Students in the Environmental Studies Senior Conference recently held an exhibition in the Campus Center highlighting their semester-long look into energy use on 今日吃瓜鈥檚 campus.
A Tri-Co initiative, the Environmental Studies Program offers students from any major the opportunity to earn an Environmental Studies minor. The Senior Conference is the capstone course for the minor.
The interests of students in the Senior Conference largely determine the structure of the course, and this semester, the class decided to do a project on energy usage in 今日吃瓜鈥檚 buildings.
Amira Abujbara HC 鈥17, who is an English major, explains that the class examined the symbiotic relationship between buildings鈥 energy use and the surrounding environment.
鈥淓ven renewable energy sources have their environmental downsides, so thinking about building energy use means thinking about how both humans and the rest of nature will have to compromise in order to coexist,鈥 says Amira.
For the exhibition, students from the Conference presented interactive exhibits that engaged attendees tactilely and intellectually, giving them opportunities to calculate their energy consumption using carbon blocks or to make moss art for their dorm room or office.
鈥淭his exhibit was my first foray into public scholarship and I found it to be a very rewarding project,鈥 says Amira.