On Thursday, May 10, we hosted Mr. Sebastian Stelios Jannelli. Mr. Jannelli talked of his time with Green Peace, the largest, nonprofit, environmental organization in the world, which is based in over 40 countries. It was founded in 1971 and helped spark the modern environmental movement. Mr. Jannelli was the editor-in-chief for its magazine and told donors how their gifts helped Green Peace take action.

Mr. Jannelli’s first interaction with the organization was in Greece, when they implemented a turtle protection program. During college, Mr. Jannelli studied Political Science and a Green Peace video that his professor showed in class changed his life. He loves that Green Peace was and is willing to put its lives on the line to protect the planet. Mr. Jannelli also proudly supports Green Peace for being an organization that can take nonviolent, direct action to help the planet.

Mr. Jannelli elaborated on Green Peace’s former campaigns, such as orca/whale killing and rain forest protection. Right now, Green Peace is focused on curbing climate change, by targeting arctic oil. Another priority campaign for the organization is the protection of pollinators.

Here at UD, Mr. Jannelli hopes that we can establish native meadows to help support the pollinator population, especially with the massive die offs in pollinators that we have recently witnessed. He hopes that it can be a people-powered movement, one that will show people that they too are empowered to take action to make a difference in their community and the world.

To view Mr. Jannelli’s talk, please click the following link: Mr. Jannelli’s Talk

Hey Green Liaisons!

Join us as we host Ms.Lia Dawson from UD’s Engineers Without Borders chapter and two of its project managers. Come hear about the organization’s efforts in the Philippines, Malawi, & surrounding Delaware community. We will be learning about EWB-DE’s successful water distribution mission in Cameroon and the future goals of the organization!

The event will be held on Friday, March 9th in the Ewing Room in the Perkin’s Student Center from 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm, and food/light refreshments will be offered. The event is free, and everyone is welcome!

Your co-chairs,

Francis Karani, Mohana Gadde, Ali Mahdi

On October 23, 2017, we hosted Kim Hachadoorian from the Nature Conservancy. She talked about her educational pathway as well as the Streams Stewards program.

Kim got her degree in Forest Ecology from SUNY college in Syracuse, NY. She focused on forest health and engaged in a program that protected forested watershed in NYC. Following her undergrad, she went to grad school and was an environmental educator for Audubon. Presently, she works in the First State National Historical Park with the Nature Conservancy and helps oversee the Stream Stewards program.

The Nature Conservancy is a global organization, and their mission is, “to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends.” The Nature Conservancy has expanded their mission to take in not just conservation work, but also urban programs. Partnering with the NC and Stroud, Stream Stewards is a citizen science program that recruits and trains volunteers to help collect data of the watersheds in the park. The Brandywine River, for instance, supplies water for all of Wilmington. Kim mentioned that everyone lives in a watershed and that we all affect the quality of water. Volunteers help monitor the water quality at Beaver Creek, Ramsey Run, Palmer Run, Hurricane Run, and Rocky Run. They assess the habitat and use parameters such as turbidity and conductivity, nitrate and phosphate levels along with sensor stations to continually monitor the sites.

Overall, her talk was extremely insightful as she mentioned not only her career pathway but also the Stream Stewards program and other ways to get involved and be a part of conservation work.

On September 27, 2017, we hosted Sam Baranski and Lorin Felter from the First State National Historical Park. They both talked about their pathway to their current jobs and provided information about the First State National Historical Park.

Currently, Sam manages all the volunteer programs for the park and does a lot of visitor communication and community outreach. She received her Bachelors in Park Recreation and Nature Services and realized she wanted to interact with the public and interpret. She got a position with assisting a volunteer coordinator and promoting social media. She also worked with the Chief of Interpretation at Harper’s fairy, developing a wayside management plan. Lorin is the head of interpretation and education at the park, and she tackles the idea of how to take initiatives at a national level. She was an architecture undergrad and mentioned always being around historical places during her childhood. She decided to switch things up and ended up going to the University of Hawaii in Oahu for grad school. She got her Masters in American Studies and Historic Preservation. Following graduation, she was an intern at Pearl Harbor, as a front lane park ranger.

Both Lorin and Sam gave an overview of the First State National Historical Park as well. The park tells the story of Delaware from colony to statehood. It was designated as a national monument and it included three initial sites: Beaver Valley, New Castle Court House, and the Dover Green. In 2014, it was redesignated and added four more sites, for a total of seven sites in all three counties. They are: Beaver Valley, Fort Christina, Old Swedes Church, the New Castle Court House, Dover Green, the John Dickinson Plantation, and the Ryves Holt House. The sites also tell about the underlying stories that have not been told about the Revolution as well as the connection between European powers and the relationship with the Lenape all the way up to the signing of the Constitution.

Sam and Lorin also emphasized ways that the public can get involved. Beaver Valley, for example, works a lot with the Nature Conservancy and partners with schools to get students engaged in the outdoors and conservation. During the NPS’ centennial, they hosted a bioblitz, where the public helped them inventory all species within a 24 hour period. Volunteers are always welcome, and when you aquire 250 hours of volunteer work, you will receive a volunteer pass. It’ll allow you to get into any park in the state of Delaware.

To conclude, this talk was very insightful as myself and the audience found out about not only the national monument in Delaware, but also the pathway both ladies took. I think I speak for everyone there when I say that their talk really connected with us all, as many college students wonder what their future career will be and how to tie in their interests to jobs.

Kim Hachadoorian, Photo: linkedin.com

Please join us NEXT TUESDAY, October 24th from 12:15-1:15 pm in the Ewing Room (located in the Perkins Student Center).

We will be featuring Kim Hachadoorian, who works with The Nature Conservancy as the Stream Stewards Project Manager for the Delaware Chapter.

She currently manages a citizen science program, which encourages members of the community to become involved with water quality testing of the tributaries of the Brandywine River, specifically those located within First State National Historical Park. Kim also serves as a mentor for the GLOBE/ Watershed Fellows Intern programs, which invites college students every summer to gain valuable work experience and develop beneficial professional skills. In addition to working for one of the most well-known environmental non-profits, Kim has a lot of interesting prior work experiences to share such as being an Urban Park Ranger in New York and a Program Coordinator with Audubon.

All are welcome, and light refreshments will be served!

On February 22, 2017, GL hosted our first lunch of the spring semester and featured a talk by Marsha Dickson, Professor in UD’s Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies. She spoke about how UD is striving to create an intersection between the fashion industry and sustainability.

Dickson informed us of the many consequences of current practices of the fashion industry: environmentally, fashion today involves the use of hazardous materials, overuse of numerous resources such as water, cotton, and energy, and the production of waste; socially, fashion today involves human rights issues, health and safety concerns for laborers, and a perpetuation of an ideal beauty standard.

The Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies, however, is trying to eliminate those consequences. The Department has decided to collaborate with many big players in the fashion industry to create a policy guide for sustainability. This policy guide includes recommendations and ideas for replacing toxic chemicals, applying new tanning approaches, and repurposing fabric waste into infrastructure.

These innovative ideas are a result of considerable research performed by UD and other institutions and industries. The Department offers programs, certificates, and research opportunities for both undergrads and grads at UD.

To learn more about these programs and how fashion and sustainability are merging, please check out the whole talk here!

On October 26, 2016, GL hosted Dr. Raymond Scattone, Assistant Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy at UD, for a talk on his research that examined the link between environmental justice and brownfield revitalization.

According to Scattone’s research, urban land use changes often focus on “redevelopment” as opposed to “revitalization,” which means that priority is placed on the economics of a project, rather than a combination of economics, environment, and society. The latter option also allows for more community involvement and say in what their neighborhood looks like and how it functions.

Scattone’s research focused on 10 brownfield revitalization projects across the U.S., as brownfield land use-change projects often highlight the ongoing and unequal environmental and social problems associated with conventional redevelopment because they often have a large proportion of minority or low-income populations. Scattone also provided suggestions to DNREC and the state of Delaware based on this research, including a need to increase the flow of information between developers and community members and the need to create explicit “Brownfield Opportunity Programs” in order to ensure the continued success of revitalization projects.

If you would like to view Scattone’s full talk, you can find it here!

For Earth Week this year, Green Liaisons again hosted two great speakers: UD scientist Dr. Jennifer Stewart and UD Dining Representative Ryan Boyer. The lunch took place on April 18th.

Dr. Stewart spoke about her research under the school’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment that seeks to make algae-based biofuels a viable source of renewable energy.

Algae, like corn and sugarcane, is an organic matter that can be converted into a “biofuel” capable of replacing gasoline. It is thought to be preferable to such food crop biofuels, as it offers the advantage of producing more fuel per acre and requiring no farmland for growth.

Algae could be made even more beneficial by feeding it carbon dioxide (CO2) captured from smokestack emissions. This would reduce the amount of CO2 released to the atmosphere and subsequently reduce climate change.

Stewart is investigating a way to enable the algae to use this CO2 for increased growth while simultaneously absorbing the nitric oxide also found in the emissions. Nitric oxide would otherwise be harmful to algae.

She aims to breed a strain of algae that would treat the excess nitrogen as a nutrient rather than as a toxin, so that it would grow faster and consume more CO2.

The second speaker, Ryan Boyer, the District Marketing Manager for Dining Services, shared with us the latest environmental initiatives being implemented in the university’s new Caesar Rodney Dining Hall.

These initiatives fall under the umbrella of Dining Services’s new Green Thread program, which focuses on responsible sourcing (such as purchasing locally, moving to cage-free eggs, and looking out for animal welfare), efficient operations (such as increasing water conservation and improving green cleaning practices), and waste minimization (such as increasing recycling, introducing tray-less dining, and streamlining the to-go container system).

In addition, Dining has been adding other initiatives to improve their environmental footprint, like the weekly Farmers’ Market, Sustainable Fish Friday, and RecycleMania.

If you would like to learn more about either of these topics, please check out the talks here!

On Friday, March 4th, Green Liaisons hosted Dr. Willett Kempton, UD Professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy and Research Director at the Center for Carbon-Free Power Integration, for our first lunch of the semester.

He shared with us the latest news about the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology that he helped to spearhead.

V2G technology is an innovation of renewable energy research that enables electric vehicles to communicate with the electric grid in order to recycle stored battery power.

Beginning with local situation of electric vehicles (EVs), Dr. Kempton mapped out the current locations of electric vehicle charging stations in Delaware in order to demonstrate the benefit of how deliberate public planning can benefit the electric-vehicle driver and how that planning is already being instituted in this state.

He also described for us the benefits of transitioning to EVs. The environmental benefits are certainly known, but what Dr. Kempton stressed were the advantages earned by the entire grid system and by the EV driver when V2G technology is implemented, as this enables the grid to rely on a more efficient and quick-responding power source and it enables the driver to earn a profit from the energy they are sending to the grid. According to Kempton, in a theoretical situation in which the vehicle is unplugged for six hours a day, a driver may earn up to $56 a month.

Dr. Kempton also detailed the aggregator system that is responsible for bidding on the amount of energy required by the grid each day and then documenting what energy is inputted by the EVs in order to recognize when the energy limit is reached.

This work has involved collaboration between Dr. Kempton’s team in Newark and international collaborators in Denmark.

If you would like to learn more, check out Dr. Kempton’s talk here!

Photo by Evan Krape (UDaily)