Jenna brings a global lens and diverse skillset to her graduate work — from filmmaking and fine art to gardening, land management, and community education.

Jenna James is pursuing a master’s degree at the School for Environment and Sustainability, where she studies landscape architecture and environmental justice. Raised in North London, Kazakhstan, and Germany, Jenna brings a global lens and diverse skillset to her graduate work — from filmmaking and fine art to gardening, land management, and community education.

After high school, Jenna intended to take a gap year before attending college. That gap year turned into a ten-year gap. “You can get up to a lot in ten years,” Jenna says: she worked jobs from tree removal to hospital support staff to nonprofit gardening. At 27, Jenna returned to school, completing her undergraduate education at Western Michigan University with a dual major in rhetoric and international studies.

Her transition to landscape architecture was sparked by work as a landscaper in Portage, Michigan, as well as at the University of California Botanical Garden during the COVID-19 lockdown. These experiences ignited her passion for ecological restoration and community engagement, leading to her role with Kalamazoo in Bloom coordinating volunteers and maintaining the city’s annual flower displays. She realized that public ecology allowed her to bring together her many talents — her green thumb, creativity, and passion for public engagement.

Jenna works at the University as a peer-advisor for Next-Gen Scholars and serves as a caretaker at the University of Michigan’s Nichols Arboretum — a live-work position that supports her graduate education. Jenna manages everything from prescribed burns to invasive species removal while engaging the public in environmental education. As her supervisor writes, “Jenna is incredibly friendly, kind, and engaging.” Upon graduation, she plans to establish an organization focused on carbon sequestration and habitat restoration in Kalamazoo’s underutilized spaces.

CEW+ admires Jenna’s confident individuality and names her a Margaret Dow Towsley Scholar.