Laura Schultz is an Environmental Science Writer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she works in the Illinois State Water Survey’s Water & Public Health program. This program oversees the family of websites run as a collaboration between the Illinois State Water Survey and the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP), which are funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency: WaterOperator.org, PrivateWellClass.org, and DecentralizedWastewater.org. Laura works on the communications team for each of the three programs — primarily running social media, writing monthly newsletters, and creating blog posts on various topics related to wastewater. She also works on the team entering data into WaterOperator.org and DecentralizedWastewater.org, and edits “Tap Talk: The Drinking Water in Rural America Podcast.” Laura has been with the Illinois State Water Survey since 2023, and previously received a B.S. degree in Earth, Society, and Environmental Sustainability at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2018; as well as a professional M.A. degree in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2020.