Sustainability Champions

Marie-Noelle Nwokolo

Marie-Noelle Nwokolo '16. Photo by Carl Socolow '77.

Dickinsonians honored for separate sustainability initiatives

by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson

A statewide environmental organization honored two Dickinsonians for their work in global and local sustainability. Marie-Noelle Nwokolo ’16 and Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring (ALLARM) Director Julie Vastine ’03 were named 2015 Campus Sustainability Champions by The Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium (PERC) during the organization’s fall conference.

Founded in 2010 to help Pennsylvania colleges and universities share knowledge about how to protect natural resources and implement positive change, the PERC Campus Sustainability Champions award is bestowed on students, faculty or staff members at partnering colleges and institutions across Pennsylvania who have meaningfully contributed to social, economic and/or environmental sustainability on campus and beyond.

Nwokolo was recognized for organizing a series of on-campus screenings and discussions of Poverty Inc., a documentary on global-aid systems. An international business & management major and service trip volunteer, Nwokolo had viewed the documentary while attending Harvard Business School’s Africa Business Conference, and she presented the screenings and panel at Dickinson to spark a campuswide conversation around global social justice and the economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability.

ALLARM Executive Director Julie Vastine accepts the PERC Sustainability Champions Award during an Oct. 9 ceremony.

ALLARM Director Julie Vastine '03 accepts the PERC Sustainability Champions award during an Oct. 9 ceremony.

Vastine was honored for her work with ALLARM, a Dickinson program that works to monitor, protect and restore local waterways. Through that work, she provides training and technical support to student and community volunteers as they collect and analyze water samples from the LeTort Spring Run, Conodoguinet Creek, Susquehanna River, Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean.

PERC accepts just two Campus Champion nominations each year from each of its member institutions across, and Dickinson is one of only two colleges and universities statewide to claim both a student and a non-student awardee in 2015. The award ceremony marked the second significant event joining Dickinson and PERC within recent years. In 2014, Justin McCarty ’15 and Anna McGinn ’14 organized the first PERC student-research symposium, allowing students from different colleges and universities to share original research and initiatives related to sustainability.

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Published October 19, 2015