Botz — a student of UMD’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS) pursuing degrees in Environment, Sustainability & Geography (ESG) and German Studies — was selected to intern with the Saerbeck City Planning Office. Located 20 miles north of Münster in western Germany, Saerbeck strives to be the sustainable city of the future, with the mission to “show how it is possible to lead an entire community into a climate-friendly future,” according to its website.
“I was able to find a really good connection there that balanced my interest with ESG and German, and being able to use both of those together was really cool for me," Botz said. "Everything that I did there was entirely in German so that was difficult at times, but that pushed me to work even harder.”
According to Botz, her experience working in a world language was invaluable, and set her up to succeed outside an academic environment.
“I just had to figure it out,” Botz said. “Which I think is actually a really good experience, and is a lot closer to what a real workplace would be like. It is so important to push yourself out of your comfort zone, because it's going to be that much more rewarding when you reach your goals in the end.”
Botz persisted and contributed to a real solution to combating climate change.
“We were working on a heat network map,” Botz said. “Our goal was to heat the city with hot water instead of natural gas, which is what they’re currently doing. So I was working with city planners to map the city’s hot water needs. I also worked on a city plan to make the street layout more resilient. I was tasked with figuring out some solutions for retaining more water, and preventing runoff.”
Dan Nolan, German Studies Associate Professor at UMD and Director of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) for the University of Minnesota system, created this internship opportunity by winning grant support from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (or German Academic Exchange Program) and the University of Minnesota Center for German & European Studies. The grant connects COIL projects focused on the climate change with local internships in Germany, and provides resources to support students like Izzy interning abroad.
“At the end of the internship,” Botz said. “I presented these ideas to the planners. And they told me that those ideas that I put together will probably be used in the next few years, which was rewarding for me to hear.”
In addition to working on various projects with Saerbeck city planners, Botz worked as a translator for international visitors to Saerbeck’s famous Bioenergy Park. Home to Europe's largest solar plant, the facility contains over 20,000 solar modules and seven wind turbines that together produce almost four times more energy than is needed by the town. Additionally, residents send their bio waste and receive composted soil in return.
According to Nolan, there is a real value to studying climate change solutions at the international level.
“By getting our students in the room with the people who are fighting the same battle, but are facing different conditions, we learn to find solutions better together,” Nolan said. “We really need to work on these issues together.”