SENIOR PROFILE: Megan McNally

Megan McNally came to Barnard interested in theater and political science. Now, at the end of her four years there, she has turned a house in Buffalo, N.Y. into a center for “how-to” workshops and is traveling around the country to improve sustainability efforts among businesses and organizations.

Born and raised in Buffalo, McNally set her sights on improving the city’s east side as she became more interested in environmental policy.

McNally said the Barnard EcoReps—a group of 10 Barnard students who develop environmental education programs on campus and aim to lower Barnard’s carbon footprint—played a decisive role in introducing her to the environmental field.

Between her sophomore and junior years, McNally interned at Buffalo ReUse, a nonprofit social enterprise devoted to sustainability in Buffalo. Residents approached her with concerns about receiving citations from the city for building code violations.

“The area in the city is a very poor area,” she said. “Nobody has money to rehab the houses, and nobody has money to hire people to rehab the houses.”

At Buffalo ReUse’s annual foreclosure auction, she convinced her mother to purchase one of the houses for about $3,500, using a portion of the grant she received from Barnard’s Centennial Scholars Program, which provides students with the opportunity to pursue an independent study project early in their college career. She took the fall semester of her junior year off to host workshops in the house on home repair, maintenance, and gardening.

“As long as I kept asking questions and kept asking professionals who knew what they’re doing, I myself will learn the ‘doing’ and teach other people the skills that I learned,” she said. “I started just going around knocking on doors in the neighborhood, telling people what I had in mind, and started giving out workshops.”

After graduation, she plans to take a road trip around the country to interview workers at various businesses and organizations to “see what works and what doesn’t … sort of to compile all this information to come up with a unique way to address this issue [sustainability],” she said. Her first stop will be in New Mexico, where she hopes to do a sustainable-building apprenticeship.

She will also be working for Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Vermont, which teaches courses in design, construction, woodworking, and architectural craft, with a focus on sustainable design.

Her project in Buffalo has made her career interests more focused, she said.

“Doing this project … has totally changed my life, and I’ve learned so much about myself and what’s important to me,” McNally said. “Now I can go out into the real world and be directed in what I am doing.”