Austin College students are currently competing in the twelfth annual AC Unplugged energy savings competition. The goal of the competition is to teach good energy use habits and to educate students on the environmental impact of high energy consumption.
AC Unplugged has been a campus tradition for over a decade, beginning in 2010 as a way to encourage a reduction in campus emissions. Since then, the competition has raised over $10,000 for local and national charity organizations and saved more than 97,000 kilowatt hours of electricity between the four residence halls: Caruth, Clyce, Dean and Baker.
Over the years, the Grayson Crisis Center, Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Grayson County, the Texoma Health Clinic, and the Grayson County chapter of Habitat for Humanity have received a large portion of the money donated after being selected by the halls’ popular vote, with the most money being donated by the winning hall each year.
The theme for this year’s competition celebrates a classic pop ensemble as it encourages students to “spice up their lives” by saving energy. The Spice Girls theme for the 2021 year was selected to encourage campus residents to try new ways to have fun that don’t involve using electricity. In the final week of the competition, Caruth Hall is leading the way with a nearly 30 percent reduction in energy use compared to the baseline.
AC’s traditional residence halls have already saved more than 30,000 kWh in this year’s contest – a new record. Students have participated in an outdoor game night and a hot sauce eating competition, painted terracotta pots for spice planting, and, this week, are strutting their stuff in a thrifty Spice Girl Lookalike contest. What are you doing to reduce your energy use?
With Austin College teaming up with Recyclops to get back to recycling on campus, it’s a good time to ask some fundamental questions about recycling contamination. Namely, what it is, and why it matters.
What is recycling contamination?
Recycling contamination is any non-recyclable item that winds up in the recycling stream. Some contamination might seem obvious, like soiled motor oil containers. Other contaminants are less apparent, like wax-lined paper cups. The two best ways to avoid recycling contamination are to familiarize yourself with what is and isn’t recyclable according to the guidelines of your local service, and to trash items you aren’t sure about. If you’re not sure whether an item is recyclable or not, it’s better off in the trash than contaminating the recycling. Remember, one more item heading to the landfill is better than an entire container of contaminated recycling heading to the landfill.
Why does it matter?
Contaminated recycling doesn’t get reused or repurposed, it goes to the landfill. Even if the recycling isn’t taken to the landfill, contamination creates a major problem for recycling facilities. Contaminants such as plastic bags can wrap around the machinery used to sort and process recyclables, leading to a shut-down of the facility while employees climb inside the equipment to clean out the tangled items. Food containers — like pizza boxes — are often stained with grease that soaks into the paper. If the boxes end up in the recycling, they will be processed along with clean recyclables, contaminating an entire batch of paper pulp with grease and rendering it non-reusable.
What can AC students do to help?
Following the Recyclops guidelines for recycling is essential. So, before you recycle, ensure that:
You have the right bag for your recycling. If you live in the North or South Flats, Bryan Apartments, Roo Suites, or Cottages, make sure you have the required green recycling bags to collect your loose recyclables. You can collect a semester’s supply of these bags from the Environmental Studies Coordinator, Rebecca Jones.
Your items are recyclable. Recyclable items on campus include plastics number 1, 2, or 5; paper; cardboard; and metal containers, such as food tins or soda cans. Ensure that all items are dry and clean of food residue. Paper with dry ink is fine, but wet, shredded or plastic-coated paper is not recyclable. For more information, check out the AC Recycling page.
Remember, if you aren’t sure whether an item is recyclable or not, it’s better to put it in the trash than to risk contaminating the whole container. When in doubt, throw it out!
During the fall and spring semesters, the Austin College Environmental Studies Department hosts a series of lunch talks designed to give current students a chance to meet with alumni (as well as other experts and professionals) to learn about the wide array of environmental professions and career paths that alumni have pursued after graduation. The talks are also an opportunity for students and faculty to learn about the projects, research and campaigns headed and assisted by alumni in a variety of fields, from the solar industry to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). In April 2021, Anthony Swift, the current director of the Canada Project of the NRDC, spoke about the organization’s largest undertaking: blocking the development of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Anthony Swift graduated from Austin College in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science and biology. As an undergraduate, Swift was an active member of the Austin College community, holding a position as Student Assembly President alongside an active membership in Phi Beta Kappa. As a junior, Swift was internally nominated for the Truman Scholarship in recognition of outstanding academic commitment to pursue a career in public service.
Following the completion of his degree at Austin College, he attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School, graduating in 2010 with a doctorate in law. Five years later in 2015, Swift would become the director of the Canada Project with the Natural Resources Defense Council. His work with the NRDC in blocking the Keystone XL pipeline represents the work of an agency undertaking a massive endeavor.
In Anthony’s words, at its most fundamental level, the Keystone XL pipeline represents a large-scale threat to human and environmental health. On the local scale, communities and ecosystems near the points of extraction, refining and transportation of tar sands face the threat of oil spills, the release of toxic contamination and environmental degradation. On the global scale, the distribution and use of fossil fuels derived from tars will increase the production of greenhouse gas emissions, spurring further climate change.
The site of tar sands extraction in Canada is northern Alberta. The local ecosystem is the boreal forest, one of the largest remaining intact forests on earth. The forest provides a wide array of ecosystem services, including climate change mitigation through the storage of atmospheric carbon. The mining of tar sands leaves large tracts of the boreal forest stripped bare of vegetation and interspersed with tailing ponds holding the toxic waste generated by extraction. In essence, mining tar sands transforms a thriving ecological community into a wasteland. In describing this transformation, Anthony recounted a flight he took over the tar sands fields. He showed a photo: a side by side of the boreal forest before and after tar sands extraction. The before photo showed a landscape of dense forest interspersed with clear lakes, pocket-sized from the height of the plane. The after photo showed a site of dark-looking, bare ground stretching into the distance that, in Anthony’s words, wouldn’t have been out of place in a post-apocalyptic, “Mad Max-style” movie set.
Environmental justice plays a key role in Anthony’s work and by extension the work of the NRDC. The Keystone XL pipeline project threatens the health and safety of the First Nation peoples of Canada, particularly in Northern Alberta where tar sands extraction, and consequently pollution, is concentrated. In the United States, the planned path of the Keystone pipeline would have driven through the tribal homeland of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, before continuing on through the Sand Hills of Nebraska, one of the most ecologically sensitive regions in the United States. Although Anthony highlighted the threat to both regions cultural and ecological importance, he noted that a spill anywhere along the route of the pipeline has the potential to cause massive environmental damage.
Transportation is key to the production and distribution of tar sands. The NRDC’s work to stall the transport of oil into the United States led to a decline in the total amount of tar sands extracted. There are 3 million barrels a day on today’s market. Had the Keystone XL project gone forward, that number would have risen to 5 million barrels per day — meaning 5 billion more barrels of oils refined into fossil fuels, threatening local communities and ecosystems along the way.
We are thankful to alums like Anthony not only for taking the time to speak with AC students and staff, but for the tremendous efforts they put forth to protect our environment. Other spring 2021 lunch talk speakers included:
Vero Tessier ’21, an upcoming AC grad who defended her honors thesis on wildflower abundance and conservation at the Sneed Prairie Restoration Project.
Natalia Carter ’05, an independent solar consultant working to bring awareness to the benefits of renewable energy.
Sabina Wilhelm, a biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service working to monitor and protect seabirds in eastern Canada.
This past summer I had the amazing opportunity of interning for Little Traverse Conservancy (LTC) for eight weeks. LTC is a land trust in Northern Michigan that has been protecting land since 1972. They protect the natural diversity of Northern Michigan through nature preserves and conservation easements. I spent some of the best months of my life at this internship, and I’m so appreciative that I had the chance to go. My time there flew by because I enjoyed it so much! I was gratefully accompanied by another Environmental Studies student, Tulwen Adams.
After a long, twenty-hour road trip, I was immediately fascinated by the beauty that Michigan holds: green everywhere, bright blue waters of Lake Michigan, and chipmunks! The office of LTC is tucked up within one of their nature preserves, which made it all the more magical to work there. The LTC staff warmly welcomed us; it was incredible getting to know them. Despite being in a pandemic, they still found ways for us to connect, like having outdoor, socially distant picnics and other fun get togethers.
My work days were filled with maintaining LTC’s nature preserves, and my weekends were spent adventuring around Northern Michigan and its upper peninsula with Tulwen. A typical workday would begin with driving to LTC’s barn, picking up tools and instructions for the day, then travelling to any preserve that needed maintenance. We often would mow trails, insert logo/information signs, or remove invasive species. We would occasionally build boardwalks, go bat monitoring, or establish native plants within the preserve. One of the best parts about this internship is that we did something different every day.
My favorite experience from the entire trip was going to Beaver Island. It is the largest island in Lake Michigan, and LTC has several nature preserves there. People live on this island, so interns have to maintain the hiking trails on it every couple years. We flew over Lake Michigan in a tiny six-seater plane, which was a little scary but incredibly exciting! My coworkers and I purposely finished our preserve monitoring pretty quickly so we would have a lot of time to explore the island together afterwards. My most cherished memories from this internship consist of the adventures that we had on this island.
Interning at LTC taught me valuable lessons that I will forever carry with me. I learned how nature preserves and conservation easements operate, how to use certain tools, and how to successfully restore degraded land into a natural area. I also gained more insight on the type of career I want to have in the future. Working with such a close-knit group of colleagues made me desire a type of workplace like LTC. Lastly, and most importantly, this internship substantially increased my independence. I feel more confident in a work setting and with the idea of moving away. I sincerely miss my time in Michigan so much. I can’t wait to visit again to see the progress on the projects that Tulwen and I worked on and catch up with the LTC crew!
“Can you guys please be quiet? I’m trying to enjoy nature,” my niece says with an air of deadly seriousness. Our feet crunch loudly on the dirt road as my sister and I stifle laughter. She doesn’t seem to remember, but a year earlier (a truly astronomical amount of time in the busy life of a 7-year-old), I had jokingly asked her the same question as she giggled her way through our annual holiday hike to Lake Texoma. This year, she had come equipped with a net, a bird guide and a wicked load of knowledge about dinosaurs. What a departure she had made from squealing and cowering at the sight of harmless bugs!
I felt the strangest sense of relief. While I had grown up on the lake, surrounded by wooded areas and more animals than neighbors, my niece was just beginning to explore and understand the world outside of her suburban neighborhood. Her sense of excitement about the process in turn made me excited – and that, of course, got me thinking.
***
Leaving behind my childhood home near Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge, I made my way to the “big city” of Sherman to attend Austin College in 2009. After graduating in 2013 with a degree in English, I worked in both an academic setting and in print media for a number of years. When possible, I eased the monotony of deskwork with volunteer hours at the refuge and eventually joined the local chapter of Texas Master Naturalists. During these years, I experienced a pretty broad spectrum of attitudes toward science and nagging environmental issues, with typical perspectives ranging from helpful and optimistic to openly hostile.
“Excitement” about nature and the environment has a darker side, I’ve found. It sometimes comes in the form of reluctance to perceived change (I’ve come to call this the “I’ll be dead by then” argument) or outright denial. Sometimes even those sympathetic to the issues experience burnout and are overwhelmed into inaction: The term “eco-anxiety” describes a relatively recent phenomenon, a “chronic fear of environmental doom.”
***
January Term 2021 at Sneed Prairie.
My own particular brand of eco-anxiety developed from sheer naivety. “Why would anyone be resistant to something that’s good for everyone?” I often wondered. Then I started to get my hands dirty. Turns out, being bright-eyed and optimistic about environmental solutions doesn’t hold up quite as well when it affects someone else’s life or habits or, maybe most importantly, their bottom line.
For example, many agreed that removing Styrofoam from the cafeteria at my former workplace was a step forward – except the ones who didn’t. They tended to remind me on a weekly or even daily basis that their beverages were not as well-insulated in paper cups.
Likewise, many reputable news outlets have reported on global warming trends with nary a mention of “climate change” or other seemingly frightening buzzwords that I’ve since learned to avoid as a journalist in the rural south. But sharing these kinds of stories with my readers only incited them to hurtful “keyboard heroics” – anonymous online attempts to personally shatter my confidence and the credibility of our entire news organization.
This wasn’t exactly the fan mail I was expecting. Thankfully, there’s more to the story.
***
The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once wrote,
“…the busy people sow and harvest and again sow and harvest (busyness harvests over and over again), […] the busy people store the barns full of what they harvested and rest upon their gains – alas, […] the person who truly wills the good in the same span of time does not see even the smallest fruit of his labors and he becomes the object of ridicule as someone who does not know how to sow, as someone who labors in vain and is merely shadowboxing…”
Eternally optimistic, albeit a little jaded, I sought out a new perspective. Instead of endlessly spinning my wheels – busying myself at all hours with the fate of humanity itself, as if it rested on my shoulders alone – I decided to approach the problem from another angle. Cue the angelic face of my 7-year-old niece and a fateful job opening in the Center for Environmental Studies at Austin College.
There’s good reason to want to change people’s minds about environmental issues. I’ll always see it as a noble endeavor, and one that must be undertaken if we hope to make real steps toward progress in this lifetime. But there are generations of children and young adults now whose minds need molding, not changing, who are excited to learn and be a part of a rapidly growing, increasingly relevant field like environmental studies, and want to contribute to something greater than themselves. I’m here for them.
A student enjoys GreenServe 2018’s on-campus project. Photo courtesy of Dr. Andrea Overbay.
GreenServe 2018 saw the expansion of native plantings on campus. Sixteen volunteers filled an empty bed behind the Abell Library with six different native species selected with the help of Dr. George Diggs. Drs. Peter Schulze, Keith Kisselle, and Mari Elise Ewing helped with the effort alongside Thinking Green Campus Awareness student co-leader Julian Coronado. Even President Steven O’Day and First Lady Cece O’Day dug in and got their hands dirty!
President O’Day digs in. Photo courtesy of Dr. Andrea Overbay.
Native pollinator garden volunteers. Photo courtesy of Dr. Andrea Overbay.
Austin College President Emeritus Dr. Marjorie Hass and the Board of Trustees launched Austin College Thinking Green in 2011 to serve as an umbrella for all campus greening initiatives. One of the outcomes was the formation of Thinking Green Campus Awareness, a committee of students who identify, organize, and publicize greening activities on campus. Dr. Mari Elise Ewing, Professor of Environmental Studies, serves as the Director, and Katie Collins and Julian Coronado, both seniors, serve as the two student co-leaders for this academic year. The mission for Thinking Green Campus Awareness is to increase campus participation in environmental responsibility and sustainable utilization of resources so that students will enrich their communities beyond Austin College.
Organized by Thinking Green Campus Awareness, GreenServe engages students from around campus in a morning of service focused on environmental responsibility and sustainability. Students volunteer at places like Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge, Eisenhower State Park, both the Sherman and Pottsboro Community Gardens, and elsewhere throughout the Texoma community on projects such as trail maintenance, invasive species control, and habitat restoration.
A butterfly hovers over Purple Mistflower. Photo courtesy of Dr. Mari Elise Ewing.
GreenServe often includes an on-campus project. For GreenServe 2016, the on-campus project consisted of expanding the native plants around the LEED Gold certified IDEA Center. Ninety volunteers planted over 550 native plants paid for by the Student Sustainability Fund, created in 2011 by a vote of the entire student body and maintained through a five dollar annual student fee. The project increased awareness of and interest in native plants on campus, which lead to GreenServe 2018’s pollinator garden project.
Over the summer, the native plants were in full bloom, drawing numerous butterfly and bee species. Native plants and pollinators share an important symbiotic relationship, contributing to the health of their ecosystems. Pollinators use the nectar and pollen they gather for food. During foraging, they often carry pollen from one flower to another, which is a vital part of the reproductive cycle for many native plants. Over the years, pollinator populations have declined through habitat loss, disease, and pesticide use. Planting your own pollinator garden is a great way to help pollinator populations recover, and the pollinators are fun to watch! More information can be found at the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s pollinators page.
The native plants draw lots of pollinators. Photo courtesy of Dr. Mari Elise Ewing.
A bee lights on some Mealy Sage. Photo courtesy of Dr. Mari Elise Ewing.
If you’d like to recreate our pollinator garden at home, here is the list of species we planted, all native to this area of North Texas:
Grace Fullerton, Class of 2020, won Honorable Mention in the 19-21 age group for the 2018 Live Deliberately Essay Contest put on by the Walden Woods Project! You can read her essay here. This year’s contest saw a record number of entries, with over 2,400 submissions across three age groups.
This year’s prompt was “In an essay of 750 words or fewer, describe a time in your life when you pursued a path that was ‘narrow and crooked,’ but felt like it was the right path for you. In what ways are/were you able to, as Thoreau advises, walk that path with ‘love and reverence?’ How has navigating that path shaped you into the person you are becoming?” The essay was an assignment in Dr. Mari Elise Ewing’s Janterm course, “A Deliberate Life,” which explored meaningful ways to live a more environmentally and socially sustainable life. Grace wrote about lessons she learned in Ecuador during a gap year.
Originally from Austin, Texas, Grace plans to pursue a career in education after graduating.
On September 23rd, 2017, Dr. Peter Schulze gave a presentation at the 2nd Annual TEDx Austin College event. Titled “We Aren’t Going to Mars,” Dr. Schulze’s talk is an exploration of why we should not count on escaping to another planet, and how to make better decisions about this one. He critiques four routine but errant arguments commonly used to oppose environmental protection.
Dr. Schulze regrets that the TED format does not allow for acknowledgments included in the videos. He thanks the following people for help with his presentation: Kelby Archer, Megan Aultman, Priya Chary, George Diggs, Mari Elise Ewing, David Hall, Keith Kisselle, Lynn Womble, the many students who organized the 2017 Austin College TEDx event, and Ben, Helen, and Matt Schulze, but notes that only he should be blamed for any errors or shortcomings.
In other news, Austin College has been selected for Princeton Review’s 2017 Guide to 375 Green Colleges. The Guide “profiles colleges with the most exceptional commitments to sustainability based on their academic offerings and career preparation for students, campus policies, initiatives, and activities.” This marks the fifth year that Austin College was selected for the list. The 2017 Guide can be viewed here.
I was in college when An Inconvenient Truth came out. After seeing it, I remember thinking “Man, that sure does sound like a pretty bad problem…I hope the scientists can figure it out!” The raw truth of what is happening was too massive – and painful – for me to allow it to penetrate into my daily life. It would take another film, Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, to wake me from my comfortable, ignorant slumber. The broad theme of that film, a rumination about humanity’s relationship to nature and technology that contains no dialogue, is “life out of balance.” It cemented a conviction that I carry with me today: things don’t have to be this way.
Film was a significant part of my life at the time. I graduated from Austin College in 2009 with a degree in Communications (Media Studies emphasis), and within a few months was working for a local TV station, KXII-TV, as the technical director and production supervisor for the morning shift. I am a Denison native and felt right at home in local TV. After a few years, I moved into a commercial production role at KXII.
I couldn’t get our ecological problems out of my head, though, and I knew I wasn’t doing much to contribute to the solution. Sustainable lifestyles involve living in ways that are fundamentally different to the way most of us live right now, and I had a sneaking suspicion that sustainable lifestyles are more satisfying and contented, in addition to not being a burden on the Earth. I knew there were people out there exploring these lifestyles (Transition Towns, ecovillages, homesteads, the Tiny House movement, etc.), but I didn’t know how to get started or how I could explore these alternatives without making a hefty investment. That’s when I discovered Help Exchange.
Help Exchange is a website that connects designated hosts all over the world with volunteer helpers. It’s very similar to WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms). You’re expected to do 5-6 hours of labor, 5 days a week in exchange for room and board. I began spending idle time clicking through HelpX listings all over the Western United States and daydreaming. Near the end of 2015, I finally took the plunge – I quit my job at the TV station and declared my 2016 a belated, long-awaited gap year adventure that would afford me ample opportunity to directly experience homesteading and off-grid living. It was like discovering a desert oasis as a man dying of thirst.
The experience was even better than I expected. I climbed Emory Peak in Big Bend National Park, visited the Grand Canyon and Utah’s Canyon Country for the first time, and slid down sand dunes near Death Valley (in additional to a good bit of camping). I lived on an off-grid solar-powered farm in Arizona for nearly two months, helped build a tiny house, and learned how to manage a dairy goat herd in the hills outside of Hollister, California. Most importantly of all, I met a number of incredible people who are living more sustainably, people whom I now count as friends for life. I made it as far as Brookings, Oregon (about 6 miles north of the California border) before deciding it was time to come home.
My campsite in Canyonlands National Park
A few short months after getting back to Texas, I saw the listing for the Environmental Studies Coordinator job and knew it was the job for me. I’m delighted to be back at my alma mater working with a great group of people. I’m eager to get my hands dirty out at Sneed Prairie and can’t wait to see what the next step is for the Center for Environmental Studies. It feels great to contribute, and the students are a constant source of fun and inspiration.
It’s also great to settle down in the place that has always been home to me. In the coming years, I hope to purchase some land and start my own sustainable homestead. It will be fascinating to approach sustainability from two halves of a whole: how to build a sustainable community and institution at my job, and how to build a sustainable personal life at home. I relish the challenges ahead!
The College Center for Environmental Studies awards our Environmental Studies Prize to the graduating senior who has excelled academically and made the greatest contribution to campus environmental efforts and awareness. This year’s recipient is Sarah Elena Dillabough, of El Paso, TX.
Sarah Elena in Bhutan with the School for Field Studies.
And boy, did she deserve it! We feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to work and learn with Sarah Elena; we asked her what inspired her to pursue a career in Environmental Studies, and to do so with such clarity and dedication. A glimpse at her story…
“I had always been an outdoorsy type of person; however, an experience I had in Fiji made me decide to pursue environmental studies in college. I took a volunteer trip for a month to Fiji and Australia. While in Fiji, on a small island accessible only by boat, with no cars, roads, or stores, I was walking along the beach with my best friend. We found our group’s trash scattered on the beach. Confused and upset, we picked the trash up. We began walking and met some local women along the way; we asked them what to do with the trash. They looked at each other, and with a smile told us to leave it on the beach. At that moment I realized that that is how they deal with trash. That experience on a beautiful island juxtaposed with the sad fact that all the trash was going into the ocean is what made me really want to go into environmental studies. It was one of those slap in the face experiences.”
And we are so thankful that she chose to start her path here with us at Austin College. We foresee great accomplishments from Sarah Elena as she works towards a career in environmental policy, education, and international conservation.
During her four years here, Sarah Elena made tremendous contributions to the Center for Environmental Studies as well as the Austin College Community as a whole. She excelled academically not just within her Environmental Studies major, but also as a Political Science major and French minor.
Outside of her classes, she was a dedicated member and leader in several student organizations and academic societies. To name just a few of these involvements, Sarah Elena was a member of Phi Beta Kappa National Academic Honor Society, the Pi Sigma Alpha National Political Science Honor Society, a Sara and Robert Hallman Citizen Scholar, and a Hatton W. Sumners Scholar in Political Science.
Most notably though, she served two years as a leader and team member for Austin College Thinking Green and the Student Sustainability Fund Comitttee – both integral components of the Center for Environmental Studies. Sarah Elena also earned a summer position with the Little Traverse Conservancy in Michigan, one of our internship partners, where she again stood as a committed and enthusiastic representative of Austin College and the Center for Environmental Studies.
“During my internship with the Little Traverse Nature Conservancy I worked closely with various members of the conservancy to accomplish stewardship tasks on trails, environmental education for young children, and leadership of volunteer groups on trail maintenance. I lived about 6 miles from the office, which is situated on a small lake and is right across from Lake Michigan; I rode my bike to work every day. I had a wonderful time in this beautiful area of Michigan meeting friendly people and doing work that I felt was meaningful; during my internship the conservancy celebrated the conservation of 50,000 acres of land in Northern Michigan.”
Sarah Elena in Michigan with the Little Traverse Conservancy
As an undergraduate Sarah Elena’s travel reached much farther than Michigan. During the first semester of her Junior year she studied International Relations, French, and Arabic in Marseille, France and Fez, Morocco. The next semester she studied River Ecosystems and Environmental Ethics in Cambodia and Vietnam with the School for Field Studies. Then during the summer of 2015 she participated in a Himalayan Studies program in Bhutan, again with the the School for Field Studies.
Aside from her achievements, awards, and talents, Sarah Elena is kind, positive, and thoughtful. It has been our pleasure to work with her in the Center for Environmental Studies, and we look forward to learning of her future accomplishments.
