterfly larva feed on milkweed plants exclusively, so we planted milkweed to encourage this pollinator species.”

Shannon operated as a sort of interdisciplinary cross-pollinator herself, helping children and local citizens understand the connection between vibrant habitat, species protection and nutrition.

“I don’t have a green thumb so all of this was a learning experience for me. But I fell in love with the idea of connecting humans to nature and conservation.”