The Road to Success

You could say that Sydney Boswell ‘25 is a transportation enthusiast. She often looks at the world in terms of how easy or difficult it is for people to get around: Are sidewalks safe for people with disabilities? Are city streets shady enough to reduce urban heat? Can people on bus routes get to community gardens? It’s a way of seeing the world that she started fine-tuning at Rollins while double-majoring in environmental studies and public policy and political economy.

“When I started at Rollins, I thought I would be a political science major,” says Boswell. Then, in her first year, she attended a panel on sustainable urban planning hosted by the environmental studies department, and suddenly the path forward came into focus. “Walkability, shade cover—these are things we think about as people who live in Florida and in urban environments. It connected ideas I’d had implicitly but had no framework for until then.”

Boswell took advantage of all Rollins had to offer, completing multiple internships, leading student organizations, and working alongside faculty mentors. Today, she is a planner with the City of Lake Mary, where she represents the city on the region’s transportation planning boards and recently spearheaded a Downtown Design Guide that was adopted by the city commission.

“Regardless of what steps I take in my career, my goal will always be to promote community wellness in the areas I'm in, to help create productive and vibrant spaces,” she says. “I want to make spaces more livable, and I learned what livability really means at Rollins.”

Meaningful Mentorship

“[Environmental studies professor] Lee Lines was a huge mentor for me. He was my advisor, and I also worked with him as a tutor for his course on geospheres. It was really interesting to collaborate with him, keeping him informed on how students were approaching the class and asking if he knew of any opportunities in the planning field. He was able to connect me with an alumnus who worked at the City of Orlando.”

A Turning Point

“Before my internship with the City of Orlando, I didn’t really know how to get into the urban planning field. I understood the broader concepts, but I didn’t have any practical professional experience, and I didn’t know I wanted to go into transportation planning specifically. During my internship, I worked on the Vision Zero initiative, exploring low-cost, high-impact traffic safety solutions. I became passionate about transportation planning in a way I wouldn’t have been without that experience.”

Learning to Lead

“As a city planner, you’re juggling very large development projects—entire office buildings and subdivisions—alongside day-to-day questions about single-family home builds and code interpretations, plus longer-term projects and board meetings. Striking that balance coming straight out of college has been a learning experience. But the environmental studies senior capstone, where you build a project from scratch, gave me the confidence to take on something like the Downtown Design Guide on my own. I never would’ve thought to do that otherwise.” 

Real-World Reach

“The structure of the capstone is really freeing. The project I did was vastly different from others, and that freedom to be creative and choose whatever aspect felt most important was invaluable. My project focused on the community garden program in the City of Orlando. We looked at how, if the city were to expand its garden system, it could do so in a way that was accessible by walking or by transit: equitable, addressing food deserts, and useful to lower-income residents who could most benefit from the resource.”

Raising Her Voice

“I was president of the Asian American & Pacific Islander student organization, and vice president and treasurer before that. It helped me learn more about my own identity and develop a stronger sense of self, especially in those first couple of years of college. I was also involved with Voices, an intersectional feminist organization, as co-president for two years. We organized Take Back the Night, a march from campus down Holt Avenue, advocating for the elimination of sexual violence and harassment. That connects directly to the planning field and the concept of turning people into “sidewalk guardians” and creating a community that looks out for one another. Rollins is a kind of bubble, a testing ground for ideas like that.”

Words of Wisdom

“Don’t be afraid to get involved. Everything is so accessible at Rollins. This might be the most accessible time of your life. You have this wealth of opportunities right in front of you. Explore and don’t be afraid to take risks. Find out what you like because now is the time to do it. Take random classes. Join a field study or a student organization you know nothing about. It will only benefit you.”