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The extraordinary relationship between Vermont Law and Graduate School and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) goes back to the very beginning, when an attorney named Doug Costle, as part of President Richard Nixon’s Advisory Council on Executive Organization, helped draw up the blueprint for a wide-ranging new federal agency that would protect the nation’s air, land, and water. Costle would go on to lead the EPA for four years during the Carter administration and, from 1987 to 1991, served as Dean of Vermont Law and Graduate School.
Over the past four decades, scores of VLGS graduates have brought their unique brand of activism, civic responsibility, scientific understanding, and legal training into our most important environmental regulator and watchdog. Not surprising, perhaps—given that Vermont’s environmental law program is consistently ranked the best in the nation. Still, with the small size of the school’s alumni body, the numbers are surprising and disproportionate. “VLGS has very quietly and systematically penetrated the public sector,” notes Vermont Law and Graduate School Dean Marc Mihaly. “At EPA, in energy, we’re virtually a mafia.”