Rain couldn’t damper Empower Poly Coalition’s weeklong celebration of Earth Day. While yesterday’s yoga session was rescheduled to Thursday, all of the rest of the events have gone as planned.
Jorge Montezuma, director of the Be the Change committee, said while in past the celebrations have just been on one day, the club wanted to give students as many opportunities as possible to attend the events. Each day, events and speakers planned to get students involved with the club’s mission of sustainability.
The week’s events started with a club fair and will end Saturday with the Be the Change Conference, which is a student leadership training event on sustainability.
The highlight of the week is a speech by Auden Schendler in Spanos Theater at 6 p.m., Empower Poly Coalition director Sam Gross said.
Schendler, director of sustainability at Aspen Ski Resort, is one of the up and coming figures in the sustainability movement who has written a book about how to live a more sustainable life, Gross said.
“He is giving a motivational speech geared toward taking action and I think many students and even members of the community will be excited for that,” Gross said.
Kate Lancaster, business administration associate professor and one of the faculty advisers for the club, said she is impressed with the student leadership of Empower Poly and the effort they have put into the week’s events, especially getting Schendler to come to Cal Poly.
“It is a good example of reaching out; (Gross) just has the foresight and courage to reach out to someone that he thought would be relevant and important,” she said.
Turnout for the events has been small so far but it is expected to pick up as the week goes on, Gross said.
Tyler Hartrich, vice president of the Empower Poly Coalition, said the events are all about celebrating the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and getting students excited about sustainability.
Hartrich, who spoke last night about how to motivate students to work toward a sustainable future, is planning on using his degree in city and regional planning to work on urban design and making cities more sustainable.
Empower Poly is also hosting a green job fair tomorrow to show environmentally responsible career options in the job market. There will be more than 30 potential employers at the fair, representing a variety of companies from energy engineering consultants to an outdoor adventure company to different food companies, Gross said.
“There is definitely a stigma toward the environmental movement about the economy, like the two cannot both be accomplished, but the truth is that’s not the case,” he said.
Attitudes about sustainability are changing in the business world, Lancaster said. Some of the top companies in the world, like Hewlett Packard, are looking for new graduates to make businesses more sustainable, she added.
“It seems to be more and more indication companies are expecting new hires to deal with the environmental impact they are creating,” she said.
Another topic that is being covered is sustainable agriculture and local food systems. Hunter Francis, from the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Science Center for Sustainability, will give a presentation about the newly-created center, as well as how local farmers can be sustainable in the Science Building, room E-27 at 5 p.m. today.
The Real Food Challenge Workshop will try to get the campus community more focused on where their food comes from and how that affects the environment.
Several members of the Empower Poly Coalition went up to Santa Cruz to attend an event about the Real Food Challenge and decided to bring the same experience to Cal Poly, Gross said.
The workshop will take place in the Business building, room 104 at 4 p.m.
A full list of events and times can be found at focusslo.com.