Center for Sustainability and the Environment

While focusing on freshwater macroinvertebrates, Jess Garcia-Lopez, ’22, is also adding knowledge around wild rice growing in the Whitehouse Nature Center.

Colleges and universities nationwide seek to reduce and eventually eliminate their carbon footprint through the long-term, aggressive initiative.

Through the Dr. R. Bruce, ’67, and Jane Harper Earth Day 50th Anniversary Gift, music graduate Ryan Powell, ’19, was commissioned to compose an original piece to celebrate nature and recognize the current moment. Powell’s recently completed composition of nearly six minutes comes with a bonus: he created a video as well.

A waterfall constructed of plastic bottles—created by Center for Sustainability and the Environment Director Doug White and his students to recognize a gift from Bruce, ’67, and Jane Harper—will kick off a semester of activities to acknowledge a worldwide environmental event as Earth Day celebrates its 50th anniversary in April.

Bruce and Jane Harper want to do their part to help the planet, the environment and Albion College, and they hope their $108,000 Earth Day 50th Anniversary Gift will be a meaningful step in that direction. “The envionrment has become a much more urgent issue the last couple of decades,” Bruce Harper, ’67, says.

Evan Rieth, ’19, grew up on a 60-acre farm in Three Oaks, Mich., and has been transfixed by the idea of farming as a career ever since. Now he’s using the liberal arts skills he’s learned at Albion to become a farmer that can succeed in 21st-century America.

In May, geology professor Tim Lincoln led his 17th, and likely final, Center for Sustainability and the Environment (CSE) trip to explore a part of America and its local environment, a journey that over the years has proven enriching and disturbing, often at the same time. Whether it’s wetland destruction in New Orleans or mountaintop mining in Appalachia or forestry in New England or habitat loss on the Chesapeake Bay, Lincoln, in his role as director of CSE, has taken students across the country to face the environmental issues head on.

“I knew pretty much nothing about farming,” says biology major and Center for Sustainability and the Environment member Tom Martin, ’17, who became quite attached to the work through his full-time summer job at the Student Farm, adjacent to the Whitehouse Nature Center. “Now we have pounds and pounds of produce we sell twice a week. I can grow food.”