Davida Marti Schiff, Recent Graduate
Date: June 29, 2006

Davida Schiff’s interest in environmental sustainability goes back to her high school years. It’s what prompted Schiff, SEAS ’06, to choose SEAS’ Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering – a “good fit,” as she put it. And it was the impetus for her involvement in a variety of campus environmental efforts.

Now, new diploma in hand, Schiff has headed to Boston. On June 6, she’ll start work there as a research assistant at The Health Effects Institute, which studies the effects of air pollution from transportation sources. The institute is funded equally by the automotive industry and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Davida Schiff For three of her years at Columbia, Schiff was a member of Students for Environmental and Economic Justice. The Columbia and Barnard student group is concerned with the relationship between ecological and workplace well-being and each institution’s policies and practices. During this time, Schiff was most active in the recycled paper effort – by her account, “a long, somewhat frustrating one.”

This spring the efforts paid off, with Columbia’s endorsement of the use of 30 percent recycled paper, purchased at the same price as the virgin paper in use. The group’s ultimate goal – 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper – has been partially accomplished. That paper is now available, though at a premium price.

Schiff was a member of Columbia’s Green Umbrella for six months prior to her graduation. There she joined administrators, faculty staff and other students concerned with the design and implementation of environmental initiatives in the Columbia community. She describes this experience that brought a variety of voices and groups together as a “more central voice, one that’s trying to prove there really is student interest and concern.”

As she looks back on environmental stewardship at Columbia, Schiff says “it’s hard to mobilize around environmental issues.” She cites the chasm between agreement on issues and day-to-day practice: “No students refused to sign the petition for the 30 percent recycled paper. All agreed with it. But getting individuals to turn off lights, etc., is difficult. Columbia needs to provide incentives, and has the resources to do that.”

Schiff points out that “lots of top-of-the-line, important research trying to tackle issues of environmental sustainability” is going on at Columbia, especially at The Earth Institute and SEAS. She’s adamant that it “needs to be integrated into Columbia’s actual administration and policy as well.”

Asked about the biggest change in Columbia’s environmental sustainability effort in the past four years, Schiff says that “in the last semester, students, faculty and administration have begun to sit down at the table and talk to each other.” Her hope is that the talking continues “in a valuable way.”

Down the road, Schiff hopes to go to medical school. Her hoped-for specialization: environmental and public health and medicine.