Students in IU’s Integrated Program in the Environment (IPE) don’t just study the environment—they change it for the better. In 2024, seven of the students who served the state through the selective McKinney Climate Fellows (MCF) program are pursuing joint-degrees administered by IPE. The Environmental Resilience Institute’s (ERI) selective MCF program gives Hoosier students environmental and sustainability experience, expands their networks, and deepens their roots in Indiana.
The program places students in paid internships with local governments, businesses, and nonprofit organizations, trains them in GIS and other skills, and tasks them with solving meaningful, real-world resilience problems.
Applications for the 2025 McKinney Climate Fellows program are open until Nov. 1. Undergraduate and graduate students from any major are eligible to apply.
IPE students Braya Benjamin, a sophomore studying environmental science, and Mary Grace Jacko, a senior studying environmental and sustainability studies, were part of the 2024 MCF cohort.
Benjamin, a former Sustainability Scholar, knew instantly when she heard about the program she’d want to participate.
“It's like if you ask a math major if they prefer pure math or applied math. I feel like that's me, but with the environment and the sciences. Sure, biology and chemistry are cool. But I like them applied,” she said.
Her pragmatic streak combined with her passion for educating others leant itself to the program.
As a McKinney Climate Fellow, Benjamin served the Indianapolis Public Library, which spans 25 locations and serves 280,000 Hoosiers.
While there, she created a greenhouse gas inventory, wrote a formal report, and presented the findings to the Library’s board. Her report looked in-depth at the sources of emissions associated with maintaining and operating the library system and its programs. The library will use it to reduce emissions and become more energy-efficient.
In Jacko’s time with McKinney Climate Fellows, she worked with the Indiana Resilience Funding Hub (IRFH), learning about the grant writing and application process.
Jacko's efforts helped small towns and organizations across the state discover and apply for grants, including one that led the Gentryville Police Department to receive an electric truck. Jacko also contributed to a proposal that secured a $117.5-million grant that will make solar more accessible to Indiana residents as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.
“At IRFH, the impact you make is right in front of you,” Jacko said. “We have communities that are thanking us for the work that we've done and they're telling other communities surrounding them.”
As a senior, it made the invisible parts of sustainability—namely, planning, finding funding, and securing funding—visible for the first time, Jacko said. Along with that, career possibilities opened.
“Before applying, I didn't understand that grant applications are a huge part of sustainability,” Jacko said. “It made me realize how important having the ability to apply for grants is… I feel like, post-graduation, I have a lot more opportunities than I would’ve had before the program.”
In addition to her broader understanding of how environmental action is taken in government, she learned how to work with federal documents, parsing and understanding them at a level that makes for successful proposals.
“Over the year, I grew tremendously professionally and personally,” Jacko said. “I know a lot more about Indiana sustainability than I ever had, and I've lived in Indiana my whole life and have always been interested in sustainability.”
The experience was the highlight as a student at IU, she said.
“It gave me a lot of hope for the sustainability, and the future of the environment, while also giving me the push that was like, ‘I'm in the right place. I'm doing the right thing, and this is exactly what I was supposed to be doing this whole time,’” she added.
Benjamin also encouraged students interested in the environment and sustainability to apply.
“Apply, because the most important thing is getting yourself in the space,” Benjamin said to interested students. “We need people like you, passionate individuals who care about the environment and who care about making a change.”
As the hub for all environmental and sustainability-related programming on IU's Bloomington campus, IPE connects students with the experiences and support they need to excel as the next generation of environmental leaders. To this end, IPE shares and supports opportunities like ERI’s MCF program through its outreach.
