October 2024 Student Spotlight

In this month’s student spotlight, Master of International Affairs candidate Nico Antonucci talks about his summer abroad in Amsterdam, his interest in environmental justice, and more.

Can you tell us about your summer abroad in Amsterdam?
Before I even enrolled at Baruch College I knew that I wanted to do a study abroad program in Amsterdam. I’ve always had a love for the city and a desire to be there for an extended period of time. Luckily for me, Baruch’s office of Global Initiatives [at the Marxe School] had a connection with the University of Amsterdam (UVA) and the UVA was offering a course pertaining to my focus in school, environmental policy. The class I took was on the concept of a circular economy, which essentially is a way of promoting sustainability by eliminating waste streams. Instead of creating products that are intended to be thrown away after use, society and the products are designed in a way where the materials can be cultivated and recycled for reuse. The entire program was fantastic and I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. My class was a large interdisciplinary collection of people from all over the world. Getting to meet and learn from them was just as valuable as the class itself. Over the three weeks of the program I learned about the circular initiative that the EU, and especially the Netherlands, are promoting, and for our final project we got to present our own ideas of how to make Amsterdam a more circular city to the actual municipality of Amsterdam, which was a really cool experience. Overall, the program was everything I had hoped it would be and I recommend it to any student thinking they want to study abroad.

How have you cultivated your passion for environmental justice over the years?
At an early age my family instilled in me a love and appreciation for the environment. I was taught to always respect and care for it by being conscientious of the impact I was having. This appreciation stayed with me throughout my life, but as an undergraduate, when I began learning about climate change and the effect it is having and will continue to have on our planet is where I really began seeing environmental justice as a career path. Having only minored in climate studies as an undergrad I knew I needed to get a masters degree if I wanted to have an actual impact. That is what brought me to Baruch, a known policy school in the city. Over the past year and a half I have expanded my understating of environmental policy and climate change both in the classroom and out. I have found opportunities to work with professors on research projects pertaining to environmental justice, I have gained access to conventions, panels, and discussions where I’ve gotten to hear and learn from esteemed professionals. And last semester, with the help of three other classmates, we were able to establish a climate and sustainability club for all graduate students at the Marxe School to come together, discuss developments in climate change, as well as opportunities for students to get involved in projects and initiatives across the city.

Congratulations on your internship at the U.S. Economic Development Administration at the Department of Commerce. What will you be doing there?
My internship this fall is through the Washington Semester program that the Marxe School offers every fall. I know that l will be developing my memo-writing, I am sure that I will be doing a lot of note-taking and other administrative work that they assign to me, but the specifics of those tasks I am unclear of. The EDA does a lot of work with climate change, which is what attracted me to the opportunity in the first place. The business of the EDA is to inject funding into communities, to prop up their economies, so when a natural disaster destroys a town and they need rebuilding, I am sure that we will be the agency providing them with the necessary funds to rebuild. A big initiative the EDA is currently working on is called the Re-compete Pilot Program. The intention of the program is to assist communities that once relied on industries that no longer fit in our transitioning economy, like an old coal mining town. By injecting money, jobs training and a new job market in these towns they can reestablish a viable economy and way of life. Projects like these are what I believe I will be working on during my time in D.C.

What has your experience in the special concentration in environmental policy in the MIA program been like thus far?
My experience in this specific special concentration has been mixed. While I believe Baruch is making steps to better establish themselves as a climate focused school, I do not think they are there yet. I have had some difficulty finding classes that fit my focus. Either they were dropped due to low student enrollment, they were not being offered in the semester I was looking to take them, or they conflicted with days I was taking a required core class. As Baruch expands its faculty that focus on this field, these issues should alleviate themselves however, for the time being there is still a gap. I also do wish that there was less of a focus on the required core and more credits were given to classes that fit into my concentration. That being said, the classes I have gotten to take in my special concentration and the professors that teach them have been fantastic. Extremely informative and practically significant and I do believe they have filled me with the necessary information and positioned me to make a real impact once I graduate. So for that reason I firmly believe that once I look back on this program I will have no regrets and nothing but positive feels toward it.