Sustainable Skidmore

Upcoming Events

• 2/11/2013-3/3/2013: Skidmore Unplugged

  Skidmore students will compete in a three-week energy conservation competition as part of the Campus Conservation Nationals, the largest nationwide energy and water reduction competition. Each residence hall will work to reduce their energy consumption and the savings will be tracked throughout the competition.

• 3/18/2013: “Slow Democracy” Discussion with Author Susan Clark @ 7:00 p.m. in the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery

  Susan Clark, co-author (with Woden Teachout) of Slow Democracy: Rediscovering Community, Bringing Decision Making Back Home will speak about the ideas in the book and lead a small-group, interactive discussions. Open to all; no reservation required. Copies of Slow Democracy will be available for sale and Susan Clark will sign books after the event.
  
  Just as slow food encourages chefs and eaters to become more intimately involved with the production of local food, and slow money helps us become more engaged with our local economy, slow democracy encourages us to govern ourselves locally with processes that are inclusive, deliberative, and citizen powered. In Slow Democracy, community leader Susan Clark and democracy scholar Woden Teachout document the range of ways that citizens around the country are breathing new life into participatory democracy in their communities.

• 3/30/2012: “North Woods Service Day” from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Meeting @ Falstaff's at Skidmore College

  Sustainable Skidmore, the North Woods Stewards, and the Skidmore Student Conservation Corps are hosting a community service day to help with trail maintenance, clean up, and erosion control in Skidmore’s North Woods, a large tract of forested land north of campus.

   

Past Events

• January 30, 2013: Tom Denny Presentation on “Saratoga’s Trees: Past, Present, and Future" @ 5:30 p.m. in the Davis Auditorium at Skidmore College

  Using historic and current photographs, Denny’s talk will offer a glimpse into the results of the street tree inventory recently completed for the City by Sustainable Saratoga, along with some thoughts on the opportunities and challenges the City faces as we plan the streetscapes in Saratoga’s future.

• January 26, 2013: Big Green Scream @ the Williamson Sports Center. Women’s game begins at 2 p.m., men’s game begins at 4 p.m.

  Support the women and men’s basketball teams as they compete against Union College at the Big Green Scream. There will be activities focused on sustainability, a sustainability halftime relay race, and prizes!

• September 19, 2012:  Tom Wessels Lecture on Reading the Forested Landscape

• November 1- November 21st, 2010: Skidmore Unplugged!Dorm against dorm battle it out in this in this competition to reduce electricity consumption! Fun and prizes!

• Skidmore Walking and Biking Survey
  The ES351 "Sustainable Mobility Solutions" class, taught by Jeff Olson, is conducting a survey of walking and biking habits on campus. Click here to take their brief (less than 2 minute) survey.

• September 27-October 1, 2009:  Leave Your Car at Home Week
  During this week, Skidmore community members are encouraged to ride, bike, bus and carpool to campus to help the College reduce its environmental impact.  We hope folks form green commuting habits and follow through for the rest of the year!

• September 29, 2009: Film Screening of "King Corn” (8 PM, Spa)
  A documentary about the subsidized crop that drives our fast food nation.

• October 2, 2009: Student Garden Harvest Dinner (7 PM, Falstaff's)
  Delicious, local, home-cooked food from the Skidmore Student Garden and nearby farms. Also featuring live Skidmore bands! Sure to be a warm, hearty good time you won't forget. Invite your friends!

• October 3, 2009: "History of the North Woods" Guided Tour (2:30 - 4:00 PM, Bolton Hall Room 280)
  Skidmore's North Woods are a treasured resource for students, faculty, and community members alike. If you haven't experienced them yet, please join us for a guided tour.

• October 4, 2009: "The Future is Riding a Bicycle" Lecture (7 PM, Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall)
  Communities around the world are finding that the bicycle is an important local solution to global issues including climate change, energy dependence, public health sustainable development. So how do we change our built environment? Jeff Olson, a local urban planner, will offer real solutions that can be implemented, and case studies that provide optimism for the future.

• October 5: "Pride of New York" Dinner at the Dining Hall
  Don't miss out on this night of tasty, locally grown dishes!
  
  
• October 7: "The Dilemma of Ethical Consumption" Lecture
  Shoppers in the 21st century don't just consume, we investigate the impacts of our decisions on climate change, animals, our health, geopolitical relationships, working conditions, and more. Yet often when we try to live by our principles, the choices can be overwhelmingly contradictory and demanding. Fran Hawthorne, editor and award-winning author, will address these issues and more in her lecture.
  
  
• October 5th: "Environmental Portents, Peruvian Enslavement, and the Extinction of Easter Island's Birdmen" Lecture
  Oral histories from Rapanui elders from the mid-19th century demonstrate that this indigenous people had developed an elaborate ecological understanding of and adaptation to their isolated home and its difficult environment. A variety of unusual circumstances compel us to reconsider the usual explanations for Easter Island's colonization, including self-induced "ecocide" and illustrate, more broadly, the significance of Latin America's historical membership as part of the Pacific World. Greg Cushman, Assistant Professor of International Environmental History at the University of Kansas, will explore alternative explanations about the disappearance of this well known people from Easter Island.
  
  
• September 24th:  Bicycle Maintenance Day, Case Center walkway from noon-3pm
  Stop by Case Center between noon and 3pm to have your bike spruced up by the student Environmental Action Club and the Skidmore Cycling Club!
  
  
• September 25th: "Food Farms and the Future" and Garden Party!, Tang Museum 1-2pm and Student Garden 3-4pm
  Mr. Edwin Yowell, a regional director of Slow Food USA will be talking about the slow food movement and the implications of the food choices we make. The lecture will be followed by a work party at the Skidmore Student Garden, located to the right of the Colton House on North Broadway (to the right of the admissions building).
  
  
• Garden Work Party!!  Sunday, April 11th 11am-3pm
  What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon then getting your hands dirty and helping to build some beds and plant some vegetables!!
  
  
• Jeff Goodell Lecture:  Wednesday, April 14th at 7pm in Gannett
  Local author and environmental journalist Jeff Goodell will visit the Skidmore campus at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 14 to speak about his newest book, How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to fix Earth's Climate, scheduled for release in April. The Washington Post describes the book as a "vividly written, thoughtful book; Jeff Goodell helps readers explore the audacious question of whether humans can use technology to fix the very problem it's created."
  
  In 2008, Goodell spoke to a packed audience in Gannett Auditorium about his earlier book Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future, published in 2006. Goodell is also the author of three books published before Big Coal. He also is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine.  He lives in Saratoga Springs with his wife and three children.
  
  In "How to Cool the Planet," Goodell investigates the viability of geoengineering: ambitious, mostly unproven strategies to "deliberately engineer the earth's climate to counteract global warming." Despite his promise to avoid the "wacky ideas proposed by wannabe geoengineers," Goodell still must ask the question: "at what point does the urgent and heroic goal of fixing the planet become just another excuse to make a quick buck?" In a genre dominated by doomsday scenarios, Goodell's treatment is refreshingly lighthearted, but two questions haunt him: "What kind of person dreams of engineering the entire planet? and Can we trust him?" He warns, "Technology has taken us farther away from nature, not drawn us closer to it," and his provocative account achieves a fine balance between the inventor's enthusiasm and the scientist's skepticism.
  
  
• North Woods Stewardship Day: Sunday, April 18th
  • 10-noon: trail clean-up:  meet in Palamoutain Lobby outside Gannett at 10am
  • Noon-1pm:  light lunch for clean-up volunteers
  • 1-2pm Children’s Walk:  meet in Palamountain Lobby outside Gannett at 1pm
  • 1:30-2pm: History of the North Woods Lecture: Bolton 282
  • 2-3pm: History of the North Woods Guided Tour: leave from Bolton 282

• Earth Day Celebration:  Saturday, April 24th
  Each year the Environmental Action Club hosts an Earth Day Celebration on Case Green on the Saturday either before or after Earth Day.  This year’s celebration will take place on Saturday, April 24th at noon on the Case Green.  The celebration will include music, food and several other clubs will table offering seed planting, tie dying, a clothing swap etc.  
  
  
• Focus Skidmore: February 15th-18th
  Focus Skidmore is an event series that is part of a nationwide discussion surrounding climate change and climate change action.  Our goal this year is to highlight both international efforts, particularly with regard to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen from December 7th-December 18th as well as the global impacts of climate change.  Please click here to learn more about the UN Climate Change Conference.
  
  We are still finalizing the schedule, but below are the events that are confirmed.  Please check back as other events are confirmed.
  • Lucy Van Hook, debriefing Copenhagen from the Ground:  Monday, February 15th at 7pm in Davis Auditorium
    Lucy Van Hook, an independent carbon consultant, is currently managing the Carbon Quantification Project at The Maine Housing Authority, and has been since its inception in January 2008. Lucy has studied the ecology of climate change since 2000. She is part of a technical team that is developing a weatherization methodology to measure, monitor and sell the carbon emissions avoided from weatherizing single family and multi-family dwellings.  The larger scope of the Carbon Project includes the development of a Project Document that will allow Housing Finance Agencies (HFAs) to quantify and sell carbon emission reductions from solar thermal installations and energy efficiency measures in the housing projects they sponsor. Lucy oversees the participation of the state HFAs that have joined the Program during the development stage, and will continue to do so as other interested agencies join the Program.  Lucy is a Maine certified energy auditor, and received her BA in Biology and Environmental Studies from Bowdoin College. 
    
    Through her work, she will be attending the Copenhagen Climate Change conference and will offer the Skidmore community a look inside the conference from the perspective of a young person working in the climate change field.
    
    
  • UN Ambassador's Club Teleconference: Thursday, February 18th at 7pm in Gannett Auditorium
    The Ambassador's Club at the United Nations, started by Ambassador Kamal from Pakistan, is "a "virtual" program of interactive out-reach, linking a voluntary association of Ambassadors and senior International Civil Servants at the United Nations with students and executives in the United States".  Join Ambassador Kamal and two of his UN colleagues for a robust discussion about the outcome of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference and any relevant policy implications.  Please click here to learn more about The Ambassador's Club at the United Nations.This event is open to the community, however if any groups would like to participate ahead of time in helping to generate some specific questions for the Ambassadors, please contact Erica Fuller at efuller@skidmore.edu.
    
    Thanks to the efforts of the Skidmore IT Department, in particular Academic Technologies and Media Services, we will be using Skidmore's new mobile Tandberg video-conferencing system to help lower the carbon footprint of this event by reducing the travel needs of our speakers.  Please contact Ben Harwood at bharwood@skidmore.edu for questions regarding the Tandberg system.  This is event is co-sponsored or supported by the Environmental Studies Program, Sustainable Skidmore, the Environmental Action Club and International Affairs.
    
    
  • Early Screening of the Documentary Sun Come Up and Discussion with Filmmaker Jennifer Redfearn:  Date and Time TBA.
    Sun Come Up is a character-driven documentary following the relocation of some of the world's first climate refugees, the Carteret Islanders – a community living on a remote island chain 50 miles off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The islanders are among the first to organize a community-wide evacuation as a result of climate change.  Skidmore will host an advanced screening of this film followed by a discussion with filmmaker Jennifer Redfearn.  To learn more about this documentary, please click here.  This event is co-sponsored by Environmental Studies, The Office of Student Diversity Programs, The Office of Intercultural Studies, Sustainable Skidmore, and the Environmental Action Club.
    
    
• Saturday, October 24th- Saturday, November 14th: Skidmore Unplugged
  From October 24th-November 14th, Skidmore residents competed residence hall against residence hall to try and reduce their electricity consumption by the greatest percentage.  Each hall is individually metered so students can see how much electricity each residence hall is using in real time. Please click here to view the Skidmore Unplugged electricity dashboard.  Congratulations to McClellan Hall with a 12 percent reduction to WIN SKIDMORE UNPLUGGED!!

• Saturday, September 12th from 9am-12pm:  North Woods Stewardship Day
  Skidmore College's North Woods is a treasured resource for both the College and larger Saratoga Community.  On North Woods Stewardship Day we did our part to take care of this wonderful resource by cleaning and maintaining the trails.  There were also two walking tours of the North Woods.

• Friday, September 18th from 11am-2pm:  Bicycle Maintenance Day
  On Friday, 9/18 Skidmore community members stopped by the Case College Center patio to get their bike "spiffed" up.  A representative from Skidmore's Environmental Action Club's green bikes program along with a bike mechanic from Elevate Bicycles were on hand to help out with some simple bike repairs.  Saratoga Healthy Transportation Network was also be present to promote safe biking practices and their bicycle benefits program.  Click here to learn more about Saratoga Healthy Transportation Network.
  
  
• Sunday, September 20th-September 26th:  Leave Your Car at Home Week
  This year, Skidmore College partnered with the Saratoga Healthy Transportation Network to help promote this initiative throughout Saratoga County.  Designed to reduce carbon emissions when commuters travel solo in their cars, the event  encouraged solo drivers to carpool, bike, walk or bus to work if possible.    Participants were encouraged to register their team online. Saratoga Healthy Transportation Network's Bike to Work Day last May and Skidmore's Leave Your Car at Home Week last fall served as a springboard for this collaborative initiative.