Bloustein School Ph.D. candidate Ellen Oettinger White is the recipient of The Caroline Thorn Kissel Summer Environmental Studies Scholarship from The Garden Club of America. The Caroline Thorn Kissel Summer Environmental Studies Scholarship promotes environmental studies by students who are residents of New Jersey or nonresidents studying in New Jersey or its surrounding waters. Ellen’s dissertation, ” The Ecological Impacts of Federal Roadside Design Guidelines: Two State Interpretations,” focuses on roadside vegetation management practices and their ecological effects.
The Garden Club of America offers 29 merit-based scholarships and fellowships annually in 12 areas related to conservation, ecology, horticulture, and pollinator research.
Also a Coastal Climate Risk and Resiliency Fellow at Rutgers, Ellen is a transportation researcher, urban designer, certified city planner, and GIS analyst with an interest in the environmental effects of transportation infrastructure. Her work combines macro-scale analyses of landscape history, ecology, transportation policy, and design, measuring the effects of these forces through the lens of climate resiliency. Prior to pursuing her PhD, she worked as an urban designer and transportation planner, helping communities design better transit systems and streets. She also holds master’s degrees in urban planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and in landscape architecture from Rutgers.