Sustaining Success

Sustainability education coordinator's impressive resume matches her agenda

March 17, 2009

Sarah Brylinsky, Dickinson's new sustainability education coordinator, is a vegetarian eco-feminist Pittsburgh Steelers fan whose interests include rugby, singing, target shooting, jazz saxophone and oil painting.

Sarah Brylinsky's 3.99 GPA at Ithaca College should include an asterisk.

"It's a funny story," said Brylinsky, Dickinson College's new sustainability education coordinator in the Center for Environmental & Sustainability Education. She was cruising toward a perfect 4.0 GPA until her last semester at Ithaca, when she took a course with a professor who emphasized that students should be skeptical of reports of global warming. As part of the course, students were required to watch, outside of class, a climate-change video featuring the late Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain and, in 2004, State of Fear. The University of Illinois at Chicago researcher whose findings were cited in State of Fear wrote in a New York Times op-ed, "Our results have been misused as 'evidence' against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel."

"My only B was in a course I academically disagreed with," Brylinsky said. "This is something I feel very strongly about, and I didn't feel was a sound part of our curriculum."

So when questions skeptical of global warming came up on tests, "I opted to refrain from answering those questions," she said. "I wrote on every test, 'I don't feel this is part of a scientific curriculum.' "

Like many social scientists, Brylinsky is committed to the assertion—inconvenient or otherwise—that if climate change is not a crisis, it could become one if humans don't alter their impact on the environment. Under those circumstances, she's proud of her 3.99 GPA in more ways than she would have been with a 4.0 GPA that ignored her moral compass.

Raising awareness

Brylinsky brings that same devotion to her role of raising awareness about sustainability at Dickinson. Ask her about goals and plans, and she offers a litany without hesitation.

She'd like the Center for Environmental & Sustainability Education's name changed to something catchier, and she wants to make sure everyone on campus utilizes the center and its resources.

"I am not an expert on every topic, but I am an expert at becoming one," she said.

Don't doubt her. Brylinsky has a track record of success in a range of fields that extends beyond sustainability. She is, among other things, a vegetarian eco-feminist Pittsburgh Steelers fan who plays rugby, sings in the college choir (alto and second soprano), shoots .22-caliber rifles in competition, plays jazz saxophone and dabbles in oil painting.

Quick learner

Brylinsky is no late bloomer to good citizenship, and her mother's assertion to a newspaper that her daughter came out of the womb fully engaged is not far from the truth.

Born in Berwick, Pa., Brylinsky attended an International Peace Summit at age 12. Three years later she began organizing events through a youth philanthropy board affiliated with the Central Susquehanna Community Foundation. She organized more than 25 community events in Pennsylvania and New York.

While at Ithaca College, she was the resident assistant in the Sustainably Conscious Living Community—the equivalent of Dickinson's Center for Sustainable Living (Treehouse). During her junior year at Ithaca, Brylinsky coordinated education activities for 60 students at the Sustainably Conscious Living Community, where low-flush toilets, compost piles, short showers and clothes-drying racks ruled. Thanks to the promotional efforts of Brylinsky and other resident assistants, 140 students applied to live there during her senior year.

To add to her resumé, Brylinsky received the 2008 Student Sustainability Leadership Award from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. (Read her application to learn more.)

Sustainable curriculum

At Dickinson, Brylinsky would like to see components of sustainability incorporated into every discipline within five years. The infusion could be as simple as using climate change data in calculus questions. "Even if you get the math wrong you still learn something about climate change," she said.

Theatre & dance students could put on productions that promote local sustainability and use environmentally friendly set design and lighting.

"You don't need 'sustainability' in the title to make a point," she said. "The ultimate vision is to ensure that every student who graduates from Dickinson comes away with an education that prepares them to be responsible and sustainable citizens."

Brylinsky, who plans to pursue graduate studies in eco-feminism, already has spoken to students and faculty with similar interests at Dickinson.

"If you look at cases of contemporary environmental disasters, you realize it is women in communities who have to deal with disasters first," she said. "They have to deal with children being poisoned by water systems, not having the resources that they need available, infrastructure failing and then having to provide things at home and having fewer food resources because of climate changes. It is women predominantly who have to deal with those issues first."

Brylinsky said another short-term goal is to heighten awareness about the college's Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP) committee, which plans to present its agenda on campus next month.

"The CCAP will affect purchasing policies, building plans, educational outreach—many, many facets of how the college prioritizes its growth and maintenance," said Brylinsky, a member of the committee. "It's important for the campus not to fear undue financial hardship because of the CCAP, but understand that it will in fact save us money in the long run in addition to making us environmental stewards."

Brylinsky received a bachelor of arts degree in communication management and design from Ithaca College in December, with minors in environmental studies and women's studies. She earned an asterisk-free 4.0 GPA in both minors.