QMSS is very happy to welcome Margerie Snider to the department as one of the new GSIs for QMSS 201. Margerie is currently enrolled in a master’s program in the School of Environment & Sustainability (SEAS), where she is specializing in environmental policy and justice. After graduation, Margerie plans to focus on local government policy and/or sustainability consulting to help implement environmental policy change.
Margerie graduated from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) in 2019 with a double major in political science and environmental science. Upon graduation, Margerie moved to Washington DC to begin her career at the FBI as a management and program analyst in the inspection division. Margerie spent a lot of her time deep diving in data management and organization to perform proper inspections of regional operations, administration work, leadership work, casework, and more. Throughout her time at the FBI, Margerie has become very advanced in data management, analysis, and visualizations. After spending 4 years in the FBI, Margerie decided to pivot her career and return to the University of Michigan to focus on environmental policy. Margerie was particularly fascinated with the program at the University of Michigan because of the extensive focus on the capstone project where she is now working with the city of Detroit office of sustainability to help strategize environmental policy.
After speaking to Margerie about her thoughts on the QMSS program, Margerie emphasized the practicality of truly understanding the hard skills. This refers to data analytic techniques in Excel, R, Tableau, etc. She also emphasized that there is such a high demand for these skills in the job market saying, “You can’t find a job application without seeing at least one software program mentioned.” Also, Margie discussed the advantage of being familiar with these tools before entering the workforce can really help you stand out in job seeking scenarios. During Margie’s undergraduate time here, QMSS did not exist. She wished for the opportunity to learn these skills prior to her full-time position as this would have greatly eased the learning curve of her first job after graduating.
We are very lucky to have someone as experienced and knowledgeable to help assist the QMSS program!
