Markey Freudenburg-Puricelli

What’ve you enjoyed most about your area of study? Was there a particular discovery, new skill or way of thinking, or insight that you found especially valuable? Please share an example from your favorite class or experience.

Learning Spanish has been a blessing in unforeseen ways. I have loved my newfound ability to communicate with much larger groups of people across the world, and I would not be where I am today had it not been for my international experiences made possible by MISTI and MIT Global Languages. Perhaps my favorite experience, however, comes from home: back in Detroit, my mom’s house has always been home to unexpected guests—from those experiencing homelessness to refugee foster kids. These past two years, I’ve come home to find Colombian and Venezuelan immigrant families, who had yet to begin learning English, living with my mom. I’ve had the privilege of witnessing their stories and helping in their transition to a new country by means of a shared language, and I couldn’t be more grateful to the skills I learned through MIT Global Languages and MISTI programs for making this possible.

How does the knowledge from this field, or your interest in it, combine with your other major or minor studies at MIT?

I am a geology major, and speaking Spanish has opened a whole world of Earth science opportunities! With my language skills, I have traveled across the world with MISTI to do exciting geologic field work and connect with wonderful researchers and families abroad. I spent a summer studying volcanology in Chile, followed by a summer of paleontology in Peru; I also participated in GTL Spain where I taught Earth science in Barcelona for the month of January. I like to say that I have families across three continents—my family here in the U.S., my Chilean host family, my Peruvian host family, and my Spanish host family!

An MIT education includes study in the scientific, technical, social science, arts, and humanities fields. How do you think that wide range of knowledge and perspectives will be valuable to you – for your career success and for your enjoyment of life?

My range of experiences across the humanities and physical sciences has allowed me to see where I can make the greatest impact on the world around me. My time living and working in Spanish-speaking countries has connected me with a fantastic network of motivated people and shown me the failures of modern science: I believe that many of the world’s most challenging environmental problems already have scientific solutions—we are just failing to implement them. In other words, our issues are no longer those of science, but of policy. In my future career, I intend to integrate science with policy to make a difference in environmental challenges.

What are your plans for the future?

This fall, I’ll be starting a one-year MPhil in Environmental Policy at Cambridge University as a Gates Cambridge Scholar—and we’ll see what happens next! I envision myself later pursuing a PhD in geology, eventually seeking a faculty position in which I can teach Earth science while conducting my own research. Armed with the necessary economic and political context, I hope to escort necessary Earth science out of laboratories and into effective policy, where it can make a real impact on those communities most vulnerable to a changing climate.