Hello All!

This year, I had the great opportunity of going to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE)’s Sustainability Conference in Minneapolis to give a presentation! I really should have gotten to this post sooner, so that more of the people I saw at the conference may have seen it, but I’m only getting to it now.

At the conference I met and talked with a lot of really great people from all over the US and Canada, from places institutions the University of South Dakota, Portland State, Skidmore College, Allegheny College, Antioch College, the University of St. Scholastica, and other places like the US Green Building Council. I managed to chat with Professors, Students, Sustainability Officers and other administrators including some college presidents! Being able to swap ideas with others and telling people about everything we’ve done at Lafayette was one of the best opportunities I’ve had in my whole time at Lafayette.

It was especially heartening to talk to people who found our experiences at Lafayette to be great examples! The Sustainability Rally we had recently and all our efforts to get a Sustainability Coordinator were of especial interest to many students.

In addition to seeing Jessie McElwain, Eban Goodstein, Steven Mulky, and many others talk/give workshops, giving my own presentation was a great experience. I managed to get a lot of excited students and several faculty/administrators who were happy to hear about the formation of LaFarm through the funding of the CGI-U Outstanding Commitment Award. It was great talking to so many interested students right then, and the range of questions I received was interesting: people asked about everything from our crop rotation, soil conservation, cover crop and other farm management techniques, to the potential for greenhouse production in the Winter, to the way we got funding for starting the farm and employing Sarah, to how we got a sustainability rally to work at Lafayette. I felt really proud of everything we had been able to accomplish because of all the interest people had in Lafayette!

I’m very thankful that, because of my research with Prof. Cohen, I was able to go to such a fun and informative conference. I hope that in years to come, other students get such a good opportunity!

Joe Ingrao, Fall 2015 EXCEL Scholar