Sadie Turner '26 is an incoming Master of Environmental Management student at the Yale School of the Environment

Sadie combined her interests in environmental policy, law, urban planning, wetland ecology, and environmental history through the Environmental Studies major. Her award-winning senior essay, “Assessing Flood Vulnerability of a Historic Settlement Community: A Critical Geographies Study,” received the prestigious Gaylord Donnelley Prize for outstanding undergraduate research.

Her thesis examined how centuries of landscape change—including rice cultivation, wetland loss, and residential development—combined with racial inequities to increase flood vulnerability in a historic South Carolina community. By integrating environmental history, geography, ecology, and public policy, Sadie’s research explored how past land-use decisions continue to shape climate resilience today.

Throughout her time at Yale, Sadie embraced the interdisciplinary opportunities that define EVST. She combined coursework in environmental law, urban planning, ecology, and history while taking graduate-level classes at the Yale School of the Environment, including Coastal Ecosystems, where she conducted fieldwork in Connecticut’s salt marshes.

Following graduation, Sadie will spend a gap year in Mexico City, where she will conduct research on coastal resilience and ecosystem economics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Economics, Climate Change and Society Lab, supported by the Parker Huang Yale Postgraduate Fellowship. After her gap year, she will return to Yale to pursue a Master of Environmental Management (MEM) at the Yale School of the Environment, specializing in Water Resource Science and Management.