Jerry Gidner ~ MS/JD dual degree alum, Class of 1990

What brought you to the University of Michigan and the joint MS/JD program in particular?
I graduated in 1982 from Michigan State University with a degree in Zoology, and immediately started
working as a Park Naturalist at the Eaton County Parks and Recreation Department, just west of Lansing, Michigan. I also immediately started taking classes toward a Master's in Natural Resources Policy at MSU. The first class I took was a water law class. I didn't do very well in the class and decided I was too burned out on school to work and pursue a degree at the same time. I decided to work for a couple years then go back to school full time. That decision let me concentrate on my Naturalist job and also gave me the freedom to go somewhere else for grad school, since I would not be tied geographically to the Lansing area. I decided to apply for the joint JD/MS in Natural Resources program at U of M; luckily for me, I was accepted to both programs. It was my intent to work in the environmental or natural resources field, preferably in policy, but in law if necessary. I started in the fall of 1985 as a first year law student. It wasn't until the following year that I really started taking classes at SNRE (Back then it was just SNR!).

What are some of your most memorable experiences of your time at SNRE?
SNRE was really a haven for me. The Law School was a much larger school seeming to have the mission of turning out corporate lawyer types (the leadership of the law school may disagree with that, but it was certainly my perspective). It wasn't necessarily cutthroat in a competitive way, but just much more big business oriented. SNRE was entirely different, and was really an oasis for me. The atmosphere was friendlier and more cooperative, the politics more to my liking, the classes more interesting. I really enjoyed SNRE, but there are probably two things I should highlight.

One is that I met my wife, Amy Sosin, there. Amy started during my second year in Ann Arbor, which was my first year of taking classes at the grad school. She received her MS in ecology and got a job in the Water Office at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC. After 17 years of marriage and two daughters (9 and 4 and a half), we are still going strong. Amy eventually went to night law school, and now works in the Solicitor's Office at the Department of Interior, working on Federal Public Land Law issues and NEPA, mostly.

The second thing to highlight is my Master's thesis. I was supposed to do a Master's project with a group, but I guess I am sort of contrary. I convinced SNRE to let me go to India on a program run out of UC-Berkeley, and do a Master's Thesis. I spent about 8 months in India, living with a family in New Delhi, assigned a mentor at the Indian Law Institute. For my thesis, I performed a political and institutional analysis of a forestry agency run by the Central Government, the National Wasteland Development Board. It was created by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi with an ambitious goal of bringing forests to the overused lands around Indian's rural villages. It ended in complete failure and was actually officially disbanded while I was there. This experience taught me a lot about setting goals for agencies - Prime Minister Gandhi set a very public goal of planting something like 2 billion trees a year. Unfortunately, the Wasteland Development Board infrastructure could not produce or deliver anywhere near that number of seedlings, let alone convince villagers to tend to them. I have seen similar mistakes a number of times in the US federal government and try not to repeat them.

What impact has SNRE had on your career path?
Having both a MS and a JD from the University of Michigan, it is hard to know which one opens the most doors, but they both do. I entered U of M wanting to work on environmental issues, save the world, tilt at windmills. I spent a couple summers working as a summer law clerk at the EPA, first in Chicago and then in DC. Amy and I decided to head to DC after we graduated, because it seemed to be a good place to start environmental careers for a few years before we would head out west. 17 years later we are still there, and will probably stay for the duration of our careers.

I originally took a job with a small law firm in Annapolis to work on environmental issues. The law firm did a lot of real estate work, so had a lot of Superfund and state water protection issues no one else wanted to deal with; most of that work came to me. I could probably have developed a decent practice, but when a friend at EPA called and told me they had a vacancy, I left in about 2 seconds! I spent 4 years as an enforcement attorney at the EPA, dealing with TSCA, FIFRA and EPCRA. It was great fun. We brought administrative cases against all the big chemical manufacturers. I did lots of litigation and settlement negotiations. The beauty of being a litigation attorney in the federal government is getting immediate hands-on experience. I think my second day at EPA I was assigned a case and told to file a notice of substitution of counsel to make myself the lead attorney.In 1994 or 1995, there was a budget stalemate and the federal government shut down. We could all see it coming, so I decided to leave the EPA and take a job at a local environmental boutique law firm. My experience at the firm was not a positive one, and I left after 15 months.

I am a member of the Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, which is located in the Upper Peninsula. I never lived there, and in fact the Tribe was not recognized by the Federal government until I was 15. But somewhere between my time at U of M and that miserable law firm, my grandmother, mother, sister and I all enrolled in the Tribe. By the time I left the law firm I was trying hard to connect my Tribal and environmental interests. When I was looking for work after I left the firm, I jumped on an opportunity for an environmental scientist position at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In January 1998, I stopped practicing law and never looked back. I have found it much more interesting to be a program manager than to be a lawyer. I think I can be much more creative and have a much wider portfolio of possible activities as a program manager than I ever could do as an attorney.

I spent about 14 months as an environmental staffer at BIA, and then became the Chief of the Environmental and Cultural Resources Division. We did everything from environmental compliance at BIA facilities, helping Tribes with their environmental issues, archeology, and even Endangered Species. Somewhere in there I was accepted into the Senior Executive Service (SES) Candidate Development Program at Department of the Interior (DOI). For those who don't know, the Senior Executive Service is comprised of top level managers in the federal government. When I finished that program, I left the environmental world behind for awhile. I was basically plucked from obscurity and went from being a Division Chief to being the Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, the political appointee in charge of all of Indian Affairs at DOI. Some of the issues I dealt with were natural resource issues, but most of them were not. The other work I was involved in was interesting and I learned a lot about other programs in the BIA.

After 2 years, I decided I wanted to learn about business to help tribes with economic development. I convinced the Assistant Secretary to send me to get an MBA. After leaving U of M in 1990 I didn't think I would ever be back in school, but the MBA program at American University was a great experience. I went one year full time, and then was called back to fill an SES vacancy, so finished the MBA at night. The job that the BIA needed me for was as the Deputy Bureau Director for Indian Services. It was about as far away from environmental and natural resources issues as I could get. Mostly involved with constructing roads, running child protection programs (I will just say, for the record, that road engineers and social workers are very different kinds of employees!) and dealing with tribal government issues.

This past spring, somewhat as a surprise, the Assistant Secretary asked me to become the Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I started that job on September 17. The scope of my duties has now changed dramatically. In the previous job I had 35 employees and an annual budget of about $800 million dollars. Now I have almost 5,000 employees and an annual budget of about $1.5 billion. Once again, I have significant responsibilities for natural resources issues.

What are some of the main challenges and opportunities for change within the Bureau of Indian Affairs?
The BIA has a lot of challenges. We basically provide most services that a town would provide, but to 562 sovereign entities, with a combined service population of about 1.8 million people, spread over 35 states, 56 million acres, and served by 12 BIA Regional offices and 85 agencies located on reservations or near Indian Country. We build roads, process welfare assistance checks, manage forestry, agriculture, grazing and fish and wildlife programs. We lease land, probate estates, keep land records, operate irrigation projects, fight wild fires, and participate in water rights negotiations. We operate or fund more than 100 police departments, have an Indian Police Academy and manage detention facilities. We participate in the International Whaling Commission and some of our Regional Directors attend the IWC meetings around the world every two years. The scope of our responsibilities is just stunning. I believe we have the most complex mission of any federal agency. In many places, Tribes have taken over these programs with our funding. In others, we continue to provide the services ourselves.

We have Indian preference in hiring and it is easier to get a job at BIA if you are a Native American. But many jobs are filled with non-Natives, particularly in specialized fields such as engineering or forestry, where we may have trouble recruiting Indians with the proper credentials in some parts of the country. I think the BIA is a land of opportunity for natural resources professionals, especially those who are Indian. We will be seeing a generational shift over the next 10 years, with about 50 percent of our employees eligible to retire in that time frame. So I see lots of opportunities for entry level positions and for people coming out of an undergraduate or graduate program. We are looking for people who are bright, energetic, and who want to work for an agency with the best mission in all the Federal government - helping Native Americans.

Diane Cameron Lawrence ~ BS, Class of 1977

Diane Cameron Lawrence is a freelance writer and producer based in Louisville, Kentucky. A member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, she covers the environment for Louisville Magazine. Her work has also appeared in/on the Washington Post, the Hartford Courant, Ladies' Home Journal, USAWeekend, NPR's Kitchen Window, Living On Earth and others. Lawrence's journalism awards include a George Foster Peabody and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.

Lawrence lives with her husband John Gregory, manager for NPR's This I Believe project, along with many animals. She enjoys horseback riding, cycling, gardening and travel. Currently, she is completing her first television documentary about Kentucky's African American freetowns. She is also working on her first book, a collection of animal stories.