When Garrett McGraw came to Wake Forest, she brought with her an aspiration that many students who are passionate about science, specifically biology, are familiar with: medicine.
“In high school I always really liked biology,” McGraw said, “so I came to Wake [Forest] initially thinking I’d be pre-med because I feel like that’s the default if you’re good at biology.”
Over time, however, McGraw realized that medicine wasn’t for her and began seeking other avenues that would allow her to continue taking biology courses. She landed quickly on environmental science after overhearing friends discuss the program.
“I looked into the requirements and I was like, ‘This is cool,’” McGraw recalled. “[The environmental science major] is a combination of science, which I like, but also more humanities and liberal arts type classes.”
A passion for biological science wasn’t McGraw’s only motivation for studying environmental science, though. As a child, she bonded with her dad over their shared passion for the outdoors. In retrospect, she believes those memories played a key role in her interest in the subject.
While science was McGraw’s gateway into the major, social science and humanities subjects have piqued her interest at Wake Forest, particularly in courses she’s taken with Dedee DeLongpré Johnston, the founding member of Wake Forest’s Office of Sustainability.
In Johnston’s Leadership for Sustainability class, students were tasked with identifying a sustainability-related issue on campus and researching the background and causes of it.
“[Leadership for Sustainability] provided me with a lot of real-world experience and skills that I can take into a career,” McGraw said.
McGraw views Johnston’s Organizational Sustainability course in a similarly practical light.
“[Organizational Sustainability] is the class that provided me with by far the most practical skills because I feel like I learned a lot about [Environmental and Sustainable Governance (ESG)] and how sustainability works in the corporate world,” she said.
Johnston spoke highly of McGraw’s academic drive and leadership skills.
“Garrett is a great student and an equally great person,” she said. “The world is a better place when inquisitive and compassionate people like Garrett are leading the way.”
Inquisitive is an excellent word to describe McGraw who, in addition to an environmental science major, will also graduate with minors in chemistry and psychology. Although some people see her various academic interests as “random,” McGraw believes that the threads connecting the subjects, particularly psychology and environmental science, are obvious.
“I think psychology especially is pretty relevant [to environmental science],” McGraw said. “[Within] a lot of climate-related issues, psychology is important [to] figuring out how to change people’s minds and get them to understand what’s happening with our planet.”
Moving forward, McGraw anticipates that the skills she’s learned in her academic courses at Wake Forest will benefit her in her future career, which she hopes will be in corporate sustainability or ESG.
McGraw is open to a wide range of possibilities, both from a location perspective and subject-wise. With experience in both the sustainability and science aspects of a broadly expanding field, she’s looking into both.
Wherever she ends up, McGraw knows that Wake Forest is not the end of her education on environmental issues.
“I think the field [of environmental science] is rapidly changing and rapidly growing,” McGraw said, “so there are a lot of things left [for me] to learn.”
