Environmental Science Grads Embark on Diverse Careers

Sandra Demberger ’20 MS

Sandra Demberger ’20 MS is currently working as a contractor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) where she serves on the Scientific Advisory Board. Previously, she was a Knauss Fellow with the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Coastal Program. In this role, she assisted with communications and conservation planning. During the fellowship, she was afforded extensive travel experiences to speak with conservation partners in California, Florida and Hawaii. Before earning her masters at Villanova, she worked with the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary. There, she worked in the field monitoring marshes and living coastline construction and conducted outreach for technical audiences and the public. “This experience has proven extremely valuable as I work towards the next steps in my career,” she says.

John Nguyen ’19 MS

John Nguyen ’19 MS recently started a new position as a Life Scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Chicago, Illinois. “Under the Permits Branch of the Water Division, I'll be reviewing NPDES permits for transport, storage, and disposal facilities, as well as handling litigation cases. I'm pretty excited to move to a big city like Chicago!” he says. In addition to his role with the EPA, Nguyen works as a consultant with the Environmental Grantmakers Association. He graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, with a BS in Chemistry in 2014 before pursuing his Master's in Environmental Science at Villanova. Nguyen worked with Steve Goldsmith, PhD, on his masters’ thesis, focused on the impacts of hydraulic fracturing on streams in the upper Susquehanna River watershed. He also served as a graduate student representative on Villanova’s Student Sustainability Committee. Upon completing his graduate degree, Nguyen was a William Penn Foundation fellow where he helped safeguard water resources in the Delaware River watershed.

Justin Stewart ’20 MS

Justin Stewart ’20 MS recently started a doctoral program at Vrije University in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. “My research focuses on identifying key players and patterns in networks of microorganisms with an emphasis on plants, soil, and maps, and space,” he says. To aid in the preservation of fungal networks, he helped to launch the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN). As a student at Villanova, in the labs of Dr. Kabindra Shakya and Dr. Peleg Kremer, Stewart wrote his masters’ thesis on the microbiome of the atmosphere of cities.

Andrea Stumpf ’20 MS

Andrea Stumpf ’20 MS graduated from the Environmental Science program at Villanova during the height of the pandemic. “I defended my thesis on Zoom,” she says. Despite this hardship, Stumpf was able to accept a position at an ecology lab at the University of Notre Dame where she researches the Montana grasslands and the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Her duties include processing samples from these locales and running laboratory experiments on brine shrimp, an organism that is a major component of the Salt Lake ecosystem. “I am working on innovative research at a time when the Great Salt Lake is in trouble,” she notes. Prior to her experience at Villanova, she received a Bachelor of Arts in Theater and a Master of Fine Arts in Theater Design and Technical Production.