When Abby Burke BA ’26 arrived at the Oregon Environmental Council as an environmental health intern, the state’s legislative session had just wrapped, creating a slate of new policy questions for the nonprofit. The council works to advance science-based policies and community-led solutions that protect the state’s air, water, and land.
Burke brought a valuable mix of skills to the role: the interdisciplinary perspective of an international affairs major, the analytical training of a data science minor, and a lifelong commitment to the environment.
Growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, Burke knew she wanted to attend a small liberal arts college surrounded by nature. She chose Lewis & Clark for that reason—and for its ability to provide a strong global education.
“The international affairs department has a great reputation, especially with its annual symposium,” Burke says. “Lewis & Clark is a very internationally oriented school, and I’ve experienced that through my overseas study program to Prague in the Czech Republic.”
From the start, Burke was interested in a little bit of everything. “I didn’t come to L&C with a declared major,” she explains. “I was interested in how you can understand the world through different theoretical lenses, an approach that leans into political science, international affairs, and sociology and anthropology. Because of the interdisciplinary liberal arts setting, I’ve gotten to take classes in each of those areas and others too.”
“L&C fosters strong writing and research skills, and those things—paired with being curious and genuine—will get you far.”
That interdisciplinary exploration helped her connect policy, research, and environmental issues in new ways. One especially influential course was The Social Life of Policy, taught by Jennifer Hubbert, professor of anthropology and Asian studies. “Policies create windows to analyze the world,” says Burke. Studying the life cycle of policy through an anthropological lens opened the door to a field she had not directly focused on before: the environment.
For Burke, that connection was also personal. As a rock climber, she cares deeply about the clean air, water, and land necessary for outdoor recreation. “I love to be outside, so naturally I want our environment to be healthy,” she explains.
Those motivations carried over to her role as the Oregon Environmental Council’s environmental health intern. Drawing on the research, writing, and analytical skills she had sharpened at Lewis & Clark, Burke took on a wide range of work. She read and interpreted federal rebate programs, presented reports to supervisors, wrote blogs and website content, and worked on her long-term project—a policy memo about how Oregon could make an equitable transition to clean energy.
By researching comparative state strategies, considering economic feasibility, and listening to community stakeholders and climate coalitions, Burke refined an important memo that helped imagine how Oregon might transform its energy use and meet its rigorous emissions reduction goals.
Ultimately, Burke believes the experience helped position her for a lifelong career in policy. “The U.S. withdrawing from global alliances reverberates all the way down to the state level,” says Burke. “From international to state to local, it’s all interconnected. I appreciated being exposed to some of these different stakeholders as an intern.”
Alongside her major, L&C’s academic flexibility allowed Burke to add a data science minor in her junior year—an addition that strengthened her overall approach to policy work.
“Employers want quantitative reasoning just as much as qualitative because they need their interns to be able to contextualize data,” says Burke. Data science gave her the foundation not only to prove her coding skills, but also to ask what counts as “good data” and how to communicate it effectively in conversations with stakeholders.
Today, Burke is a research assistant on a political economy project with Elizabeth Bennett, Joseph M. Ha Associate Professor of International Affairs and program director of political economy. “I’ve found the professors at L&C are invested in your success,” she says.
With Lewis & Clark’s new data science major now in place, Burke says she’s excited to be a part of the next generation of policymakers and data scientists.
“At L&C, everyone really values thinking deeply and critically about a variety of different things. The liberal arts make you a competitive candidate with a well-rounded education. Each class gives you a different point of view, and together they reinforce one another,” says Burke. “L&C fosters strong writing and research skills, and those things—paired with being curious and genuine—will get you far.”
International Affairs Data Science
