Thirst for water knowledge brings American PhD candidate from ‘across the pond’ to Waterloo’s renowned Water Insitute
Isabel Jorgensen: PhD candidate, School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability - Collaborative Water Program, Water Institute
Living in California through a ten-year drought made the topic of water compelling and personal for Isabel Jorgensen, and she explored this interest while completing her undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies at Trinity College in Dublin.
Ireland is home to many important discipline-shaping hydrologists and academics, including one of Isabel’s professors, Mary Bourke, a fluvial geomorphologist whose research has contributed to solutions for finding water on Mars. This application of hydrological research inspired Isabel, igniting both a passion for research and its practical application.
A research gateway project
While working on her undergraduate degree in Dublin, Isabel began researching the Salton Sea in Southern California – a salty inland lake. For the past two decades, the Salton Sea has been shrinking due to water transfers to urban areas. Beyond the concerns this presents around water supply is the toxic dust from the exposed lakebed that is kicked up by desert winds, worsening already poor air quality.
Using her strengths in environmental science and chemistry, she learned a lot about what was happening to the Salton Sea, “but not a lot about how to stop it or the systemic drivers of what's happening.” These unanswered questions lead Isabel to the work of Dustin Garrick at Oxford University.
From there Isabel began a remote research opportunity with Professor Garrick, where she developed her research skills while being mentored during her undergraduate degree. This further cemented her vocation as a researcher and ultimately led to admission to the Master in Water Science Policy and Management at Oxford, where she would continue to work with Garrick. “I went from water being the entry point to the centre point. Now I was studying everything around water.”
Upon completing the one-year master’s program at Oxford, Isabel took a gap year to work as a consultant for the World Bank where she applied her research skills and gained professional work experience on a global scale.
From world water to Waterloo
With fresh consulting experience from outside academia and a breadth-expanding master's degree from Oxford, Isabel felt compelled to continue the research she had started. Garrick had recently been appointed University of Waterloo Research Chair in Water and Development Policy in the School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environment, Director of the Collaborative Water Program, and a member of the Water Institute at the University of Waterloo, so following him to Waterloo to begin her PhD in the Collaborate Water Program made perfect sense.
I went from water being the entry point to the centre point. Now I was studying everything around water.
Maximizing program and campus opportunities
Along with her research experiences, Isabel earned a Certificate in University Teaching through the Centre for Teaching Excellence at no additional cost, an opportunity offered to all PhD students at Waterloo. This was something she hadn’t encountered at other universities. “Waterloo has provided an excellent range of research and teaching experiences which are supplemented by an abundance of certificate programs that are uncommon in the US or elsewhere in Canada”, she shared. Also unique was the chance to not only be a Teaching Assistant, but to be a co-instructor at the graduate level, which enabled her to gain practical experience in the classroom.
Isabel received support from resources at the Writing and Communication Centre and the Faculty of Math’s statistics consultative support where researchers from across faculties can get help from statisticians in the faculty. She was also involved in the Society of the Water Institute Graduate Students (SWIGS) as a board member and vice-chair.
Isabel is also a P.E.O. Scholar, supported by The P.E.O. Scholar Awards (PSA) - one of the few substantial merit-based awards for women of both the U.S. and Canada who are pursuing a doctoral-level degree.
Authentic interdisciplinarity
Water, like many research domains, is fundamentally interdisciplinary. Continuing her research in a truly interdisciplinary environment at Waterloo was a priority for both her and Garrick to avoid the disciplinary siloing that can be common when students pursue their PhDs.
What I like about SERS (the Faculty of Environment’s School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability) is that they don’t try to emphasize disciplinary alignment; they emphasize some level of disciplinary breadth. And then you still have expertise in certain things, but you approach a problem from multiple angles. It was always an approach that I'd been taking, so it was exciting.
Isabel’s experience of SERS reflects a very international department with students from a broad range of disciplines. The learning and research environment is supportive of developing breadth and depth of knowledge – an invaluable opportunity for those who want to build a distinctive research program as they develop their academic skills.
A future full of options
A postdoc appointment? Teaching? Corporate positions? There are many options for Isabel as she looks to her future. “I've now worked with all sorts of different groups, from land policy institutes to nonprofits, and that's been awesome because I've seen all these different options for me.”