An “Ivory Silk” lilac tree was planted April 27, 2021, along the sidewalk connecting S.N. Pickard Commons and the lawn area in front of Harwood Memorial Union. Shown are John Tobin, grounds manager, left, and Josh Byrum, maintenance worker. The tree was donated by members of the Cincinnati Alumni Group in memory of David Lives ’62, who died Jan. 23, 2021. The alumni group includes Julie Scharon Chovan ’78 and Joe Chovan; Larry Hollmaier ’75 and Lori Hollmaier; Debbie Foster Lin ’75 and Peter Lin; Dan Newyear ’79; Ruth Kortemeier Roeber ’49; Mary Sweeney ’78; and Jenny Stambaugh Voorhees ’77.
Despite pandemic-related setbacks, College moves ahead with sustainability application of some of those concepts. Still, the commitment to conservation and sustainability continues and will resume fulltilt after pandemic restrictions are lifted.
malls; how excess food from restaurants and catering services might be used by food pantries; and “food deserts” in Chicago, areas which have no grocery stores.
Today, Ripon College has files full of efforts to save energy, lower waste, recycle as much as possible and to help its students understand the need for sustainability and conservation on a global scale.
Mark Kainz, associate dean for the Catalyst curriculum and assessment coordinator, says 100 percent of Ripon students are exposed to sustainability concepts consistently through the required Catalyst 300 Applied Innovations Seminar. Student collaboration groups consider five challenges based on U.N. Sustainability Goals, pick one of the challenges and then formulate a specific problem to address.
Kainz, the Patricia and Philip McCullough Class of 1969 Professor of Biology, says students also get a taste of sustainability in Catalyst 100 and Catalyst 220 courses. Ripon also offers a major in environmental studies and a minor in environmental biology.
COVID-19, however, not only put a damper on conservation and sustainability, it temporarily halted the practical
Among the challenges students undertook this spring were food insecurity in Wisconsin; reuses for abandoned shopping
Since its founding, Ripon College has been on a mission to conserve, to assure sustainability of its practices and to make its carbon footprint as small as possible. The College may not have purposely stated its intentions in its early years, but small budgets and, at times, challenges to its livelihood demanded that it pay attention to conservation and sustainability.
The curricular emphasis on sustainability, Kainz says, “has now become normal. It’s not viewed as exotic or beyond anyone’s ability to understand or incorporate” into one’s thinking or classes.
S U M M E R 2021
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