The Kohler Environmental Center Takes Root

Creating a Sustainable World One Day at a Time

by MAGALY OLIVERO

Anyone worried about the future of our planet need only speak with students of the Kohler Environmental Center (KEC) at Choate Rosemary Hall to regain a sense of optimism. These individuals are working to create a better world right now, whether assisting people displaced by environmental upheaval, providing cities worldwide with the expertise to create net-zero energy buildings, or helping nonprofit agencies secure funding to support climate solutions.

Established in 2012 with funding by Herbert V. Kohler Jr. ’57, the Kohler Environmental Center is Choate’s leading-edge immersive research and education facility, housing the signature Environmental Immersion Program, a yearlong interdisciplinary program for students who are dedicated to understanding and preserving the natural environment.

A decade later, the KEC remains a model for sustainable living and learning. “The Environmental Immersion Program gives students a knowledge base, a skill set, and a way of looking at the world that allows them to be major contributors to help deal with the world’s environmental problems and environmental justice reforms as they continue on in their education and careers,” says Joe Scanio, KEC Program Director.

Many students who have participated in the program credit the KEC with turning their interest in nature into a passion that guides their academic, professional, and personal endeavors.

Learning takes place beyond the traditional classroom setting, allowing students to understand the connection between the environment and other disciplines. A walk through the forest sparks conversations about poets who were inspired by nature. Dinnertime discussions with peers and faculty focus on the challenges posed by responsible food sourcing. Student research projects shed light on how climate change impacts social justice, economic growth, and residential displacement.

“The environment touches every aspect of our lives, where we live, work and play; what we eat; how we interact with others and much more,” says Scanio. “It’s all connected.”

The KEC’s academically vigorous curriculum and emphasis on communal living also help students develop leadership, communication, and resiliency skills. “They are doing this challenging work alongside a community of people who share their passion for the environment,” says Scanio. “It’s extremely impactful.”

Meet three Kohler Environmental Center alumni who are moving the needle every day when it comes to creating a more sustainable and environmentally just world.

Fighting for Environmental Justice

A native of Vietnam, Aitran Doan ’13 connected with the environment at a young age while living in a rural village at the mouth of the Mekong River Delta. Days were spent exploring nature, playing in the forests, listening to the birds, and watching the beauty of the river.

The scene changed dramatically when the five-year-old immigrated to Brooklyn, N.Y., to live in a “doubled-up apartment,” a place where multiple families cohabitate to cope with the high cost of living. Aitran lived in a tiny apartment with six family members in a blue-collar neighborhood.

“It was very different from the rural village where I grew up,” says Aitran, 26. “I didn’t know how to articulate that as a child, but I definitely missed having access to open space.”

The backdrop shifted again when Aitran arrived at Choate Rosemary Hall with its expansive New England campus. Having the opportunity to live for a year at the Kohler Environmental Center, nestled in the forest, reignited her love of nature.

“I remembered again what it meant to go outside and run for miles surrounded by trees,” she says. “I realized I had been numb from ages five to 13. It’s unfortunate that we have created conditions where access to nature is based on how much money you have.”

Today the scene is San Francisco, where Aitran coordinates the tenant counselor network at the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition (SFADC). The organization was established in 2013 by tenant organizations and allies to address the wave of evictions and landlord harassment forcing thousands to leave their homes and neighborhoods.

Before joining SFADC, Aitran assisted families living in crowded single room occupancy hotels, where they shared a communal bathroom and kitchen with other residents. “This could have been me,” says Aitran, recalling the cramped quarters she shared with families in Brooklyn.

She has seen the impact of climate change firsthand, such as the severe drought that has contributed to raging wildfires in California, forcing people

to flee their homes. She witnessed the “day of the orange sun” on September 9, 2020, when a convergence of smoke and fog cast an eerie orange tinge over the Bay Area due to the wildfires.

“All of these experiences have led me to think more about climate change, climate refugees and climate displacement,” says Aitran, who majored in international relations at Stanford University. “What forces people to leave; who gets to stay; what severs communities?”

These were among the issues explored at the KEC, which Aitran says “solidified my interest in how humanity intersected with the environment, especially in terms of environmental justice.” It was also a place where Aitran “found a sense of community that was important and impactful,” sharing ideas with peers and faculty around the dinner table, at the greenhouse or at lectures. “It was a formative experience.”

At Choate, Aitran also wrote about “what the Amazonian people of Ecuador were doing to fight environmental pollution and theft of their land by oil companies.” She took a year off before heading to Stanford University to be a Fellow with a program called Global Citizen Year. She worked at a rural health clinic in Ecuador and lived among the indigenous community she had studied and admired at Choate.

For now, San Francisco offers Aitran the best of both worlds. At SFADC, she can work to advance environmental justice. As a city resident, she can enjoy the natural beauty of the area while biking to the local market, across the Golden Gate Bridge or along the Pacific Ocean. Her goals as we move to a new normal following the pandemic are to retain the lessons learned during the crisis – the importance of staying in the present and never taking any day for granted.

“I’m trying to be more like the person I am when I am in nature. I’m present, in tune, good with the here and now,” says Aitran. “Recognizing the miraculous beauty that surrounds us takes us back to the essence of what it means to be a human being.”

Living an Intentional Life

Zach Berzolla ’14 remembers the day he consciously decided to stop eating meat after touring a local farm with fellow classmates from the Kohler Environmental Center. The tour was part of a broader discussion on food sourcing, examining where and how people get their sustenance.

“It was the first time I became more intentional about the choices I was making and how these choices have a broader impact,” says Zach, 26, a Ph.D. candidate in building technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “I’m still a vegetarian, 10 years later.”

Zach continues living an intentional life that focuses on the environment and energy.

At MIT, Zach is part of a team helping six communities worldwide meet their goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through building efficiency retrofits and renewable energy. These include San Pedro Garza Garcia, Mexico; Calgary, Canada; Petaluma, Calif., Sandy Sprints, Ga., Adison County, Vt., and the Codman Square neighborhood in Boston. “We want to make the tools easy, affordable and accessible,” he said.

At Middlebury College, Zach helped model the potential benefits of a micro-grid to make the campus independent of the town’s electrical grid in the event of a power failure. He also led initial efforts to establish Energy 2028, an initiative to increase Middlebury’s use of renewable energy, improve energy efficiency in existing buildings, eliminate fossil fuel investments in the endowment, and engage the entire campus community in meeting these goals. This led the college to retrofit existing buildings, break ground on a solar farm, and source local biogas from cow manure and food scraps.

Zach credits his year at the Kohler Environmental Center for turning his interest in the environment into a lifelong passion. “I had the opportunity to look at the environment through many different lenses beyond the narrow scope of activism. The faculty was driving intellectual curiosity. I was able to draw the connections between all these disciplines and build a tool kit that I could use going forward in my career.”

Zach also discovered a passion for research at Choate, learning for the first time of the important work being done by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which is transforming energy though research, development, commercialization, and deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. “I knew I wanted to work there,” says Zach, who was fortunate to work at NREL for several months during his college years.

These days, Zach is striving to break down the financial and technological barriers that sometimes make it difficult for communities to reach their emissions goals. “Education is a large part of it,” says Zach. Retrofitting buildings to make them energy efficient can be difficult for communities, especially those that include a large number of rental units and low-income homeowners. “For the most part, you need to own your home and have access to a funding source,” he says. “Communities can’t reach their emissions goals without addressing this issue.”

Zach hopes to continue working in this arena once he’s completed his doctorate. He may use his building technology expertise in the private or public sector to inform policy decisions and program development, or return to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to push the boundaries of research.

“Either way,” he says, “I intend to make a difference.”

Building Communities, Holding Polluters and Governments Accountable

Twenty-seven-year-old Gavriela Reiter ’13 has spent more than half of her life thinking about the climate crisis. It began at age 10 when her neighborhood challenged a local private utility for proposing to construct energy infrastructure near schools.

“I saw the power of community organizing,” says Gavi, who now works as a program associate at the Pisces Foundation in San Francisco, which provides grants to environmental nonprofits and environmental justice organizations working to secure a clean and just energy future.

For Gavi, addressing the climate crisis entails building relationships and communities while at the same time holding polluters and governments accountable for the harm they’ve caused.

“I’ve been a climate organizer from the moment I stepped off the Choate campus and started college,” says Gavi, who has a master’s degree in nonprofit leadership and a bachelor’s degree in earth sciences from the University of Pennsylvania.

Before joining Pisces, Gavi was an organizer at Lead Locally, supporting community and environmental justice organizations to elect leaders who would stop fossil fuel infrastructure and create green jobs. She was an emergency manager for the COVID-19 Emergency Activation at New York City Emergency Management, where she was also a strategic operations consultant and NYC Urban Fellow. With SustainUS, Gavi created and led a delegation of young New Yorkers impacted by the climate crisis to the U.N. Secretary General’s 2019 Climate Action Summit. She also organized a coalition of disaster-prone communities in New York and New Jersey.

She credits her experience at the Kohler Environmental Center for building the foundation for her commitment to climate justice. “I was able to explore my passion for the world in an interdisciplinary setting for the first time,” she says. “My thinking at the KEC evolved from ‘how to keep our earth healthy’ to ‘what does justice mean in the context of the environmental consciousness.’”

Choate was also her first model of an “intentional community co-living situation where we were living and experiencing the program,” explains Gavi. Learning took place beyond the classroom setting. “So much of my learning was facilitated around a meal,” says Gavi, recalling the spirited discussions that took place around the dinner table. “Since then, I have sought out community living, programs, and settings where people are supporting each other in similar ways.”

These days Gavi is using the lessons learned as a climate organizer to inform her work at Pisces Foundation. “It’s exciting to be part of an organization that is committed to rethinking new strategies from the more traditional environmental philanthropy towards prioritizing justice and frontline communities,” she says.

“I know we have the solutions to the climate crisis; we just need to build the political will.”

Magaly Olivero is an award-winning freelance writer and editor.