Canton native Casey Garland to work in Panama's environmental agency

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Cornell Engineering graduate student Casey Garland will work at Panama's environmental agency this summer.

ITHACA, NY (06/30/2011)(readMedia)-- Casey Ann Garland, a Canton native studying for a Master of Science degree in biological and environmental engineering at Cornell University, has received an Environmental Policy Graduate Fellowship from the Council of Women World Leaders.

The program places students in United Nations agencies and in ministries of the environment in both developed and developing countries. Fellows actively participate in projects that deal with today's most pressing environmental challenges, such as climate change, sustainability and conservation.

Garland will be posted this summer at La Autoridad Nacional del Ambiente in Panama, where she and an advisor will determine how she can best assist the agency. One issue she may tackle is land use change. "People are converting a lot of the forestland into agricultural land and so they're getting a lot of runoff and it's filling up the Panama Canal," Garland said.

Casey, the daughter of Sandra Garland of Canton, attended Pisgah High School. She graduated magna cum laude from North Carolina State University in May 2010 with a Bachelor of Science in biological engineering with an environmental concentration. For her capstone design project, she worked with a team designing a system to monitor groundwater contaminants. While at N.C. State she also worked in research and extension with local farmers, was involved with the International Student Program and participated in cultural programs in India and Turkey. In high school, she worked for the Great Smokey Mountains National Park doing biodiversity research.

After her fellowship, Garland plans to conduct research on bacterial and chemical contaminants in rural water supplies in the Ethiopian Highlands with Cornell biological and environmental engineering professor Tammo Steenhuis.

The Council of Women World Leaders is a network of current and former women prime ministers and presidents established in 1996 by Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, president of Iceland (1980-1996) and first woman in the world to be democratically elected president, and Goldman Sachs senior advisor Laura Liswood, secretary general of the council. The council's mission is to mobilize the highest-level women leaders globally for collective action on issues of critical importance to women. Through its networks, summits and partnerships, the council promotes good governance and gender equality, and enhances the experience of democracy globally by increasing the number, effectiveness, and visibility of women who lead their countries. The council is a policy program of the Aspen Institute.