Who we are
Lauren Ross, Ph.D., P.E. is an environmental engineer and owner of Glenrose Engineering, Inc. in Austin, Texas. Her areas of expertise include water quality protection and engineering design, groundwater transport, solid waste management and disposal, environmental monitoring and litigation. Her clients represent a diverse community of developers, businesses, industrial manufacturers, governments, lawyers, state regulatory agencies, universities, environmental and community organizations and private individuals.
Her work during the last twenty-five years has focused on design, monitoring, and protection systems for groundwater, surface water and soil. Her work includes the development, design, construction management, review, and inspection of state-of-the-art systems to capture and treat storm runoff using pervious pavement, retention/ irrigation, bioretention, sand filtration, infiltration and vegetative filter controls.
Her engineering consulting contributed to the successful Save Our Springs citizen’s referendum to protect Barton Springs, the closure of the Gibraltar hazardous waste disposal operations in a low-income and predominantly African-American community near Tyler, Texas, and restrictions to end over-pumping of the Edwards Aquifer in San Antonio.
Dr. Ross made five trips to New Orleans and coastal Louisiana since September 2005 to collect environmental samples and educate residents and volunteers on toxic threats and staying safe in the rebuilding environment. She produced the educational pamphlet Water, Mud, Mold, and More: Toxic Chemicals and Staying Safe When Returning to Coastal Louisiana. She has been the technical consultant to Common Ground’s toxic chemical bioremediation program in New Orleans.
Rebecca Batchelder, E.I.T. is an environmental engineer and employee of Glenrose Engineering, Inc. She graduated cum laude with a bachelor's of science in civil and environmental engineering at Tufts University. During her tenure as an undergraduate at Tufts University, she received grants from the Tufts Institute for the Environment and the Somec Social Justice Fund to attend the Kyoto Protocol Climate Change Negotiations in The Hague, Netherlands.
She continued at Tufts University to earn a master's of science in environmental engineering and water resources. While working towards her master's she received funding to attend an EPA workshop on the watershed modeling packages BASINS and HSPF in California. Her thesis, entitled "A Correction to GLUE: Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation," focused on applying classical statistical theory to uncertainty estimation in watershed modeling. She presented this thesis at the American Geophysics Union joint Assembly in 2005 where she received the best student paper award.
Ms. Batchelder has experience working with many governmental agencies, including the US Geological Survey, the Texas Water Development Board, and the City of Austin. Her interest in sustainable engineering design is not limited to her work at Glenrose Engineering. Ms. Batchelder lives at the Rhizome Collective, a urban center for sustainable design and community design, where she is involved in many innovative construction and permaculture projects.
Jeanine Sih Christensen, B. A. is office manager and research assistant for Glenrose Engineering, beginning in 1995. She started writing articles on environmental and sustainability topics in 1994, and hasn't stopped since.
Ms. Christensen began her work career at age twelve in her father's organic chemistry lab, where despite lengthy and repeated handling of many chemicals or perhaps because of it, she majored in English at the University of Missouri.