by Tony Moore
April 22 is Earth Day, the worldwide celebration of the planet we call home. At Dickinson this year, Get Out and Gather, hosted by the Center for Sustainability Education (CSE), is an event designed to build community and safely bring people together—in person.
The event invites Dickinson community members to gather on Morgan Field Thursday, April 22, at 4:30 to celebrate Earth Day and announce the winners of the 2021 EcoChallenge, a campuswide sustainability-focused challenge that pits residence halls against each other and against other campuses.
The event features a short (one-mile) journey around campus and Carlisle—easily undertaken on foot, bike, scooter or any other sustainable mode of transportation. The walk will include challenges that enter participants into a raffle.
Also worthy of celebration is Dickinson achieving yet another STARS gold rating from AASHE, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.
The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System measures sustainability across metrics such as a campus’s academic offerings, buildings, research, engagement and air and climate. Dickinson has been gold each year since first receiving the rating for the first time in 2011, and the rating is just one of many sustainability accolades the college has earned.
Another facet of the Earth Day celebration are two weeks of events planned by the Carlisle Climate Action Plan’s community engagement team. The events feature a webinar on do-it-yourself sustainability and another on air pollution and the COVID-19 pandemic. A downtown clean-up event is planned for Thursday, April 22, and Friday, April 23, brings the Climate Justice for All Rally and Climate Jeopardy! hosted by Professor of Physics Hans Pfister, which will be held on the Carlisle Climate Action Plan's Facebook page at 4 p.m.
Published April 20, 2021