The ELP Goes to Washington

As a self-described theater kid, Liesl Schrag always knew Broadway was the mecca for aspiring performers.

Stepping into the U.S. Capitol complex for the first time last spring, the new University of Illinois environmental sciences graduate had a similar feeling: “This is where the magic happens.”

Schrag was one of 13 Illinois students who traveled to the nation’s capital in mid-May as part of the first-ever Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) in Washington, D.C., offered by the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE). There, the students pitched climate-related bills to federal policymakers and met with sustainability advocates in the private and nonprofit sectors.

Those selected for the D.C. trip had already completed the regular eight-week ELP during the spring semester, where they gained hands-on experience in environmental policymaking and legislative lobbying at the state and local level and met with corporate sustainability leaders in Chicago. For many, that experience fundamentally altered their career path, steering them toward jobs related to environmental policy. The trip to Washington reinforced their new trajectory in profound ways.

“The ELP was quite literally the springboard for everything. That was only validated in D.C.,” said Raphael Ranola, an agricultural and consumer economics major who discovered his career “north star” while visiting a nonprofit firm on the Washington trip.

For Noah Yeager, a U. of I. senior in history and political science, “The Environmental Leadership Program in D.C. has been one of the most formative experiences of my college career. Advocating to United States legislators was a dream come true, especially at the undergraduate level. … Simply put, I don’t ever think I have ever learned so much while having so much fun in one week.”

During the four-day trip, the students met with congressional aides for U.S. Senators Tammy Duckworth and Richard Durbin of Illinois, as well as U.S. Rep. Mike Quiqley and staff for Reps. Sean Casten, Robin Kelly, Delia Ramirez, and Eric Sorensen of Illinois, gaining insight into how science and policy intersect on Capitol Hill.

They split into policy teams and advocated for federal legislation that would ban polystyrene containers in food service, support urban heat mitigation strategies, and establish voluntary climate labeling for food products.

With guidance from Colin Kerr, Federal Relations Specialist for the University of Illinois System, the students toured the U.S. Capitol and learned about the system’s ongoing legislative efforts at the federal level.

The students also visited key organizations working at the intersection of policy, environment, and communications, including:

• Sol Systems – Solar development and legislation
• Resources for the Future – Economic research and policy
• Smart Growth America – Urban planning issues
• League of Conservation Voters – Advocacy strategy and environmental campaigns
• U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of the Chief Economist – Food systems and climate
• Politico/EE News – Media’s role in policymaking

In between, the group bonded over visits to federal monuments and museums, walks along the National Mall, group dinners, and karaoke.

A Federal Component for the ELP

The D.C. trip was several years in the making. iSEE launched the initial eight-week ELP in Spring 2022 with support from the Alvin H. Baum Family Fund to prepare undergraduates for leadership roles in sustainability fields. Each spring, students spend six weeks refining their policy presentations and hearing from experts in the field. Then, in the final two weeks, they make their pitches to local government officials and meet with state legislators and policymakers in Springfield and business professionals in Chicago during Spring Break.

A federal component was always part of the plan, but organizers wanted to ensure that it didn’t conflict with the spring ELP program and that students could visit D.C. while Congress was in session, said iSEE Senior Academic Program Instructor/Advisor Eric Green, who directs the ELP.

Green’s student interns – Andres Vazquez, Lilly Kooyenga and Ehrevkah Martin – provided invaluable feedback during the planning stages for last May’s inaugural program, as well as logistical support during the trip itself. Kerr and Paul Weinberger, Assistant Vice President for Federal Relations for the U. of I. System, lent expert guidance and arranged a dozen meetings with senators and congressional representatives.

The political climate in Washington wasn’t necessarily conducive to the environmental policies the students were pushing, Green said. But Schrag said they still came away hopeful after some “pep talks” from the legislative aides: Times will change, and putting the building blocks in place now will make it easier to get things done in the future.

Students chosen for the D.C. program drew on their ELP experience at the state and local level to quickly become familiar with the federal policy landscape and prepare for the congressional meetings. However, the trip coincided with the passage of a major budget bill in Congress that kept lawmakers occupied, so the students focused their lobbying on legislative staff – including one of Rep. Casten’s aides who had actually drafted the climate food labeling bill. He quizzed the students to see how well they understood the bill; they passed with flying colors.

“They were definitely very interactive and gave a lot of feedback, which was really helpful,” said Schrag, who double-majored in Integrative Biology and Earth, Society, and Environmental Sustainability.

“The staffers seemed really interested in what we had to say and, though the legislative environment is not in our favor, we learned that it takes years of planning and advocacy across different Congresses to pass laws – affirming our resolve,” Yeager said.

For Schrag, learning the art of a successful pitch was exhilarating, building on her experience performing in numerous theatrical productions growing up.

“I’m still a theater kid at heart, so I want to present and perform,” she said. But she’d never had to speak in a professional setting, conveying key points quickly and confidently. “I kind of had it locked in by the end.”

That’s one goal of the program – to give students a sense of empowerment, in part by allowing them to choose which policies to support, Green said.

“This is something they can work on the rest of their life, whether it’s through their personal life or they do it as a professional in some manner,” Green said.

New Career Pathways

Previously, Schrag had been searching for a job that would combine her public speaking skills with her interest in the environment. “Now I realize it does exist. It was really cool to find that out,” she said.

The huge team effort involved in lobbying was also eye-opening. “It makes me feel like anyone can work their way in and help in some sort of way, which made me optimistic,” Schrag said.

The high point for Ranola was the chance to meet with Resources for the Future (RFF), a nonprofit research institute that uses economic research to improve decisions on energy, the environment, and natural resources. Earlier in his college career, Ranola was unsure how to blend his studies in economics with his interest in environmental issues. The ELP showed him how to combine environmental policy, international development, and sustainability – and meeting the staff at RFF pulled it all together.

“To see that there’s work being done at that scale, at that level, by really smart people, was great,” Ranola said. “I kind of saw a glimpse of my future. There are these technocratic, highly educated people who are just doing economics to save the planet. That’s exactly what I want to be doing.”

Schrag was “star struck” during the visit to the League of Conservation Voters, an organization she has followed since first hearing about its work through the ELP.  She hadn’t even considered an environmental career until she was accepted into the ELP last fall, but the opportunity to work directly on policies affecting her own community and advocate for them firsthand changed her plans. She worked on a bill that would ban carbon capture and sequestration near underground aquifers, including the Mahomet Aquifer that supplies water to Champaign County communities. That experience brought home the importance of local and state environmental policies in protecting the community and people around her.

“This is such a relevant issue to me, growing up here. My family lives here,” she said. “I realized I actually do enjoy doing this kind of work. That’s the beauty of ELP as a program – you really get to do it yourself.”

She’s now interested in a policy job in Washington with the government or an organization like the League of Conservation Voters.

“The ELP has definitely changed my career trajectory,” she said. “It opened my horizons.”

Expanding the D.C. Pipeline

Another D.C. program highlight: Being at the center of it all – and inside the rooms where environmental policy happens. Walking through the halls of congressional office buildings with interns, legislative assistants, and legislators, Schrag thought: “I’m in the buildings where all these people who make change are.”

That high-level access is typically enjoyed by students at East Coast schools, said Ranola, who would like to see a stronger Illinois pipeline to D.C.

“There’s a real case for place-based opportunity,” Ranola said. “Being able to actually interface with the companies that are doing the stuff that I wanted to be doing was immensely helpful for career clarity. That’s the kind of intangible that you can’t really get by going on a Zoom call.”

U. of I. does offer the Illinois in Washington program, which coordinates semester-long internships for students in the nation’s capital; and iSEE affiliate Jonathan Coppess, Gardner Associate Professor of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, offers a similar Washington trip focused on agricultural policy as part of his ACE 291 course.

But in terms of teaching students about sustainability advocacy, and the trade-offs involved in the policy process, “this is it,” Green said. The addition of the D.C. component elevated the students’ experience – and made the ELP the premiere undergraduate program focusing on local, state, and federal policy, he said.

“There was something about that elevation that was really transformative,” he said. “To be in a place where such big things happen, seeing the sort of chaos of it all but also knowing that all of this is in service of the American public – it was gratifying for them to reach that level.”

Green hopes to offer the D.C. program again next spring, drawing from the ranks of ELP graduates or possibly working with Coppess on a blended program involving environmental and agricultural policy.

Whatever form it takes, the ELP alums encourage other students to sign up.

“Goodness yes. It was awesome,” Ranola said. “Do it.”

– Article by iSEE Communications Specialist Julie Wurth

Interested in applying for the Spring 2026 ELP? Applications for the eight-week program, which begins in January, will be open Monday, Sept. 29, through Friday, Oct. 31.