October 21, 2004

Pop quiz: Tiffany Grobelski

Junior, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

Co-chairs campus environmental group. Calls herself a chemistry nerd. Favorite class is ecotoxicology.

Photo by Stephen Anzaldi

You’re involved in a student group called SEED. What is that?
SEED is Students for Ecological and Environmental Development. It’s the only environmental group on campus. I joined as a freshman and am now co-chairwoman. We have about 20 active members and more than 200 listserv subscribers. Our mission is to promote environmental awareness on campus and in the Evanston community. We work to educate people on the current issues. We do some political activism. We try to improve campus recycling efforts. And we bring programming to campus. Along with the College Democrats, we’re sponsoring a yet-to-be-named speaker Nov. 19.

What classes do you take?
The environmental sciences major is interesting because it is really broad. You can emphasize the physical sciences or go with political science and economics. But I’m a chemistry nerd and my favorite class so far has been ecotoxicology.

What did you like about it?
The class amazed me because it brought together all of the sciences. When I took general chemistry I wondered why I needed to know all of that. Ecotoxicology brings together biology and chemistry and physics and provides a real application I hadn’t seen before. I’ve come to really understand how chemicals affect the earth and our bodies.

What have you tried at Northwestern that has surprised you?
I lived in Jones Residential College for two years and interacted with a lot of fine arts majors. I helped with a lot of performance events and now pursue my own art. I paint and write. I always seem to be taking an English class.

As a scientist-in-training, where do you find inspiration when creating art?
I love nature, so that’s a huge inspiration. What a lot of people don’t realize is that science is really deep and beautiful. It is everywhere and it raises some really complex ethical issues. One of my collages, which actually made the cover of Rolling Jones — the Residential college’s fine arts quarterly — was on the theme of purity and how it so difficult to find in the world today, particularly in food. But science can also be cold and empty if there aren’t values and a sense of wonder to go along with it. I try to combine those characteristics with science in my art.

— Stephen Anzaldi