Jen Kleindienst ’09 became Wesleyan University’s first sustainability coordinator, and one of her favorite projects on the job has been "The Wishing Well," a student-designed water wagon that can roll into an outdoor event.
When Wesleyan decided to stop using bottled water, Kleindienst’s office cosponsored a competition for students to devise a way to supply water at commencement. The winner was the water wagon, which hooks up to any outdoor faucet and filters, cools and dispenses water. That’s just the kind of innovation a sustainability coordinator wants to see.
Kleindienst, who majored in public policy and minored in environmental studies at Hamilton, says she left equipped to succeed in grad school and land the type of job she’d been shooting for since she was a rising junior.
“I feel like unofficially my degree was in environmental policy based on the courses that I took, and I think it gave me a nice, well-rounded approach to looking at sustainability,” she says.
After Hamilton, she earned a graduate degree in environmental studies at Antioch University New England.
