By Gabrielle Fitzgerald
Perhaps students have seen this logo around campus: a green e surrounded by yellow, orange and red lines. It is the logo for the upcoming sustainability conference called Epicenter 2011, Generating Student Sustainability Leadership.
On Oct. 28, Sustainability will have a daylong student focused conference. It will run from about 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Kim Criner, sustainability student affairs coordinator, said.
The Sustainability Department hopes this conference will provide ways for students around the Kansas City area to connect and discuss ideas.
“…To create this opportunity for these roundtable discussions and these peer-to-peer exchanges so that [students] can finally feel like they are sharing in the conversation and getting something out of it, that they can take away to actually use and do,” Criner said.
Students of all backgrounds are encouraged to attend, even if they think they know nothing about sustainability.
“If you’re curious but you feel like your understanding is lacking, we’re going to hopefully be able to bring everyone up to speed to a place where at least they’re learning,” said Criner said.
One way she hopes to do this is by bringing in an internationally known speaker, Alex Steffen.
“He is really good at making something that is seemingly complicated seem pretty clear and understandable to a lot of different audiences,” Criner said.
Not only is Steffen good at making things seem less complicated, but he is also a very positive, solutions-oriented person. He is a talented speaker, which will be a great way to kick off the conference, she said.
Steffen is not the only person speaking at the conference. The first half of the day will include more than seven speakers from Kansas as well as other states. One of these speakers is Erin Willard, who set up the Greencut Program, which takes one dollar from each paid credit hour and puts it in a fund for campus sustainability programs. Another speaker will be Matt Kazinka, from Minnesota, who is involved with helping prevent climate change. He first became interested in this when he attended a Power Shift Conference in Washington, D.C. in 2007, a national sustainability conference.
“I’m really interested in…laying out some of the issues around climate change that are becoming more and more apparent in our world right now… And I want to talk about the youth response to that and stuff that’s happening all around the country with students and non-students, young folks who are working together to create solutions to that, respond to that, and create clean energy alternatives, “ Kazinka said.
He said he hopes that students will leave with a “sense of urgency” in order to prevent climate change, but also a “sense of capability.” Students should know that there are other young people out there who are coming up with brilliant ideas, which Kazinka considers inspiring.
“I think it’s great for students to see what green projects are out there right now and kind of see if they can bring back that knowledge from what other schools are doing to their home campuses. It’s a great leadership opportunity for anyone but especially those who are interested in sustainable leadership,” Kevin Clark, environmental science student, said.
The conference, located in the Regnier Center, is completely free to students and includes breakfast and lunch; however it is strongly advised that you pre-register on the conference’s web page, http://www.epicenter2011.com.
Contact Gabrielle Fitzgerald, reporting correspondent, at gfitzge1@jccc.edu.