Working closely with Dr. Jennifer Apple and the Arboretum, our group hosted an event to construct homes for native bee species. These homes will be placed in the Arboretum the following spring to enhance biodiversity and to educate students and visitors about the importance of native bees and the Arboretum as a whole.
Michael Bertlesman, Ryan Van Voorhis, Koen Schroten, Alex Findeis, Emilios Papas, Ladynel Loveras
Catherine Brownell, Ashley Law, Jason Snider, Hannah Labedz, Taylor Johnson worked with community member Dan Dezarn, the director of the office of sustainability at SUNY Geneseo.
With Dan’s guidance we created an informational pamphlet that helped explain the benefits of composting, and Geneseo’s sustainability goals. The group also held a composting workshop on campus. The pamphlet and video of the event can be found in our blog posts.
The Compost Crew
Victoria Ozadovsky, Maddie Walker, Sheila Barabino, Sarah Ball, and Abdul Sanderson collaborated with Fair Trade Club to make the college a Certified Fair Trade University.
Working with Meg Reitz at the Department of Student Life and Dan DeZarn, the Director of Sustainability, we are attempting to have President Denise Battles sign a Fair Trade Resolution, which would set guidelines for the college to purchase goods that are Fair Trade and support the Fair Trade Movement.
The purpose of our community engagement project is to promote education among Geneseo’s youth on environmentalism and sustainability. Our project will use a series of fun activities to tackle topics of green energy sources, endangered species, and the benefits of switching to reusable materials to reduce waste.
We will be working with Declan Dwyer-Mcnulty and the R Kids program to lead a series of activities for seven children from the Geneseo community ranging from grades 4 through 6. The first day we meet with the kids, we will talk with them to establish their knowledge base. The second day we will do an activity on the topic of endangered species. On the third day we will do a field trip down to the e-Garden on campus where we will be teaching the kids about renewable energy, showing them the wind turbine and the solar panels and explaining what these do. Finally, at our fourth and final meeting we will determine to what extent the kids have retained the knowledge we have presented by playing a game in which they have to make decisions about utilizing different sources of energy. We hope that our project will teach the kids valuable lessons about sustainability that they will carry with them to hopefully bring back to their homes and classrooms.
Isabella Vicentini, Jordi Menkhorst, Kyle Chesterman, Megan Metz, Rosemary Carey
The From Farm to Fork event focused on displaying the issue of food waste and food security through a menu that was not only locally produced but also exposed the reality of food insecure populations.
The Credo Kitchen event successfully fed 40 individuals on a budget of $147.60, or $3.69 per person for 3 meals. This was done by only buying locally, however, we had a vast amount of advantages, such as the support of the ambassadorship, accessibility to farms, the support of CAS and Geneseo, and the knowledge capital behind the menu creation.
Nydia Constantine, Christopher Mandracchia, Sofia Villalon
We are three college students researching food sustainability and making efforts to reduce our production of food waste. Over 30% of food produced in the US is never consumed and ends up filling up landfills and releasing methane into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, more than 40 million Americans are food insecure. There are, however, many things we can do as consumers to do our part in reducing food waste. This blog will serve as a way to document our personal experiences making efforts to reduce food waste as well as a way to educate others about how to be more conscious consumers on a college campus
Chaise Carl, Jamie McCormick, Rachel Davis
“When exploring our options for potential community engagement projects, we researched existing programs in parks and community centers. My father, who works for the Battery Park City Authority in Manhattan, runs a clothing recycling program for the City Authority, which operates exclusively in Battery Park City. We realized the need for a similar program in Geneseo, where often, on campus students feel the urge to send their excess clothes or textiles to the landfill in the crunch for time that results at the end of each semester. With this in mind, we decided to make the focus of the program be concerned with students living in residence halls. After researching organizations that might be able to suit our needs, we found Planet Aid, an organization based in Rochester.” – Cal
…we will have saved 1,200-1,600 pounds of CO2 emissions from entering the environment just from our operation here at Geneseo.
Francesca Bello, Callen Gross, Casey Haack, Nicole Venator
Our intent for our Community Engagement project is to raise awareness around Main Street, both by businesses and consumers, about some important environmental issues that arise in any business model and what these businesses and consumers can do to help improve their environmental footprint. Specifically, we are hoping that businesses will reduce the non-biodegradable materials and plastic materials that they use in favor of more environmentally friendly materials. The hope is that consumers will become more aware of the harmful effects of plastic and non-biodegradable materials on the environment and realize that there are small changes they can make that will have a big impact. We partnered with the Office of Sustainability and worked as ambassadors to the Geneseo Campus and the greater Geneseo Community to help spread awareness. We will be gathering data on the responsiveness to our initiative and if people begin to cut back on their plastic use, then the Office of Sustainability can use our findings for future endeavors, especially with respect to the greater Geneseo community outside of the Geneseo campus.
Zachary McGarvey, Michael Wall, & Allyson Lenz
