2014

PERC Campus Sustainability Champions 

(listed in alphabetical order by last name with links to each Champions' profile)

Category: Faculty/ Staff

John Anderson
Millersville University of Pennsylvania
President of Millersville University Dr. John Anderson’s commitment to sustainability started at an early age; he remembers not being allowed to swim in the Hudson River because it was polluted. Anderson now leverages his leadership positions to champion the environmental, social and economic components of sustainability.

Anderson signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) as president at Alfred State and at Millersville, pledging that these institutions will be carbon neutral within the next few decades. In September, Anderson announced his commitment to ensuring that the next campus building will be a Net Zero Energy facility, serving as both office space and teaching facility.

Anderson serves in numerous sustainability leadership roles. He is a member of the Executive Committee of ACUPCC and a founding member of the Sustainability Education and Economic Development (SEED) Center Task Force. SEED’s mission is to accelerate sustainability and clean technology education. Recently, MomentUS invited Anderson to become an inaugural member of the Higher Education Leadership Circle, a strategic organizing and communications initiative to build public support for climate change solutions among mainstream Americans. Anderson lobbied to form, and now chairs, the Sustainability Committee of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

Category: Faculty/ Staff
Nic Auwaerter
Franklin and Marshall College
Nic Auwaerter ’11 is the Sustainability Coordinator for Facilities & Operations at Franklin and Marshall College, but he has been a long-standing sustainability champion at the College. Nic is a driver of sustainability through research, advocacy, and action. As a student he co-founded The Dirt Army, and helped create an organic community garden on Baker Campus with money from the College's first annual Sustainability Award; his research and planning efforts also catalyzed the introduction of new energy-monitoring program to campus residence halls.

A member of F&M’s Presidential Taskforce on Campus Sustainability, he also helped lay the foundation for much of the work he’s doing today as a College employee. Nic is one of the “go-to guys” for campus greening, both because of his deep knowledge and commitment. Although he’s probably best known as the face of F&M’s campaign to eliminate the use of bottled water on campus, Nic’s responsibilities are wide and deep: he helps oversee, and track the impacts of any number of campus sustainability projects, including campus waste management and energy use. There are few people on campus who don’t think “Nic Auwaerter” when they talk about “Sustainable F&M.”

Category: Student
Josh and Zach Berliner
Bucknell University
Josh Berliner and his twin brother Zach Berliner, class of 2015, have worked both as a team and separately to make a very impressive impact on sustainability at Bucknell University. Both are Economics and Environmental Studies double majors and co-presidents of the Bucknell Environmental Club. Together they serve on the oversight committee for the Bucknell Green Fund, and have contributed many hours of research to energy-saving Green Fund projects including the strategic placement of occupancy sensors and replacement of standard bulbs with LED technology. Each also completed independent research projects documenting the economic and environmental benefits of water saving fixtures (Josh) and recycling signage (Zach). Josh and Zach will be the leaders of this year's PERC Student Sustainability Symposium.
A news story on these students contributions is available here: http://www.bucknell.edu/news-and-media/current-news/2013/november/illuminating-the-future.html"

Category: Student
Stephanie Bradley
Millersville University of Pennsylvania
Stephanie Bradley is an undergraduate student working for the Center for Sustainability. For the past year she has worked to make the TerraCycle/SmileTrain program called "It Takes a 'Ville-age to Save a Child" a bigger initiative on Millersville University’s campus. She has personally counted over 100,000 items by hand, boxed them up, and shipped them out to TerraCycle’s headquarters. Millersville University is recognized as a leading collection site nationwide and Stephanie's hard work and dedication have been instrumental in the process. Stephanie makes it her passion and her practice to actively inform people everywhere she goes about TerraCycle and the benefits it has on the environment, as well as children through the SmileTrain.

Category: Student
Lynette Dooley
Lycoming College
Lynette Dooley is a senior Biology major (ecology tract with a minor in Environmental Science) . She has been a member of the Lycoming College Sustainability committee for 4 years and has served as one of the three student coordinators for 2 years. Her efforts have been integral in completing an Environmental Audit for the College, the annual Recyclemania participation and especially the establishment of the TeraCycle and Food Recovery Network (FRN) programs. In just over 6 months over 10,000 lbs. of food has been collected and donated to the American Rescue Workers. The FRN program was awarded the Community Service Award by the College last spring and as one of the student Sustainability Coordinators ,Lynette helped organize the FRN fall conference attended by 10 colleges and hosted at Lycoming in Sept.2014. Lynette is a passionate and motivated young professional and deserves this honor.

Category: Faculty/ Staff
Nick Iula
Shippensburg University
Nick Iula is the Director of Dining Services at Shippensburg University. He has been a tireless supporter of environmental initiatives at Ship Dining. Under his direction, Ship has instituted trayless dining and Project Clean Plate to significantly reduce waste and promote healthy portion sizes. Waste food is composted at the organic garden on campus and extra food is donated to local churches as part of Ship’s involvement in the Food Recovery Network. Dining services also volunteers labor at the campus farm and purchases a portion of the harvest from the farm which is then served in the dining halls. Of the food that is purchased elsewhere, nearly 30% comes from vendors within 150 miles. Dining services invites all of the vendors to a local vendor fair held on campus. Nick is a member of the Healthy Eating Adventure board of directors and has promoted this program on campus by having vegan menu options and having a free dinner and lecture for the community each semester. Nick and other members of dining services also routinely give public demonstrations on campus and to community and school groups that highlight their solar and pedal-powered cookers. Nick and his staff are true sustainability champions!

Category: Student
Briana Krewson
Franklin and Marshall College
From the time she stepped onto campus, Brianna Krewson ’17 distinguished herself as a champion for sustainability. As a first-year student and a member of F&M’s Environmental Action Alliance, she played an important role in organizing the first-ever Sustainability Summit at F&M, bringing together campus leaders in sustainabilityundefinedstudents, faculty, administrators, staff and community membersundefinedto facilitate communication and shared action. This year Brianna is President of the EAA, and already hard at work on the second Summit.

A particular area of interest for Brianna is the idea of a sustainable campus food system, which she is in the process of creating. This summer Brianna was the Dirt Army intern, growing many of the vegetables that go into the soups served at the EAA’s Fair Trade Café. “Hands in the dirt learning” is an experience she clearly relishes. As she said in her introduction to Common Hour speaker Jeff Moyer, farm manager of the Rodale Institute, "There is something about growing your own food that is absolutely magical."

Category: Student
Mariah Murphy
Dickinson College
Mariah Murphy ’15, has played a pivotal role in advancing Biking @Dickinson initiatives. Employed as an intern with the Center for Sustainability Education, Mariah is responsible for managing The Handlebar, our on campus bicycle cooperative, which now has over 20 trained and active volunteers. Recently, she led a student initiative, funded through our senate, for the purchase and installation of two bike pump and repair stations for campus. She continues to challenge campus administrators to consider options for indoor bike storage and increased covered bike racks. Mariah has improved the biking culture by coordinating events (Bike to Farm Potlucks, safety trainings, rides etc.), maintaining the Biking @ Dickinson Blog, serving on the Dickinson Bicycle Advisory Committee, managing our biking listserve, coordinating summer and winter indoor bike storage, coordinating our Green Bike program, and maintaining our online Bike Rack Inventory Map. Mariah continues to go above and beyond the call of duty and has donated countless volunteer hours to the effort of improving the biking community and infrastructure at Dickinson.

Category: Faculty/ Staff
Liesel Schwarz
Villanova University
The members of Villanova University’s President’s Environmental Sustainability Committee (PESC) nominate Liesel Schwarz for the Campus Sustainability Champion. Liesel is Villanova University’s first Sustainability Manager and chair of the President’s Environmental Sustainability Committee. Since starting the position only 1 and a half years ago, Liesel has overseen the rapid expansion of sustainability efforts on campus. She has initiated numerous campus sustainability programs, including a campus bike share, TradePal, hydration stations, and the Athletic EcoReps program. Liesel was instrumental in the University’s signing of the St. Francis Pledge and she has worked with the University to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Of particular note, Liesel has highlighted sustainability on campus through both events such as Campus Sustainability Day and Earth Day and through frequent communication about sustainability through newswire postings, an annual sustainability report, a newsletter, and a website (http://www.villanova.edu/villanova/sustainability.html). She has actively engaged with faculty and students on sustainability related projects, research, and service. Her efforts led, in part, to Villanova receiving the Main Line Chamber of Commerce Green Business of the Year Award, the Sierra Club’s Cool Schools list, and the Princeton Review’s Green Colleges list, among other distinctions. Liesel is truly a leader in promoting campus sustainability.

Category: Faculty/ Staff
Helen Takacs
Dickinson College
Professor Helen Takacs has championed integration of sustainability values and approaches into the international business and management curriculum at Dickinson College. She developed a module on climate change that she includes in her introductory Fundamentals of Business course, and made sustainability problems the focus of the semester project of the INBM senior seminar in fall 2013. In spring 2014 Helen led the ‘Eco-E Path Mosaic’ – a three course, interdisciplinary program in which students studied sustainable business practices, entrepreneurship and environmental history. A culminating project had the students develop a proposal for creating a program for sustainable entrepreneurship. Working with the students’ proposal, Helen led a group of faculty in developing a proposal for a new certificate at Dickinson in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Category: Faculty/ Staff
Christopher Uhl
Penn State University -- University Park
We are delighted to nominate Professor Christopher Uhl as University Park's 2014 Campus Sustainability Champion.
Chris Uhl is one of PSU’s most respected sustainability champions. In 1996, long before AASHE's STARS initiative, Chris, together with student, staff and faculty colleagues, developed a set of indicators to assess Penn State's ecological well-being. Two years later, they produced “The Penn State Indicators Report,” summarizing data on 34 sustainability categories. This work launched the Green Destiny Campaign, a sustainability framework and set of specific goals for the University.
Chris’s on-campus sustainability work was inspired by his own ecological fieldwork in the Amazon Basin. Alarmed by the rate of deforestation there, and recognizing that pressures for economic profit originated primarily in the global North, he returned home and began to work on changing our own systems: by teaching thousands of students; by writing undefined DEVELOPING ECOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS and TEACHING AS IF LIFE MATTERS (with Dana Stuchul) influence educators nationwide; by asking people to reimagine their relationships with technology, energy, one another, and the rest of the planet; by making his home garden a community asset, open to all and providing produce for all who come. We are grateful that Chris is our colleague, and are proud to nominate him for this award. http://www.chrisuhl.net/

Category: Faculty/ Staff
Caryl Waggett
Allegheny College
Caryl Waggett, is the Director of Healthy Homes-Healthy Children (HHHC), which has been run through Allegheny College since 2007, and is designed to reduce the incidence of childhood diseases that are exacerbated by or originate in home environments. Children spend between 80-90% of their time indoors, and for the youngest children, most of that time is spent in their own home. Exposure to environmental contaminants during key developmental windows can have lasting health impacts, making prevention essential. HHHC provides free home assessments to local families, and helps families identify and manage environmental health concerns using cost and time-effective techniques. Assessments include lead in dust and soil; asthma/allergen triggers; injury prevention; food security; nutritional status and access, and physical activity. These efforts address significant disparities in long-term health, learning, and behavioral outcomes facing children from lower-income families. HHHC offers educational outreach efforts and provides professional development opportunities for medical practitioners, educators, and social service providers. Since inception, more than 80 Allegheny students have participated as research assistants, home assessors, community liaisons, outreach/education specialists, and lab technicians through summer research, work-study, independent study, and senior thesis projects. Additionally HHHC research has been integrated into more than 60 classes, impacting a pipeline of students and graduates committed to addressing environmental health inequities.

Category: Student
Susan Washko/ Edible Allegheny
Allegheny College
The Edible Allegheny Campus club is dedicated to the local food movement. To bring students closer to their food’s origin, Edible maintains a student garden and orchard where students who work can take a share of the food, demonstrating efforts and difficulties in cultivating food. Every fall, Edible takes students on a service-learning trip to a local orchard to aid in an apple harvest. The farmer explains to how difficult and expensive it is to grow apples that consumers desire, and the challenges in running an orchard as a successful business. The club hosts educational, hands-on events preparing local food (e.g. salsa, applesauce); food for these events is sourced from local farms with sustainable practices, so students realize what produce is in season and how it differs from grocery store products. Each year Edible prepares the dessert for the DeHart Dinner, a local foods fundraiser held at Allegheny, and attended by about 300 people from campus and the surrounding community. Food comes almost entirely from locally grown and prepared sources. Through gardening, harvesting, and cooking, Allegheny students are immersing themselves in the food system, educating themselves about downsides of industrial agriculture, and exploring benefits of a more local food structure.