Author: Aviva D. Kardener (Page 4 of 9)

January 2018 Eco-Ambassador Session #1 – Boston Health Science Campus

January 23, 2018 / / 8 Comments

Session Summary:

During our first meeting, we discussed the history of the Eco-Ambassador program and the role of Eco-Ambassadors, as well as the definition and meaning of “sustainability.” We also went through an overview of sustainability at Tufts and the goals for water, waste, and energy and emissions set forth in the Campus Sustainability Council Report. We then discussed waste and recycling at Tufts.  To round out the day, we talked about behavior change and the steps to creating a Community-Based Social Marketing plan, followed by an overview of climate change, its impacts, and how it will specifically impact the Boston area.

Assignments for next week:

  • Do your personal behavior change challenge! We will report back to each other about how it went.
  • Introduce yourself as an Eco-Ambassador to your officemates, your department, etc. This can be informal in person, or maybe you want to do a cute email?
  • Check that you have the proper Landfill and Mixed Recycling labels on your waste bins and that you have a blue lid on the recycling lid. Also, assess if you want a wall sign sticker or sign to go above your waste bins. Please bring a list of what you need to next week’s session. You can print your own wall signs here.
  • Start brainstorming behavior change ideas for your office (many of you have some ideas already!)

 

Additional Resources

Sustainability at Tufts:

 

Behavior Change:

 

Climate Change:

 

Waste & Recycling:

  • Requests: To request a compost bin for your office or a trash or recycling bin, or bin labels, go here.
  • Recycling at Tufts: Visit the recycling website (tufts.edu/recycle) for the latest recycling news or for a refresher about what’s recyclable. Check out the video!
  • Zero-Waste Events: Email recycle@tufts.edu to request that your event be zero-waste.
  • Freecycling: Sign up for the Tufts Freecycle Elist here.
  • Junk Mail: The University of Texas at Austin’s website has some good information about how to unsubscribe from unwanted mailing lists. There is also a great app called PaperKarma.
  • Tufts’ Waste Hauling Company: Learn more about Republic Services
  • Recycling in Massachusetts: Get useful tips for recycling at home and in your community at the MassRecycle website
  • Waste Disposal Bans in Massachusetts: Learn more at the MassDEP’s website
  • Living a lower-waste lifestyle: There are many bloggers dedicated to this topic. This site is one of the more well-known bloggers, Bea Johnson. If you always have a reusable water bottle on you, as well as a cloth napkin and a set of utensils, that will help you reduce a lot of waste! There are some lightweight utensils that are easy to take in your bag, see here and here, but also it’s not difficult to take a metal fork around.

 

Contacts

Shoshana Blank
Education & Outreach Program Administrator
Shoshana.Blank@tufts.edu
(617) 627-2973		 Gretchen Carey
Recycling and Organics Coordinator, Republic Services

GCarey@republicservices.com
(781) 560-1412

 Recycling (General)
recycle@tufts.edu
go.tufts.edu/recycle

 

Sustainability Classes for the Spring

January 23, 2018 / / 6 Comments

This spring semester, if you are looking for some interesting perspectives on sustainability, the environment, and climate change, look no further! Log into SIS for more information,

VISC 130 ITAL-0092-01 Arte Povera and Post-WWII Sculpture in Italy: Nature, Energy, and Experience

Wednesdays, 9AM – 12PM, SMFA taught by Silvia Bottinelli

In 1967, critic Germano Celant coined the phrase “Arte Povera”. Such label defined the unsystematic work of a group of contemporary Italian artists that were interested in simple materials and their physical and chemical transformations. The word “povera”, literally “poor”, also meant to criticize Pop Art, interpreted as an acceptance of consumerism. Mainly through sculpture, installation, and performance, Arte Povera offered an alternative to the traditional mediums of Classical and Renaissance art.

The class will analyze Arte Povera’s history, reception, and context by considering theoretical, cultural, social, political, and gender issues in 1960s and 1970s Italy. The diverse perspectives of select Italian and English-speaking scholars will be taken into account.

VISC 160-01 Landscapes and Ecologies: 1500-2018

Fridays, 9AM – 12PM, SMFA taught by Emily Gephart

This class examines the origins of landscape as a subject through which ecological relationships have been given form. We will consider why it has been an enduringly popular topic, and look at how artists from the European Renaissance to the present day have explored space & place, home & environment, and transformational ideas about nature and human societies. Through trans-historical case studies, we will consider how landscape in art allowed artists to reckon with modernization and changing beliefs about the wilderness, rural space, urbanism, indigenous peoples and resources, and the complex entanglements that have come to define the Anthropocene.

 

DRW-0120-01 ADVANCED DRAWING – LARGE SCALE

Wednesdays, 2-5 PM and 9-12PM taught by Ethan Murrow

This is a class for students with a background in drawing, painting, print and installation based practices. It will offer opportunities for students to expand and consider the physical range of their drawings in relationship to scale, context, perception, place, space and the public. We will explore techniques and strategies for working at large scale, whether in traditional media or in more temporal installation based approaches.

GER 82/182 ILVS 82 ENV 82 Imagining the Environment: Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Mondays and Wednesdays, 3PM – 4:15 PM taught by Professor Markus Wilczek

Film  / Literature / Music

Barr Resilience Program Officer

January 18, 2018 / / 7 Comments

Resilience Program Officer, Barr (Boston, MA)

The goal of the Climate Resilience focus area is to increase the capacity of Greater Boston’s residents, neighborhoods, institutions, and businesses to prepare for and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

This program officer will report to the Co-Director of Climate who focuses on mobility, and work with the overall climate team to help roll out the Climate Resilience focus area. The program officer will play an important role in thought leadership, strategy implementation, and grantmaking.

Barr’s program officers are integral in identifying new grant concepts—through conversation and network building with current and prospective grantees and leaders in our fields—and preparing effective written summaries and other communications for our trustees.

Application Deadline: February 2nd
Apply Online: Here

2018-2019 TIE Environmental Research Fellowship

January 18, 2018 / / 4 Comments

2018-2019 Environmental Research Fellowships, Tufts Institute of the Environment

The 2018-2019 Environmental Research Fellowship program, of the Tufts Institute of the Environment (TIE), is for Tufts graduate students to conduct independent, interdisciplinary, environmental research projects. Topics may cover areas such as conservation, public policy, biology, the food water and energy nexus, and public and environmental health, among others. All projects must include an interdisciplinary component and faculty mentors from at least two different schools or departments from within Tufts. Selected students can receive up to $5,000 in research funding.

On Friday, February 2nd or Tuesday, February 6th, attend an information session from 12-1pm. RSVP here.

Application Deadline: Thursday, February 15th
Apply Online: http://environment.tufts.edu/funding/fellowships/

Slacktivism or #Activism?

November 14, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Content based on a Tisch College Civic Life Lunch given to professors, staff, and students at Tufts University.

Civic Life Lunch – #Standing Rock: Starting + Sustaining a Movement
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2017, 12 – 1PM

Featuring: LaDonna Brave Bull Allard & Cutcha Risling Baldy, Moderated by Tufts American Studies Professor Jami Powell

Join us for a conversation with LaDonna Brave Bull Allard & Cutcha Risling Baldy. LaDonna Brave Bull Allard is the Historian and Genealogist for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Allard is also the Founder and Director of the Sacred Stone Camp, a spirit camp established in April 2016 that has become the center of cultural preservation and spiritual resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline. Cutcha Risling Baldy is the Assistant Professor of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University, where her research focuses on #IndigenousHashtagActivism and #TheNewNativeIntellectualism and how Indigenous people are engaging in #HashtagActivism to achieve social change.

Social media has transformed the way people communicate and relate to the world in the last few years. It has been applauded as a unifier and simultaneously criticized as “fake news,” as a realm where people lose touch with reality and get trapped into a world of likes and retweets. Could it be that social media is actually the great equalizer? Could social media really be a platform that empowers the people to broadcast their truths to the world while mainstream media and “the news” continue to ignore or distort them?

If you ask Professor Cutcha Risling Balding, she’d tell you that social media, especially Twitter, makes a huge impact on the growth and success of a movement, as seen at Standing Rock—one of the most widely recognized and recent cases of blatant environmental injustice. Risling Balding studies #HashtagActivism of social justice movements and believes that there is no such thing as “slacktivism.” As she explained at the Civic Life Lunch, there is no harm done by retweeting and liking posts that elevate and amplify indigenous voices which are so often silenced. Often, people seeing these posts get inspired and feel empowered to do something to stand in solidarity, even if locally. These actions can have a huge impact, pushing the mainstream media to actually cover movements on the news and even calling out the President to come out with a public stance on an issue.

Calling these actions “slacktivism” diminishes the importance of movements that are seen as “indigenous issues.” The reality is that water protectors at Standing Rock, organized by young indigenous women, put their lives on the line to protect water in the Missouri River from pollution because “Mni Wiconi,” “Water is Life”—a universal truth for all living beings. Access to clean and safe drinking water is a human rights issue facing many communities in the US, disproportionately communities of color. Social media enabled millions of non-native people to become allies and engage with the Standing Rock water protectors through retweets and likes of their posts, checking in at Standing Rock on Facebook, watching live videos and pictures as evidence of the police brutality and militarization. All of this shaped the narrative of what was occurring at Standing Rock, instead of it being entirely decided by distant, out of touch, and inaccurate media and government reports.

This so called “slacktivism” caught the attention of media outlets and politicians who were now pressured to address the sovereignty rights of the Sioux tribe in the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. News outlets began to invite and speak to indigenous people involved with the #NoDAPL movement. This #HashtagActivism as brought the movement to decolonize Native American tribes and the United States one step further. Through social media, activists at Standing Rock have spread awareness to the public of the real, living, contemporary indigenous people and can further shape the narrative of these social movements.

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