Glasgow senior Caroline Stallman was chosen to attend the Next Gen Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah this coming fall. The conference will focus on environmental service and natural resources. Throughout the conference, Stallman will explore career opportunities related to that field. 

The conference allows students to explore a specific pathway through informational sessions, panels and tours. Participants will experience new and emerging ideas, trends, and products; cutting-edge technology; sustainability; and more. The application process is open to high school sophomores, juniors and seniors through a competitive application process where students write essays and answer several questions about themselves. 

Stallman submitted five essays ranging from why she wanted to attend the conference to what issues, trends, or topics in environmental services and natural resources systems she is interested in learning more about. The following are short excerpts from the before mentioned essay topics Caroline was asked to submit.

“I would like to attend the Next Gen Conference to learn more about environmental science which I am passionate about,” Stallman wrote in one essay. “Since learning about climate change my freshman year of high school, I have become fascinated with this topic. I plan to major in Environmental Science in college and conduct research on the effects of pollution on our planet in order to work with others to mitigate climate change. This conference is an opportunity to learn more about this topic and to network with others who share my passion about the environment.”

In another, she wrote that she is interested in learning more about the effects of human pollution. “Although fossil fuel usage is critical to the structure of society, it has been causing many problems in the environment such as climate change. The effects of climate change include global warming, ocean acidification, melting glaciers, and many more. These problems will only get worse if we continue on our current path of fossil fuel usage, so we must come up with alternative sources of energy. We will also need to find more ways to reduce the amounts of greenhouse gasses already in the atmosphere. One solution may be to manage forests to maximize carbon sequestration. Humans also pollute a lot of plastic, especially in the ocean. This can severely harm many animals. Recently, scientists have discovered that plastic can get broken down like rocks into sand. These microplastics can cause many problems which we are just starting to learn about. I would like to learn more about the effects of microplastics on the global level. I want to know if they affect or will affect the water cycle, as well as if they will cause large scale health problems in animal species, including humans. I want to learn more about these problems because I care about our planet. We only have one planet to live on; we are responsible for taking care of it which we are currently failing at doing. I want to learn how we can change this and heal our planet, so that life will have a long future here.”