Projects from a group of University of Wisconsin students ranging from youth outreach to developing websites were presented at a conference honoring the 40th anniversary of Earth Day Wednesday afternoon.
The Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and Monona Terrace Convention center welcomed the six students to speak at their fourth annual Earth Day Conference, “Earth Day at 40.”
The presentation, Toolkits for Change: Students as Agents of Change, included a short delivery from each student about a personal outreach project, along with a discussion among all of the students about future plans and hopes for a green community.
Andrew Case, UW graduate student and moderator of the discussion, said the idea for the presentation came from another Toolkits for Change panel at the conference, which discussed the origination of Earth Day in the 1970s in Madison, when it was founded on April 22, 1970 by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson.
“The idea was to see how students are active in the community today,” Case said.
Brian Hamilton, a doctoral student at UW, spoke about his website, which tells the story of Earth Day and allows for access to thousands of Nelson’s personal and official documents.
“Earth Day was made by local activists,” he said. “People really wanted to make it about themselves and their home, and they really wanted to localize it.”
UW senior and presenter Fay Augustyn chose to work with elementary school-aged children, teaching them about the importance of the environment through art appreciation projects such as creating artwork with objects found in nature.
“They really seem to enjoy it,” she said. “It was neat to see, because kids don’t necessarily know what’s going on with the environment, but they are still able to grasp the idea that everything is connected.”
UW sophomore and presenter Steven Olikara has been focusing on empowering youth and figuring out how to engage the students of Madison in creating a sustainability initiative for the UW.
He said research and buildings are extremely important, but if the university wants to change the world, it is important to think about the students and how it is preparing them for their future careers.
“We hope to see green in every single career sector possible,” he said. “Green should be affecting every single decision we make on a daily basis.”
Olikara said he is looking forward to future endeavors in moving toward a ‘green’ campus, such as an all-campus sustainability retreat coming up and the launching of a student think tank to get students involved and engage the entire campus around this complex issue.
“This is a really common ground issue that we should all be able to come together on,” he said. “We can all agree that clean air is better than polluted air, and healthy people are better than unhealthy people. The question of what is going to power our economy in the next century is one that only a generation as diverse as we are can address.”
