From the Tropics to the Pennsylvania Shale

Picture of Ruby Stanmyer
When screening potential colleges, Ruby Stanmyer ’13 looked for a smaller, more intimate setting than those sought by most of her high-school friends. And with Dickinson, she found that—but she also found herself at the far reaches of the world and in headline-grabbing locales right in Central Pennsylvania.

“In Costa Rica, through the School for Field Studies (SFS), I studied sustainable development in a tropical setting,” she says. “And I have gotten involved on the frontlines of Marcellus Shale gas extraction and have worked with communities all around Pennsylvania who are dealing with it. Dickinson has given me the chance to go outside my comfort zone and see the world.”

Stanmyer, an environmental-science major, wants to go into the Peace Corps after graduation, and her study-abroad experience—the SFS and Dickinson in Norwich programs—has laid a solid foundation for such a path.

“I was able to become much more independent,” she says, “and the experiences opened my eyes to so much about global cultures, ideas and people.” Paired with her strong out-of-the-classroom experiences is the practical knowledge she has culled from Dickinson’s environmental science program.

“The environmental-science classes, as well as my time at ALLARM [Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring], have given me scientific tools and experience that have made me much more confident and able to interact and work in the ‘real world,’ ” she says. “All of which has prepared me to enter the job market.”
It’s no secret that attending college can be an expensive endeavor, but Stanmyer was able to use a scholarship and financial aid to help her make her way, and she is effusive in relating what that has meant to the big picture.

“College is so expensive these days that it can be extremely difficult to afford it, and the fact that I have been able to do so is incredible,” she says. “I have loved my three-plus years at Dickinson, and I know it’s going to take me places I never would have been able to go.”

Published December 6, 2012