On Thursday, April 24th, the Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium (PERC) announced the recipient’s of the 2020 Campus Sustainability Champion Award. “This award is given to students, faculty, administrators, and staff of PA colleges and universities who’ve made meaningful contributions benefiting social, economic and/or environmental sustainability on their campus, in their community, or in society at large.”
And the winners are…
Professor Mark Spiro: Professor of Biology at Bucknell
“Mark Spiro has been active in Bucknell’s sustainability efforts for two decades. In addition to teaching Biology 150, “Plants, People, and the Environment,” he co-led the Landscape group for the 2008 Campus Greening Report and co-founded the Bucknell Arboretum project, which he has co-directed since. These efforts created a highly impactful collaboration between faculty, staff, and students that has helped the campus landscape become more biodiverse and sustainable. He also played a leadership role in establishing the Lewisburg Community Garden, a university-town collaboration that, among other things, provided opportunities for local residents to have their own gardens, run a summer camp for children, co-hosted Community Harvest, a weekly hot meal program, and provided thousands of pounds of fresh produce to local food banks. More recently, Mark spearheaded an effort to establish a campus farm for teaching and campus food production. After years of planning and organizing, the farm was finally established in 2018 as a five acre living laboratory. Over 800 students in 32 classes visited the farm in its first year to learn about regenerative agriculture, soil carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and other sustainability-related topics.” ~ Pagreencolleges.org
Professor Neil Boyd: Professor of Management at Bucknell & BCSE Faculty Steering Committee member
“Neil Boyd has been an ardent supporter of sustainability for many years. He was the inaugural faculty sustainability director at Lycoming College, where he championed changes in campus culture, created an interdisciplinary minor in sustainability, and developed sustainable management courses in the Business Administration program. At Bucknell, Neil is a member of the President’s Sustainability Council, and he led the process for the Freeman College of Management to become a signatory to the United Nations Principles of Responsible Management Education. As the PRME Coordinator he led strategic sustainability planning efforts, and he continues to help stimulate environmental and social sustainability curricula and cultures within the College. Neil serves as an advisory board member for the Bucknell Center for Sustainability and the Environment, and he helped to develop the Coal Region Field Station that promotes pedagogy, scholarship, and service for social change in several municipalities in the lower anthracite region. Neil has supported additional efforts to grow civic engagement in the classroom and at the University, and he has published extensively on social and environmental sustainability topics in the fields of management, public management, and community psychology.” ~ Pagreencolleges.org
Ashley Vecchio ’20: Managing for Sustainability Student & student intern for the Office of Campus Sustainability at Bucknell
“Ashley Vecchio, a senior Managing for Sustainability major, demonstrates excellent leadership, drive and commitment in coordinating students, faculty and staff involvement on campus sustainability activities. She has unwavering motivation and dedication to planning and implementing sustainability events. She was responsible for a successful “Sustainable Move Out” event that helped in the diversion of over 15 tons of solid waste from the landfill in 2019. In 2020, Ashley successfully coordinated the planning and implementation of a campus wide, student-led sustainability innovation competition, “the Green Tank,” where groups of students self-organized and used real campus data to create project pitches for promoting campus environmental sustainability. This competition was sanctioned by Bucknell University through the administration’s commitment of using capital from the Green Fund to finance the winning projects. As a senior intern with the Office of Campus Sustainability, Ashley demonstrated leadership by supporting fellow students in delivering their expected results in advocating for sustainable behaviors on campus. She is a team player that delivers on her assigned individual and collective performance targets. She is also a student member of the President’s Sustainability Council (PSC). The PSC has the overall executive leadership responsibility and oversight of sustainability at Bucknell.” ~ Pagreencolleges.org
Each of these individuals have demonstrated, through their work, a strong dedication to advance sustainability on their campus and/or in their communities. The Bucknell Center for Sustainability & the Environment is pleased to congratulate them on their esteemed accomplishments and efforts in sustainability and look forward to their work in the future.