Five Questions with Abigail Brewer ’14, ’19 (M.A.)

This story was originally published at ie.unc.edu.

Meet Sustainable Carolina’s communications and engagement specialist Abigail Brewer ’14, ’19 (M.A.)!

Brewer is a communications and engagement specialist for Sustainable Carolina, within the UNC Institute for the Environment. As an undergraduate student, she studied biology and journalism. She feels lucky to have spent one summer studying abroad in the Galapagos. Following graduation, she spent time working in exhibit development at the Museum of Life and Science. She returned to UNC in 2017 to pursue a master’s in strategic communication. Working with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, she completed her thesis on communicating the importance seagrass in estuarine systems.

Tell us about your career so far.

I’m the daughter of a teacher and a forester. As a science communicator, I like to think I’ve done a decent job of mixing those two fields together. I remember my dad teaching me how to count the rings of a tree and hanging out with my mom in her classroom during the last days of summer as she made plans for the upcoming school year.

Last year marked a decade since my undergraduate graduation. In that time, I’ve helped create exhibits at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. I’ve attended graduate school to gain a better understanding of what it takes to communicate science in a meaningful way. I learned about the importance of seagrass while working on my thesis project with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership. I wrote stories for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. I attended large conferences and talked with state representatives about education policy. I’ve been really lucky to have had all these experiences.

But I found the perfect job here at the UNC Institute for the Environment, within Sustainable Carolina. And I promise! I’m not just saying this, and as you continue reading, you’ll see why.

When did you realize you wanted to pursue a career in science communication? Is this something that you knew you wanted to do all along, or did it take more time to hone your professional interests?

As a high school student, my AP Biology teacher made it a point to read about biology outside of our textbook. For the first time, I was reading about science, not just to pass a test or retain important facts, but for enjoyment and discovery. It sounds silly, but I didn’t know there were authors out there in the world that just wrote about science. Today, one of my favorite nonfiction books about science is Sy Montgomery’s Soul of an Octopus.

When I came to Carolina and began taking biology classes, I quickly realized that most of the people sitting around me wanted to go to medical or dental school or pursue a Ph.D. And when I went over to the journalism school for classes, it seemed like everyone wanted to be a reporter. But I loved both subjects so much that I stuck with them.

I was able to find ways to write about science. I wrote for a student magazine, I reported for Carolina Connection, and I participated in a documentary storytelling class. The one thing I struggled with though, was reaching out to my professors to ask about my particular interest – science communication. It seems like such a small thing now, but I didn’t know who to ask and I’ll say it, I was a little embarrassed to ask! Now, working in a university setting and having a supervisor that is also a professor, I know that that’s literally what professors are there to do – so always reach out. Odds are that someone before you had the same questions.

You attended UNC-Chapel Hill for both your undergraduate and graduate education programs, previously worked with The Hunt Institute, and now work at Sustainable Carolina. What made you want to come back to UNC?

This might come as a surprise, but during the second half of my undergraduate career, I knew I wanted to work in higher education communication, and preferably something that had to do with the sciences.

When writing stories, I gravitated toward health topics. I found myself reaching out to communication offices on the medical side of campus so they could help put me in touch with the right researchers. I remember writing stories about HIV and cystic fibrosis research and recording radio pieces about water quality and the first-ever UNC Cleantech Summit.

I enjoyed talking to the researchers about their work, and I really liked the idea of being the person who helped share that with the broader public. After completing my undergraduate degree, I didn’t leave campus, which was weird, because all my friends did. I spent the summer as a science writing intern at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. That gave me the opportunity to meet more researchers, write more stories and learn what the day-to-day of the School’s communication director looked like.

I interviewed with a couple different groups at Carolina after that internship but ultimately ended up at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. Communicating science for adult audiences is one thing – but doing that for kids and combining it with hands-on exhibits?! That’s another thing entirely, and it was so interesting.

After a few years at the museum, I began graduate school for strategic communication at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media. My dream job finally came up at the end of 2021 with the UNC Institute for the Environment. At that point, the Sustainable Carolina team was just starting to form, and I couldn’t wait to be part of it.

What does your day-to-day look like as the communications and engagement specialist for Sustainable Carolina?

I think most people in higher education communication will say they wear a lot of hats. And it’s true. Sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes it’s tough. As a communication and engagement specialist at Sustainable Carolina, I have been lucky to do a lot of the things I love. To make the day-to-day happen, there’s a lot of advance planning required.

For example, I plan out an entire season of our podcast in the fall. I’ll start reaching out to guests, writing guides and scheduling interviews. Our most recent season began in February and will end in September. For social media, I create and follow a content calendar each month. As for reports, I try to knock them out in the summer – with students gone, it’s a good time to work on bigger projects. And of course, the reports and the podcasts all feed into our socials, so it’s all connected.

On a day-to-day basis, I’m messaging our sustainability analyst and program manager. We work on a lot of projects together, so we meet to brainstorm and talk through any challenges. I also keep in touch with our team so that I can share any new data or information about opportunities with our audience. And because sustainability is so interdisciplinary, I’m often talking with other units across campus – we have great relationships with the stormwater program, UNC Transportation and Parking, Carolina Dining Services and the Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling.

What is something not many people know about you?

I was really into geology as a kid. I always loved rocks and kept a rock collection in a partitioned plastic box under my bed. In third grade, our curriculum included a section on rocks, and we learned about sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rocks.

At the same time, in math, we were learning about graphs. One day, we were creating a bar graph as a class. My teacher asked the class to raise their hand and give her the name of our favorite rock group.

Once she had the rock groups written down, we would all raise our hands, vote and create the bar graph together.

I raised my hand first. I confidently said, “Sedimentary.” My teacher quickly had to back track because it turns out she was talking about music – our favorite bands.

I hadn’t thought about this story for a long time, until I went to Iceland in spring 2023. One day we ventured out on the Katla ice cave tour. The Katla ice cave is beneath the Katla volcano. Later that same day, we went to a lava show. Everyone in the audience received a rock made of cooled magma – an igneous rock – to take home.

I was so embarrassed on that day in third grade. To this day, I think my teacher worded her question that way on purpose! At least she knew I was listening to the science lesson.