Director of the Environmental Innovations Initiative Katie Unger Baillie (MES ’22) started her career at Penn as a science writer for University Communications. Her curiosity about the environment and sustainability led her to enroll in the Master of Environmental Studies (MES) program. Not only did the program deepen her scientific knowledge and inform her work as a writer, it also engaged her lifelong interest in nature. By graduation, she was ready to redirect her professional path and work fully in the sustainability space.
With an undergraduate degree in biology, a master’s in science writing, and a resume full of experience as a science writer, Katie was in the middle of a successful career before returning to school part time. “At the beginning, it wasn’t designed to be a stepping stone for a career change,” she admits. (In fact, she shares that she had already pivoted once early in her career, leaving lab research behind to instead communicate science to a broad audience.) “The MES was just this amazing opportunity to get back into the study of nature and the environment, which I’d always been interested in.”
Photo by John Donges
As she designed her curriculum, Katie took as many field courses as she could, such as Creating Gateways to the Land with Smarter Conservation and Wetlands. “That got me out in nature, which I loved.” From birds to botany to waterways, her MES course offered hands-on engagement with the natural world in a unique and powerful way. She and her classmates had the chance to hike in local preserves, kayak on the Batsto River, and observe the ecology of Cape May. During one field trip to a bird banding station, she remembers, “I got to hold a saw-whet owl in my hand. That was a really special moment.”
Her coursework introduced a new side to environmental work, too. “I also took some really interesting courses on environmental justice and the water industry, just following my curiosity,” she says. These classes offered a deeper dive into policy, administration, community engagement, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. An urban water policies course taught by Howard Neukrug, founding director of Penn’s Water Center, brought students to Washington, DC, to visit the EPA, the IMF, and other organizations. “We got to talk to staffers about: What does global water policy look like? How are you funding it? What are the challenges?” Katie shares.
While fulfilling her personal interests, the MES program met and exceeded her professional goals, providing Katie with a unique window into the environmental work going on at Penn. “The program definitely informed my job at the time, which was about communicating Penn’s research and teaching.”
Of the hundreds of articles Katie has written for Penn Today, a number of them came directly from her MES experience. She wrote one story about Penn’s landscape planner and fellow MES student, Chloe Cerwinka, on Penn’s ecological campus landscaping, for example, and another about one of her professors, soil expert Alain Plante, PhD, on his sustainability course in Iceland.
Katie’s MES education and the network she built across campus also prepared her for an unexpected career shift. During her final MES course in spring 2022, Leading Change for Sustainability, the class was charged with developing one‑, five‑, and 10‑year plans for their personal and professional lives as change leaders. The assignment had a galvanizing effect. “That was the culmination for me,” Katie recalls, “realizing this is actually where I want to be working—in the sustainability space.”
With her Penn master’s degree completed, Katie began to search for a new career opportunity supporting environmental efforts. One job that caught her eye was a position right on campus—associate director of the Environmental Innovations Initiative. She started in May 2023, focusing on communication efforts, and was promoted to director the following year. “Now I'm much more on the administrative side, running the program alongside our faculty director, Kathy Morrison,” she says.
The Initiative, which was launched in 2020, connects people, research, programming, and resources across campus to amplify Penn’s work around environmental challenges and solutions. While supporting unique programming, the Initiative also uses its channels to act as a communications clearinghouse for all of Penn’s efforts related to climate and the environment, from events to funding resources to educational and employment opportunities. “A lot of my work now is about building relationships between faculty and students in the complex landscape that is Penn,” she says.
One program at the Initiative called Integrating Sustainably Across the Curriculum (ISAC) pairs faculty and instructors who want to build a sustainability component into a course with student research assistants to help expand the curriculum over a summer.
The Initiative also offers pilot support to research communities—interdisciplinary campus teams that work to develop coordinated and impactful solutions to complex environmental challenges. Each research community must integrate multiple disciplines, meaningfully engage students, and produce an outcome that is public facing.
Both students and faculty can apply for funding through the Initiative for the PPA Renewable Energy Research Program, which aligns with Penn’s commitment to be carbon neutral by 2042. “The energy company AES provides funds for student-led projects to support research and workforce development related to renewable energy,” Katie explains. She recently wrote a Penn Today article on MES alum Hannah Winn’s project funded through the program.
Some of the Initiative's most prominent events include the Climate 101 series, bite-sized lectures on climate topics by Penn experts, and the annual campus-wide Climate Week, which will be in its sixth year in October 2025.
While Katie’s work engages the entire Penn community, she still stays connected to the MES program. “There are a few ways that our program supports the MES students,” she says. At the beginning of the academic year, Katie spoke to incoming MES students at orientation, sharing some of the vast environmental resources they can access at Penn. And, since taking a role at the Initiative, Katie has worked with MES cohorts through the required MES Proseminar course. For the course’s semester-long group project, Katie enlisted students to research how the university might conserve and improve biodiversity across campus. The work includes a biodiversity inventory, noting strengths and gaps, as well as goal setting around biodiversity, identifying and preparing for potential challenges.
“We also have several MES students on our student advisory committee,” Katie says. Committee members help with the Initiative’s programming and events and act as campus ambassadors while gaining experience and exposure to sustainability leaders.
As Katie’s career addressing pressing sustainability challenges continues, she is thankful for the rewarding experience and lasting impact of earning her MES degree. “The understanding that I got from my MES classes about the complexity of creating solutions to environmental challenges is present in my day-to-day now,” she says. “The message really got hammered home that you need expertise from STEM fields, health professions, the humanities, and community partners to solve problems, and that is very much part of what I do here.”
