Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation

Fellowship Year: 2004

Academic Background: Clark University - Ph.D. 2010- (Human-environment geography)

Susannah McCandless recently received her doctorate in human-environment geography at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her dissertation research investigated whether and how conservation land trusts in Vermont provide area residents with equitable access to conserved lands, as community land trusts have done for lower-income urban dwellers. She combined analysis of interviews, surveys, and satellite data to examine how trust activity, and landowners' and farmworkers' decisions have maintained the Vermont working landscape. Susannah's background is in conservation: she graduated with highest honors from Swarthmore College, where she studied plant ecology and biodiversity conservation, with minors in Latin American and Caribbean Francophone studies. After college, she pursued a Fulbright fellowship near Monteverde, Costa Rica, looking at biological and social aspects of sustainable development in the buffer zone of conserved lands. While working closely with several area NGOs, she became interested in the potential of private lands to contribute to both biodiversity and livelihood maintenance. Susannah has worked for and with a variety of non-profits, including Vermont Family Forests, the International Society of Ethnobiology, the Worcester Roots Project, and Quaker Earthcare Witness of the Americas (QEW). For 5 years she chaired the QEW subcommittee that works with their project partners at her Costa Rican research site, and has returned to the Monteverde area to continue to support community development work there. While studying at Clark and living in Worcester, Susannah co-founded a grassroots residential brownfield phytoremediation and environmental toxics education effort. The Worcester Roots Project is entering its 9th successful growing season in the lead-infested soils of several neighborhood sites, and supports a dynamic youth cooperative, the Toxic Soilbusters, which engages in education, outreach, and remediation. Susannah has also designed curriculum, taught and mentored in settings ranging from the college classroom to the inaugural year of a Worcester summer urban youth environmental education and social change program. She presently resides in Vermont.

Expertise: Land / Open Space / Smart Growth, Environmental Justice, Sustainable Ag / Food Policy