Jessica Moriah Vaden

Project Focus: In partnership with middle school teachers and community leaders in environmental action, the Fellow will identify local connections to environmental science curriculum standards; co-create strategies for a scalable, place-based civic science approach to climate education; and develop training to build teacher capacity and confidence for implementing these skills in the classroom.

Jessica Vaden is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh where she is a STRIVE Scholar. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in Chemical Engineering in 2019 where she was a Meyerhoff Scholar (M26). She received her Master of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2022. Her research work is interdisciplinary with focuses on sustainable engineering, empowering communities about air quality, environmental justice, and engineering education efforts to create inclusive classrooms and programming under the broad theme of improving the environment to improve people’s quality of life. Jessica enjoys baking, reading, and dancing, which she considers her first passion. She is ecstatic to be the Civic Science Fellow for the Franklin Institute for her next step following her Ph.D.