Rebecca Minardi, PhD

Rebecca Minardi

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Department of Community Sustainability

Program: CSUS

Academic Focus Area: International Development and Environmental Policy

Hometown: Beavercreek, OH

Advisor: Maria Lopez

Rebecca Minardi was a doctoral student in the Department of Community Sustainability. She completed an Environmental Science and Policy doctoral specialization and received fellowships from the Environmental Science and Policy Program (ESPP) and the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) program. She received her BA in International Affairs and History from Marshall University in West Virginia and her Master of Public Health from Des Moines University in Iowa. While studying public health issues, Rebecca realized that a community is only as healthy as its habitat; political will, economic might, and robust health care networks cannot do much in the face of a deeply damaged ecosystem. After a research assistant position at the University of Michigan where she worked with the Urban Pollinator Project and in a soils lab studying cover crops implementation, Rebecca started her PhD program at MSU in the fall of 2016. After researching differences between male and female coffee farmers in Burundi and Rwanda, she joined a multi-disciplinary team researching the impacts of dam construction on human communities and the environment in the Brazilian Amazon Basin. She pursued research on how communities fare after being resettled following dam reservoir construction. She looked at current compensation schemes utilized by the Brazilian government to understand how these help or hinder a resettled community’s social cohesion and individual’s success.