Helen C Schlimm
About Me
Photo by Carl Socolow
Hello! My name is Helen Schlimm and I am from Ellicott City, MD. I hold a B.S. in Environmental Science from Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. I am interested in aquatic ecology, water quality, citizen science, science communication, climate change research, and natural resource conservation. As a Maryland native, the Chesapeake Bay played a crucial role in defining my passion for and desire to protect and improve our precious and essential aquatic resources - from local water quality to global climate change.
I aim to combine my interests in Bay preservation with community engagement at the intersection of science and policy. My background in water quality monitoring, experience with volunteers, and desire to study and communicate the impacts of climate change on freshwater resources motivate me to help find ways to enact positive and enduring environmental and social change.
More About Me
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I graduated from Dickinson in May 2017 as an Environmental Science Major with Honors and a Minor in German. My professional interests include analyzing water quality and communities distressed by energy development, industry, agriculture, and above all, how these effects are compounded by climate change. I am driven to explore how such effects will ripple back onto our precious natural resources, notably our essential freshwater supplies. I want to help ensure that our aquatic systems our preserved and maintained to a high standard, particularly in my home Chesapeake Bay and its watershed.
I was also very involved with community service in the Carlisle area and worked as a Watershed and Lab Coordinator at the Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring (ALLARM) for almost three years. My senior year, I was selected to be a Baird Sustainability Fellow and engaged in a comprehensive, discussion-oriented colloquium about the broader meanings of sustainability through my whole undergraduate experience.
I have been lucky to live abroad and travel extensively in my life, including during my time at Dickinson College. I lived in Cheltenham, England, when I was very young and in Wellington, New Zealand, during my middle school years. Most recently, I studied abroad my junior year in Bremen, Germany and travelled to thirteen other countries in Europe. My community service experience introduced me to local sustainable commitment, but my fascinating year abroad in Bremen provided me with a firsthand experience of how sustainability seemingly applies to an entire nation. In general, I found Germany to be well ahead of the curve in matters like renewable energy, efficient and accessible public transportation, general acceptance of anthropogenic climate change, and endorsement of local and organic farming.
I also conducted field research and data collection in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, in Summer 2015 to develop my senior independent research project, Long-Term Records of Climate-Induced Changes in the Zooplankton of West Greenland Lakes. I then presented my work at the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography's (ASLO) Aquatic Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, HI in Spring 2017. I am excited for whatever opportunity comes next and lets me explore more of the world.
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