Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson May 23, 2024
Up until her first year of high school, Emmie Rossi, now a senior at the University of Delaware, never considered herself a schoolwork fanatic. But that all changed when she took an earth sciences course with Mr. Alusik at Westfield High School in New Jersey.
“Mr. Alusik was an amazing teacher, and that was the first time that I really enjoyed school,” Rossi said. “That class was so interesting to me, and it changed everything.”
Now as a senior at UD majoring in earth science education with a coastal and marine geoscience minor, Rossi is hoping to pass that passion onto students of her own. She just completed her student teaching at Odessa High School in Townsend, Delaware, where she taught earth and space science.
Rossi completed three student-teaching placements in Delaware schools. She said she enjoyed making connections with the staff and students and experiencing what it’s like to work inside a classroom — something her coursework at UD helped prepare her for.
“With teaching, every day is so different … and every kid is so different,” said Rossi, who received the Excellence in Geoscience Award in 2023. “But the coursework that I did for UD complemented the field experience very well. My courses prepared me for the things that are expected and unexpected that happen in the classroom each day.”
Rossi said her classes at UD were not repetitive and that they were taught by professors whose enthusiasm shines through in the classroom.
“All of the professors have been excited about teaching this content, which helps to make an engaging course,” Rossi said. “There is nothing worse than having a professor just sit there and lecture at you or talk at you and you’re not really getting anything out of it, but I feel like all my classes have been very collaborative.”
Outside of the classroom, Rossi said that the campus environment makes it easy to make friends.
“I was nervous at first because I arrived in the fall of 2020, which was during COVID and there was practically no one here,” Rossi said. “Also, I didn’t join that many organizations on campus, but despite that, I feel like I’m always with someone, and I always have fun. It just feels like a very friendly campus, and it’s hard to feel lonely here.”
For her next steps, Rossi will return to UD in the fall of 2024 to pursue a master of science in environmental science and management. The program is relatively new, and Rossi said she is looking forward to joining the program in its infancy. This will allow her to help grow the program from the ground up.
Rossi will participate in the climate track and is hoping to move into renewable energy, specifically policy work surrounding offshore wind.
Having worked in the classroom as an undergraduate, Rossi said she would still like to be a teacher eventually, but she also loved how the earth science education program allowed her to focus on being able to communicate science concepts and earth science concepts to the general public.
“Communicating that science is so important to me,” Rossi said. “I feel like my personal mission is to get people as excited about the earth and environmental science as I am because those topics are only going to become increasingly important, and I feel like getting people in the know and getting people to want to be in the know is super helpful.”
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