Dear Students, Alumni and Parents,

WOW! I can’t believe a year has passed since our first newsletter. On the other hand, so much has happened to ESP in the last year that it must be so….. Our program continues to grow and our sense of community is building quickly. We are developing exciting plans for the future through the program-review process. ESP students continue to do excellent work, both on campus and elsewhere. You’ll have to read on to find out more about what we have been up to!

The number of environmental studies and Science majors is at an all-time high, with more applications every year. We now have nearly 60 majors and 20 minors. While this is great for the program, it also presents a challenge – we want to make sure that students can get into classes and have access to their advisers. The good news is that the School of Humanities and Sciences has increased our budget in recent years to help accommodate some of this growth. We have our own administrative assistant, Susan Weitz (yes, another Susan!), who works hard to keep the ship sailing smoothly.

We have worked very hard to build a sense of community among ESP students and faculty through a series of lunches and special dinners. We now have Free Lunches every month, in which we share information about study-abroad opportunities, upcoming courses, job and internship searching, and capstone experiences. Our first ever Senior Recognition Dinner (held in may 2007, at EcoVillage of course!) was a tremendous success. We had over 40 people there, and I daresay everyone had a good time. A large part of the success of this event was due to the tireless efforts of Kyla Basher, the ESP Student Leader for the Class of 2007. Thank you, Kyla! Kyla, together with the other seniors, passed the “torch” to the juniors,

who have risen to the occasion and assumed leadership.

Todd Ashley and Dan Carrion are the ESP Student Leaders for the Class of 2008. They have likewise contributed immensely to the sense of community this year.

Dan led the charge to develop a student-to-student letter for incoming students. We hope this increases yield (the percentage of accepted students that decide to come to IC). Dan has also helped engage students in the ESP Triathlon Team. We have about 20 students and faculty willing to do a sport (or the whole triathlon) at the YMCA this May – wish us luck! Todd led the campaign to develop an ESP graphic, which we now use on all correspondence that doesn’t require IC letterhead. We just placed our first-ever order for ESP 100% organic hoodies and t-shirts. Please let me know if you want one ($35 for a hoodie, $12 for a T-shirt). If you order one, you must promise to wear it in public to help spread the word about IC ESP!

Another big step in community building is reaching out more often to our alumni. One way is through the development of an ESP-only alumni website. This is a new service that IC is offering departments and programs, and we are one of the first to have a site up and running. On the site, you can update your own information, find your long lost friends, and network for jobs. We intend to place relevant job announcements that we receive here as well, so that we continue to help alums. Look for more

Ithaca CollegeEnvironmental StudiesNewsletter 2008 Volume 2

Todd Ashley - Student Editor w Michael Smith - Faculty Editor w www.ithaca.edu/esp

information on this very soon! We’ve also started our Environmental Seminar Series in the Fall. This gives students a chance to meet working professionals and learn about various career choices. We brought a few alumni in last fall, and would love to invite more back in the future.

As many of you know from the incessant pestering emails, we have undertaken our first-ever program review. This has been an opportunity to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the current program, and to plan for a future that will bring both faculty and students more opportunities, fulfilling experiences, and stronger academics. Input from current and former students has been invaluable in the process, and we want to thank each of you for your thoughtful input to the process. We now have outlined our mission, vision, values and goals, as well as developed a 30-page action plan for how to get where we would like to go. In early March, three faculty members from other ES programs around the country visited campus, talked to all of us and the administration, and will give us feedback on our action plan. A special thanks to Jason Hamilton, Lisa Paciulli, Janet Reohr, Bodhi Rogers, Michael Smith, and Susan Swensen for countless hours spent working alone and together on this large task. At the end of this process, we will be able to share with you what we have in mind. Just let me say – it is very exciting! Newsletter 2009?

As always, we would love to hear from you. Tell us what you are doing, and how we can help you. Better yet, come visit!

All the best always-

Susan Allen-GilESP Coordinator

IC Environmental News

Also in the fall 2008 semester a new course targeted at both environmental studies and science majors was introduced. ENVS 40100 provides exposure to a variety of careers in the environmental field by bringing in outside speakers to describe their careers and experiences in their professions. Speakers ranged from Rick Otis ‘76 (deputy associate administrator of the EPA) to Rob Garrity (project manager at altPOWER, a solar installer). This is a new requirement for environmental science majors and will be offered every fall semester.

Environmental Seminar

In the fall ‘08 semester Ithaca College was honored to have Peter Singer visit as a “Distinguished Speaker in the Humanities.” The

event was held on December 6 where Peter presented “The Ethics of What We Eat”. He has been an important figure in the animal and human rights movement since his revolutionary book, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals. For more information on Peter Singer visit his website: www.princeton.edu/~psinger/index.htm

The Ethics of What We Eat

Susan says “Peace!”

In January the new home of the School of Business at Ithaca College opened for classes. The 38,000-square-foot facility, designed as a model of sustainable enterprise and learning will hopefully earn Leed Platinum Certification after the required one-year monitoring period.

Sustainable Business

Finger Lakes E n v i r o n m e n t a l Film Festival 2008 continues the tradition of

interrogating environmental issues in all their messy heterogeneity. The festival streams are: camouflage, counterpoint, gaming, and gastronomical. Over 100 events, on campus and in downtown venues, include film directors, silent film with live music, artistic exhibitions, independently produced films from 30 countries, poetry and prose readings, forums, mini-courses, master classes, lots of music, and numerous galas and gatherings. All on-campus events are free and open to the public. March 31-April 6, check out www.ithaca.edu/fleff/ Keep up the good work Tom! (Tom Shevory is the co-director of FLEFF and also teaches environmental politics.)

Thanks to ICES, Earth Week this year is sure to please any e n v i r o n m e n t a l l y conscious mind. Events include a global warming discussion hosted by the executive director of Greenpeace, a discussion of Native American environmentalism with IC’s own Brooke Hansen, a screening and discussion of the film The 11th Hour with the filmmakers, a vegetarian teach-in, and a presentation from Benjamin Dangle, the author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars in Bolivia. To get a full lineup of events for Earth Week, check out www.ithaca.edu/ices/.

Earth Week, April 21-25

The Sustainable Café Series continued offering a wide variety of speakers this year. There are events scheduled throughout the semester and the series will be an important part of the IC environmental community again next year. Thanks to Marian Brown of the Provost’s office! For a list of future speakers go to www.ithaca.edu/sustainability/outreach_cafes.php

Sustainable Café

environmental studies program was blessed this year with the hiring of Susanne Weitz as the ESP Administrat ive Assistant. On Tuesdays and T h u r s d a y s , Susanne can be found in the little office inside CNS 232. Her background as a children’s librarian and book reviewer is obvious from the environment-related picture books on the shelves. She enjoys cooking for the student lunches and frequent baking, so feel free to stop in to sample the fattening-stuff du jour. (While you’re there, say hello to the ESP tiger who lives on top of her computer.) Susanne’s grandma-like behavior is misleading: her two kids are still in college—her son’s a theatre education major at Fredonia and her daughter, a psychology major, is transferring to New Paltz in the fall.

Susanne is in every Tuesday and Thursday from dawn to dusk (well, almost). She can help you with access to room 207, course permission forms, event planning, ESP t-shirts and hoodies, and anything else environmental studies…just ask; you can contact her at 284-1822 or sweitz@ithaca.edu.

ESP Welcomes Susanne WeitzThe

The environmental studies program had a new graphic and its newsletter designed by Josh Sperling of Line D-Zine. (joshsperling@gmail.com) The design is available on organic T-shirts and sweatshirts. For ordering/size information, contact Sussanne Weitz at sweitz@ithaca.edu or (607) 274-1822.

ESP Graphics

Ithaca College Environmental Studies

The environmental studies Program celebrated its second annual Fall “Family” Dinner on November 7 at EcoVillage in recognition of all the hard work the ESP faculty does for the students. The second annual Spring “Family” Dinner will be held again at Ecovillage on April 17 to recognize graduating seniors. Both dinners are potluck-style with the fall dinner organized by the students and the spring dinner organized by the faculty.

Environmental Studies Dinners

Leann grew up in the suburbs of Maryland near Washington, D.C. She left Maryland for Dartmouth College where she double m a j o r e d in religion and environmental and evolutionary biology in 1998. Leann then moved to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst where she earned a M.Sc. and then a Ph.D. (in 2005) from the interdisciplinary program in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. Her doctoral research focused on tracking Virginia opossums in Amherst to understand how they survive winters.- Her first teaching job was at Siena College in Albany, where she taught for two years before she came to IC. Leann has extensive experience tracking animals; her first job was herding sheep for a study on whether sterilizing coyotes reduces the rate of predation on livestock. She has also tracked carnivores in such diverse locals ranging from multi-million dollar estates in Los Angeles to a mountaintop araucaria forest in Chile.

Leann is a self-described “sci-fi geek,” and also a bookworm. She is into carpentry, sewing, and cooking. Leann will be teaching Field Biology next fall and can be found in her office – CNS 159.

ESP Welcomes Leann Kanda

Caleb Campbell, Kristen Handerhan, Victoria Fiordalis, and Samantha Puchacz examine sources about the

Morse Chain Company at the History Center

Doing Local Environmental History: Developing a Sense of Place andEcological Citizenship

Michael Smith, assistant professor of History

In spring of 2005 I began rethinking the course I love most to teach. Four years of teaching the History of American Environmental Thought had yielded generally satisfying learning outcomes and generally satisfied students. Yet my students had expressed to me on both course evaluations and in person that the material often seemed remote from their lives. The environmental changes that have so dramatically affected the social, political, and economic landscape of this country since Europeans arrived in North America seemed abstract. How could I make the course material seem less abstract? When a student wrote on her/his evaluation in spring 2005, “I personally would enjoy the encouragement and even force of [sic] asking us or requiring from us research on many of these topics . . .,” I began thinking about this project: How might a research assignment into local environmental history lead to more enduring learning in this course? Several meetings with the staff at the History Center in Tompkins County confirmed that this local institution could provide the resources for such an assignment. All that remained were the logistics.

With initial support from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the provost’s office, and the environmental studies program, this project has flourished for five semesters. Working in teams of three or four, the students in the course engage in research in the archives of the History Center. The students are participating in a service-learning partnership with this important community institution by helping the History Center identify elements of their collection for a future exhibit on local environmental history. The students’ charge is to develop a research question based on their own curiosity about some feature of the local built or natural environment. For three months they examine relevant sources from the History Center collection, refining their questions with the help of the staff. Finally, each group presents its findings at a public event, sharing research with the local community. Among the topics these student research groups have explored are the history of the 1935 flood in Ithaca, the 1903 typhoid epidemic, the industrial legacies of both the Morse Chain Company

and Ithaca Gun, and the evolution of land use patterns on West Hill.

Students have reported on both their course evaluations and in their final research report that working on the local environmental history project was among the most meaningful experiences they have had in their time at Ithaca College. They develop research, organization, and public speaking skills that will serve them well long after they leave Ithaca College. But even more importantly, almost all of the students felt more connected to the larger community of Ithaca as a result of their work at the History Center. This was one of my main goals for the experience. Let me conclude not with my own summary of student experiences but with a few of their own words.

“It is not often that students get a chance to directly work with the community outside of Ithaca College. I am a sophomore and I have not had much experience at all with the outside community. I know my way around but I knew very little about the place that I am living in, working in, learning in, and playing in. I have been very secure in my college ‘bubble’, and I definitely have felt a bit disconnect between my college life and the town. Working at the History Center gave me an opportunity to change this, and now I feel that the gap has closed and not only do I know more about the community but I am interested in continuing my discoveries.”

“Learning about local history in Ithaca has absolutely changed my perspective of this town. In fact, even being able to come down into the town of Ithaca a few days during the semester have [sic] helped me to

Ithaca College Environmental Studies

develop a connection to Ithaca that is separate from the college. My part of the presentation focused on the lasting pollution in Ithaca today; this made me very aware of one of the socio-political problems in town, and has even linked me politically to Ithaca. I recently changed my voting registration using my Ithaca address so that I can participate in the local elections. . . . I am much more invested in Ithaca because I understand a little more about Ithaca’s historical identity. In fact, it has become part of my own historical identity.”

Faculty News and Notes

Susan Allen-Gil is on the international beat this year. She taught a course in Tropical Ecology last spring that spent a couple of weeks in Costa Rica. More recently, she recently received a grant from NATO to convene a workshop on how higher education can better serve transitional governments to provide environmental security for their populations. Closer to home, Susan and her family are in the process of putting 27 solar panels in their roof!

For the past year and a half, Marlene Barken has been collaborating with Beth Pallo, environmental sciences ‘06 graduate, on a study of mercury in tuna. Beth is currently an asssistant scientist at Advion BioSciences, Inc. in Ithaca. Beth presented the research at the Whalen Symposium in 2006, and at the “Faculty Diversity & Environmental Justice Research Symposium” sponsored by the University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and Environment, June 7-9, 2007. Marlene and Beth are currently revising the paper, “Is Tuna Toxic? An Evaluation of the FDA/EPA 2004 Advisory on Mercury in Fish and Shellfish,” for inclusion in the compendium of talks presented at the symposium.

This is the second year for Akiko Fillinger to work with Julian Halfmann (environmental science ’08 with biology concentration) on the research project of competitive heavy metal intake by plants. Jonathan Hershenson (chemistry ’09) and Akiko have converted frying oil used in Ithaca College dining halls to biodiesel and started to tackle biodiesel accreditation as a 5-to-10 year project. In July, Akiko and her husband Chris adopted a 23-lb Katrina victim, an orange tabby cat named Fred (who will be on a diet in hopes of getting

his weight to under 20 lbs), after they lost their 17-year-old white shorthair cat, Toughy.

Jason Hamilton has been focusing heavily on sustainability education. He consulted for two days at Cal State Fullerton, where he helped them develop a sustainability proposal for the president. He has given talks on sustainability to several groups including Rockland Community College, Catholic Charities, and two Episcopal congregations. Jason is developing a program in wilderness mentoring and awareness. Working with the Wilderness Mentoring Guild and Primitive Pursuits, he is exploring how primitive technologies, wilderness craft, tracking, and naturalist studies can be incorporated into the environmental studies curriculum to enhance student learning.

Leann Kanda joined Ithaca College this fall as the new animal ecologist. In addition to setting up her lab and settling into teaching here, she has inadvertently become the webmaster and a founding member for a new professional community working on the development of tracking and remote sensing technologies for biological research. This September, Leann was able to celebrate the first week in over two years in which she did not drive at least a thousand miles. She is delighted to be at IC, and she is also proud that she has not yet had a nervous breakdown.

Lisa Paciulli co-taught (with Renè Borgella) a course on Primate & Bird Behavior and Ecology in Panamá last winter. Among her 2007 publications her essay “Evolution of the Human Mind” appeared in the volume Darwin Day, Evolutionary Psychology, and Evolution and Human Nature, R.M. Ross and W.D. Allmon (eds.) She is supervising environmental studies student Sara Holmes on her Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-sponsored undergraduate environmental research initiative. Sara will be investigating the Morse Chain Company factory and associated contamination issues across the street from the main entrance of campus. At home, Lisa is making plans to convert to pellet-stove heating.

Michael “Bodhi” Rogers is swimming in the successes of his grant proposal writing efforts. The National Science Foundation awarded him and co-investigator Luke Keller (IC physics) $150,000 to study how students learn in general education science classes when these classes are taught in an active-learning style. The NSF

Ithaca College Environmental Studies

Green Harvest?Tobacco and Deforestation in Tanzania

David Ross 2004

After graduating from Ithaca College’s environmental studies program in 2004, I began working for a local renewable-energy company following a solar internship during my senior year. My concentration was in ecology and sustainable development, the latter of which I continued to pursue through two more years of solar work in San Francisco. I spent the summers cycling around Europe, practicing and preaching a sustainable lifestyle and working on various farms. It was in a community in France where I met the rocket stove guru who updated me on the plight of East Africa’s forests, which I had seen first-hand while studying abroad in 2003. He told me he needed someone to start up a rocket barn project in the Tabora region of Tanzania, and it wasn’t long before we met again in Malawi for a two-week training.

In Malawi I learned the principles of curing tobacco, the design of a traditional curing barn, and how with a few simple steps you could make a very efficient alternative: the Rocket Barn. Using only bricks, wood, and thatch, as well as concrete and rebar for a foundation and metal sheeting for a chimney, one can dramatically reduce the amount of wood needed in curing the tobacco. The difference lies not in the materials, but in the efficiency of the heat transfer, where the furnace is placed, and the ventilation method.

In a Rocket Barn, the length of the barn is extended along an axis of the prevailing wind, allowing for better ventilation. The furnace is inside the wall closest to the wind and uses in part Rocket Stove principles, with two slots that meet in a single chamber, the top slot for wood and the bottom one for air. When a fire is lit, air is pulled from under the wood, increasing combustion and efficiency. Above the length of the furnace in the

Alumni

also awarded him and co-investigator Jack Rossen (IC Anthropology) funds to purchase a suite of ground-based remote sensing instruments. Ithaca College is now one of only a handful of academic institutions in the United States that has all of these instruments in one laboratory.

Tom Shevory continued in his role as co-director of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (with Patricia Zimmermann). The Festival convened 150 events in 2007, including film screenings, poetry and prose readings, art installations, live music events with archival film, and presentations by scholars, screenwriters, and directors. Aside from fleff, he pursued a series of teaching and writing projects related to environmental politics defined broadly.

Michael Smith and his wife Kristen Brennan welcomed their second son, Isaiah, into the world in April-without question the highlight of the year. With his History of American Environmental Thought class. he continues to develop the local environmental history project with the History Center in Tompkins County. The project is now in its fifth semester (see related story on pg. 5). Drawing on the student learning in this project he is also working on a book manuscript with other scholars of teaching and learning around the country. It is tentatively called “Citizenship Across the Curriculum.”

Sandra Steingraber, a visiting scholar within the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies, provided a Congressional briefing on Capitol Hill based on her new publication, “The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls: What We Know, What We Need to Know.” She is working with a Canadian film company on the adaptation of her book, Living Downstream, for a one-hour documentary. Next fall, she will give a plenary address at the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael.

Susan Swensen discovered the fun of competing in team triathalons during the summer of 2007 and continues to pursue cycling as a means of transportation and fitness. She and her collaborators published an article in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society describing the biological diversity of plant-feeding flies in the tropics. She is part of two notable committees this year: the committee to devise a plan to meet Ithaca College’s Climate Commitment

and the search committee that will select the next president of the college.

wall is another air vent, drawing preheated air above the furnace and through the tobacco towards the opposite side of the barn, where a single gap allows it to escape. Meanwhile, the smoke of the furnace is drawn through brick channels down the length of the floor of the barn, allowing for a slow and constant heat transfer into the barn, exiting vertically through a single metal pipe at the back wall. An additional, larger pipe is mounted above the smaller one, overlapping above the gap in the back wall where the moisture is escaping so that a vacuum is created and the moisture pulled efficiently out of the barn.

What may sound highly technical is actually quite straightforward and simple. Yet the task of introducing and managing a project like this, throughout skeptical communities of central Tanzania who had never seen a Rocket Barn—and who spoke no English—was certainly more complex. In this first year, our goals were to build 60 barns in a wide radius from Tabora town, across the Tabora region, so that by next year word of the tremendous fuel savings could spread in every direction. With full community and industry support, we could then build upwards of 300 barns, with the idea that by the following year, locals would replicate the design on their own and, with time, Rocket Barns everywhere would replace traditional barns.

Tabora is a dusty, parched landscape of rolling hills, thorny bushes and few trees, with rainfall coming only a few months a year. A few decades ago, forests thrived along with abundant wildlife, yet with population pressures and the increase both in subsistence farming and tobacco production, an ecologically rich region has been transformed into shrub land. The region has for centuries been the homeland of the Wanyamwezi people, while what is today’s town of Tabora evolved in the 1700s from being the convenient halfway point for Arab slave-drivers who were ferrying slaves from the Congo to Tanzania’s coastline. Today, there is still a minority Arab population who control most of the town’s businesses, while the Wanyamwezi remain largely impoverished in town and throughout the region. Houses of crumbling mud bricks are small

and families large, yet the people continue to survive on about a dollar a day.

Upon arrival in Tabora, the first step of the project was to hold information sessions (in Swahili) for tribal elders and tobacco managers in 10 villages in every direction, relaying the building techniques, fuel savings, and parameters of the project. Because a key to effective development work is to collaborate with locals and create ownership of a given project rather than handouts, much of the labor and raw materials (bricks, wood, and thatch) would be the responsibility of the farmer, while the more specialized materials and labor would be project costs. While this was initially met with groans, local investment is the only thing that makes capacity-building possible.

After 60 of the most reliable farmers were chosen, I spent some time adapting the Malawi design to using local materials and brick dimensions. My next task was to hire the builders, carpenters, specialty brick-makers, metalworkers for the chimneys, and to enlist the help of tobacco managers who might help with giving progress updates from the field. Yet the day-to-day jobs became at times a labyrinth of logistics, traveling one or two hours into the bush, on paths that could scarcely be called dirt road, to coordinate the arrival of a 10-ton truck full of bricks that might need to be off-loaded, or making sure that the concrete lintels

were dry enough for use the following morning. As few had cell phones—or electric access to charge them—and with the coverage unreliable, driving was often the only option for communication.

On a given day, I would get in the truck with my driver-cum-field supervisor Juma, and we would pick up a ton of gravel from a hilly part of town where nearly everyone is employed crushing rocks by hammer. After loading up on rebar and cement, we would drop off the materials to the lintel-maker (lintels are used to support the weight of materials above a span, like a doorway), about a half hour outside town in an area where 20 barns were under construction. There we would visit the furnace brickmaker and the carpenter,

David with Juma in front of the Rocket Barn

Hello all!

My name is Andrew Bernier ‘07, host and producer of the new radio program on 91.7 FM WICB called “Your Impact.” The show is designed to inform listeners on how make their wallet fatter, the planet a little healthier, and the community a little happier. The show started as an idea for a grant contest for MTV’s/GE’s Ecomagination challenge, which would give $25,000 to the winner and have their idea put into action on campus. I put the show proposal together with help from Marian Brown, special assistant to the provost, and Christopher Wheatley, manager of radio operations. After many grueling hours of planning, drafting and writing, the proposal was not accepted by MTV and GE. Still I was determined to see this show come to fruition. I made adjustments to the show during the rest of senior year. I chose to stay in Ithaca for a year after graduation, making this show one of my projects. During the summer of 2007, I decided the show would be called “Your Impact”, homing in on the point that “every decision you make, be it social, environmental, or economic, they all add up to be your impact”, and that line went on to be the tag line for the show. To put on an hour-long show featuring three different segments by one person is a recipe for failure, so as soon as students came back for classes, I quickly started recruiting help. At one 91.7 FM all-staff meeting, I pitched the show idea. After the meeting, just about everyone walked out, until a girl on crutches hobbled over to me. Jessica Lipscomb, a sophomore transfer student brand new to radio, said she was interested. Immediately I sent her the materials, gave her some simple assignments and put her into action. With only two people working on the show, it took us a month of prep time. Hours before our first show on October 7, we were still running around trying to get things together, and then had to contend with one of our live interview guests not showing up. Quickly we had to record a random student walking by who just happened to live in the sustainably conscious living community and to use that as a segment. Not exactly professional. The show went through some rough patches, but we made it. I like to call it our “trial run”.

Since then, we have done two more shows featuring various topics on green houseware to an interview with an alumnus who works for the EPA, Richard Otis ‘76. We have also added two more people to our staff -- and are still looking for more. The quality of the shows has definitely improved with the extra hands. It’s hectic, fun, and a new, innovative way to learn about Your Impact, airing at 5:00 p.m. every first Sunday of the month on 91.7 FM WICB and online at www.wicb.org.

Hoping you’ll tune in, Andrew Bernier ‘07

picking up however many bricks, doors or windows were prepared and ready to be dropped off at the sites we were going to visit. If a farmer had just finished burning his bricks, we would string out the barn’s footprint together with the farmer or his children for the construction to begin. We might check on 10 barns in a long morning, under a sweltering sun, before taking a shady lunch at a farmer’s home, five hands to a communal pot.

Balancing working on 60 different sites was strenuous not only because of the remote locations, but because without showing my face and pleading for work to continue, motivation levels and progress would simply plummet. Convincing farmers to prepare bricks as early as May was itself a challenge, because convention is to make them in August. There were issues of site material theft—both by the farmers themselves and by my workers—but generally progress was steady and ongoing. Getting farmers to stick to any promises of a timely completion was futile, but patience is something that I begrudgingly learned.

I returned home in October 2007 after finishing work in Tabora, exhausted and with a newfound appreciation for America’s luxuries (like paved roads). Yet I am eagerly awaiting the results from this season’s cure, which will occur in February 2008, and hope that the farmers throughout the region take to the Rocket Barn technology. If the project is a success, in the short-term, Tanzania’s forests may be spared the immediate fate of Malawi. More likely, however, it will give or provide an extra decade of buffer for Tanzanians to discover alternate income-generating activities that are sustainable. You can read the full story about David’s experience in Tanzania on the ESP website.

Your Impact on WICB

Ithaca College Environmental Studies

Todd AshleyMajor: environmental studies w/ concentration in sustainable outdoor educationHometown: Cooperstown, NYInterests/activities: sports, shoe-golf, brewing beer, mushroom cultivation/mycology; ICNL summer intern, South Hill sugarbush assessment, FLPCI Apprentice, ESP Student Representative.Post-college: moving to the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica to start a sustainable workshop school and research center.

Dan CarriónMajor: environmental studies w/ concentration in social context of environmentalismMinor: economicsHometown: Garrison, NYInterests/activities: green roof research for the past two years, presented at NCUR 2008, Dominican Republic research on popular political education and political economy and environmental impacts of free tradePost-college: Camping alot

Brendan CaseyMajor: environmental studies w/concentration in environmental law and policyMinor: legal studies Hometown: Clinton, NJInterests: brewing beer, playing the drums, cleaning, JazzercisePost-college: law school, Teach For America, or Peace Corps

Jennifer ChenMajor: environmental studies and politics w/concentration in applying sustainabilityMinor: italianHometown: North Haven, CTInterests/activities: snowboarding, my cat Zara, REMP, ICES, three years of research for Jason Hamilton.

Rebecca DeVriesMajor: Environmental Science w/ concentration in AnthropologyHometown: Mahwah, NJInterests/activities: hiking, sailing. Americorps, 2007

Recycler of the Year-Rockland County, Eili Segal Education Award, volunteer at the Science Center, School of International Training-Australia.

Kristen Handerhan Major: environmental studies w/ concentration in social and environmental justice Minor: politicsHometown: Wellesley, MAInterests/activities: working with Sustainable Tompkins to create database for the City of Ithaca’s Sustainability Map; worked with LEED-ND and the town of Ithaca to determine feasibility of having Ithaca Southwest site LEED-ND certifiedPost-college: Move to San Francisco and hopefully find a job and a place to live.

Jack HaurinMajor: environmental studies w/concentration in Social Inequality StudiesMinor: politicsHometown: Doylestown, PAInterests/Activivites: GreenStar, REMP, ICES; this one time I traveled to the Dominican Republic with a class full of my peers to learn from a social justice movementPost-college: I plan to move with spontaneity.

Robyn JenningsMajor: environmental studies w/concentration in nature as a human expressionMinor: art history and writingHometown: Chicago, ILInterests/activities: I enjoy cooking, camping and 1980s work-out videos. I interned with The Wilderness Society in Washington D.C.Post-college: By working for the SCA (Student Conservation Association), I am hoping to expand the young minds of America by teaching them about conservation and nature.

Julian HalfmannMajor: environmental science w/concentration in biologyMinor: germanHometown: Berlin, GermanyInterests/activities: four-year rower on varsitycrew team; four semesters of research in chemistry w/ Akiko Fillinger: Reduction of Carrot’s Heavy Metal Uptake

Graduating Seniors

Ithaca College Environmental Studies

Post-college: work in Utah this summer with the United States Forest Service on the fire engine crew; Attend Graduate School for B.S. in forestry and land management in January 2009

Emma Kluge Major: environmental science w/ concentration in anthropologyHometown: North Salem, NYInterests/activities: hiking, cycling, camping, traveling, music, volunteer firefighter.Post-college: backpacking the Oregon coast in the summer and working on starting a non-profit organization that would allow me to bike from NY to Washington State and give informative presentations along the way on environmental issues. I also want to go back to school for elementary education so I can teach

Andrew MullenMajor: environmental science and biologyHometown: Darien, CTInterests: spent two years at Ithaca researching the effect of bacteria infection on tissue repair in the lab of Dr. Kirwin Providence. In the summer of 2007 I received a fellowship to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas to study the molecular genetics of programmed cell death.

Kara ObergMajor: environmental studies w/concentration in sustainable urban designHometown: Southington, CTInterests/activities: I have been working with Susan Allen-Gil trying to use energy produced from the stationary bikes in the gym. I have also worked with Chris O’Keefe and Kristen Kanderhan as a part of our Sustainable Cities course; we went through the LEED Neighborhood Design Document and compared it to the Southwest Mission Statement to determine their feasibility for certification. Post-college: Moving to Europe and traveling for a year after graduation

Chris O’KeefeMajor: environmental studies w/ concentration in sustainable energy developmentMinor: spanishHometown: Berwyn, PAInterests/activivites: playing guitar, film. I have been

fortunate enough to spend eight months interning with Renovus Energy in downtown Ithaca and gaining an immense amount of knowledge and skills in working with renewables. I have also really enjoyed doing some research work for Beth Ellen Clark in trying to formulate a game plan for helping IC to lower its greenhouse gas emissions.Post-college: after I graduate I plan on pursuing a career in the Renewable Energy field on the East Coast. I have already found a prospective employer, but I hope to leave IC with my options open.

Joshua SmithMajor: environmental studies w/concentration in the environment and resource managmentMinor: sociologyHometown: Richland, NYInterests/activities: I am interested in the lawenforcement part of ES,; internship at the Salmon River Fish Hatchery.Post-college: I would like to become either an Environmental Conservation Officer or, because of my internship, I wouldn’t mind working at a fish hatchery for a while.

Nicole StumpfMajor: environmental studies w/concentration in educationMinor: humanities and sciences honors Hometown: Milford, NJInterests/activities: environmental education, media literacy, and resource and environmental management; Gilbane intern for new business building; REMP,ICES-secretary/co-vp, organic garden management,Sustainable Living Community, research for media literacy curriculum on media constructions of global warming; semester abroad in New ZealandPost-college: Go to the Dominican Republic for three weeks to work with community organizations, possibly go on for masters in education, and maybe teach yoga at Todd’s eco-lodge in Costa Rica

Nick Valvo Major: environmental studiesMinor: anthropology Hometown: West Seneca, NYInterests/activities: playing baseball and any outdoor activities-hiking, camping, fishing, hunting. My ecology class planted a forest farm on South Hill behind the towers. I have done a couple research

projects on primates at the Syracuse zoo. I studied abroad in Greece for a semester and traveled to Italy, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland.

James ViolaMajor: Environmental science w/ concentration in anthropologyHometown: Massapequa, NYInterests/activities: surfing, photography, hiking Capstone: synthesizing population estimates for the four endemic endangered primate species of the Mentawai Islands, IndonesiaPost-college: traveling Europe for a month; after that I plan to get a job doing field research, then grad school

James Walker:Major: environmental studies w/concentration in sustainabilityHometown: Midland Park, NJInterests/activities: cross-country and track, various projects in Newfield with NTFPs and on South Hill with invasive species removal

David WidmerMajor: environmental scienceHometown: Woodstock, ILInterests/activities: soccer, hiking, consuming energy, baling hay, growing tallerPost-college: A) Teaching in China, B) Argentina, C ) Moving to San Francisco. My life plan is time for personal development,then pursue ecological design/architecture.

Environmental Studies ProgramIthaca College 953 Danby Rd.Ithaca NY, 14850

Ithaca College Environmental Studieswww.ithaca.edu/esp