Recent Headlines
Isabel Valentin earned first-place honors in the Benjamin and David Scharps Legal Essay Competition.
ESF Student Wins Prestigious Legal Essay Contest
SYRACUSE, New York – July 06, 2023 – Isabel Valentín, a rising senior at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF), earned first-place honors in the Benjamin and David Scharps Legal Essay Competition.
To compete, students must submit a 2,000-word essay that is judged by how effectively they articulate the law and court cases and apply them to the fact pattern provided to reach a conclusion. The award – given in memory of attorneys Benjamin and David Scharps – goes to SUNY juniors or seniors who are prelaw or have an interest in legal studies and write the best legal essay on the designated subject.
This year’s prompt focused on the Planet Protectors’ protest against a well-known, climate change-denying politician and the subsequent consequences they received from SUNY. Valentín’s essay was evaluated on how well she articulated the law, the reasoning she offered to support her conclusions for each case, and the citations of each law and case.
Isabel’s dedication to improving our world through advocacy, organization, and leadership is a critical piece in the fight to mitigate climate change and, especially, the effect it has on marginalized communities. We are proud of Isabel’s commitment to learning and applying the law and we are grateful to see her recognized,” said ESF President Joanie Mahoney.
Valentín is an environmental studies major with a concentration in environmental policy planning and law and is not new to making her voice heard. She was a recipient of the Arthur V. Savage Scholarship in Environmental Law scholarship, which supports undergraduate students studying in the prelaw program. The scholarship is in honor of Arthur Savage’s service on the ESF Board of Trustees, the commitment to the protection of the Adirondacks, and the founding of the environmental section of the New York Bar Association.
While in high school in San Juan, Valentín organized protests calling attention to Puerto Rico’s financial crisis and how it and climate change impact the archipelago and its residents. As an ESF student, she is an active member of the College’s work in Vieques, Puerto Rico (PR), where the College has engaged in service work, research, disaster relief, and sustainability-related projects over the past decade in partnership with the residents of Vieques via community-driven organizations.
Valentin also works with SUNY’s Research Foundation as a translator and research assistant for an in-depth case study of energy transition in PR. The project expands on a theoretical framework for energy democracy (ED), intending to contribute to ED research by building an empirical case study of post-disaster energy discourse that advances interdisciplinary scholarly conversations.
She is also a program assistant with Syracuse’s Environmental Finance Center where she facilitates the development of sustainable and resilient communities in U.S. EPA’s Region 2. In this position, she determines community knowledge and supports environmental improvement projects ranging from water and wastewater systems to sustainable materials management.
Valentín wants to use her ESF degree as a springboard to a law degree followed by a doctorate in Caribbean studies all with the goal of advocating for those in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean that are most affected by not only climate change but also laws that negatively impact recovery. She was featured in Vogue in 2022, discussing how she will use the tools she has gained at ESF to help transform the world.
This summer, Valentín is working for the Environmental Defense Fund. She is supporting the Environmental Justice Council's working groups in integrating onboarding environmental justice materials, formalizing infrastructure for an environmental justice expert network, and writing the second annual environmental justice landscape assessment.
She will also be working with the office of ESF’s Executive Operating and Chief Sustainability Officer Mark Lichtenstein ”to integrate The Vieques Adaptability Framework Response (VAFR) into ESF’s operations. The VAFR is Valentín’s honors program thesis which focuses on creating an equitable way for colleges to conduct research in underprivileged areas. The Vieques Adaptability Framework Response (VAFR) will be developed using service-learning trips to Vieques as a blueprint.
“I’m confident the VAFR will have a lasting impact because of the topic the project addresses – harmful research conducted on vulnerable land or on vulnerable people – is often neglected by general discourse, especially in academic, predominantly white places such as ESF,” she said.
About SUNY ESF
The SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) is dedicated to the study of the environment, developing renewable technologies, and building a sustainable and resilient future through design, policy, and management of the environment and natural resources. Members of the College community share a passion for protecting the health of the planet and a deep commitment to the rigorous application of science to improve the way humans interact with the world. The College offers academic programs ranging from the associate of applied science to the Doctor of Philosophy. ESF students live, study and do research on the main campus in Syracuse, N.Y., and on 25,000 acres of field stations in a variety of ecosystems across the state.