Beth was a member of the inaugural Ph.D. class of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Environment and Resources (IPER) at Stanford University. She has interests in both water and energy sustainability. Her dissertation research is focused on water allocation and reallocation processes in the western U.S., involving concepts and theory from law & institutions, economics, and hydrology. Specifically, she is investigating the emergence in New Mexico of water rights settlement agreements as a mechanism for resolving longstanding conflicts over water. These conflicts involve diverse groups of rights holders and stakeholders representing a variety of cultures and ways of valuing water. They include Native American tribes with sovereign-nation status; irrigation-based acequia communities whose water rights descend from Spanish land grants; irrigation districts and other farmers and ranchers; residential well owners; urban and industrial water users; and environmental interests.
Beth has twenty years of experience focused on energy, mostly solar and other renewable energy technologies at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Winrock International, a non-profit development organization, in Washington, D.C. Her career has included research & development, evaluation, commercialization, and application of new technologies, as well as project management, program development, and strategic planning. She has interdisciplinary experience working in rural areas of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean to grow sustainable markets for photovoltaics and small wind technologies by building local institutional capacity and strengthening local businesses. At Winrock, she served as program manager for the USAID-funded Non-Government Organization Renewable Energy Initiative, operated through Winrock's project offices in Brazil, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines to improve policies and strengthen in-country capacity to make use of renewable energy technologies. Beth's experience also includes four years in nuclear power safety, conducting experiments to determine the effects of effects of severe accident conditions on safety systems and serving as a technical consultant to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission regarding safety systems in nuclear power plants.
Beth has authored a variety of papers and reports and made numerous presentations on renewable energy and nuclear power reactor safety. She has served as the chairman of a variety of conferences, conference tracks, and workshops and is the recipient of various academic, technical, management, and service awards. Prior to returning to graduate school, she served on the advisory boards of the New Mexico Solar Energy Association and the Program for Women in Science & Engineering at Iowa State University.
Beth has a B.S. with Distinction in mechanical engineering from Iowa State University and an M.S.E. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan. Her IPER Ph.D. is supported by Sandia National Laboratories' Doctoral Study Program.
Quote
My experiences managing renewable energy projects in developing regions of the world gave me a keen appreciation for the need to work at the interface of different disciplines. I chose to pursue a Ph.D. through IPER because I wanted a rigorous understanding of environmental issues, economics, policy, and security issues along with an increased capacity to use an interdisciplinary approach to address problems that cross-disciplinary boundaries. IPER has greatly exceeded my expectations.