Macalester Represents at the Upper Midwest Association for Campus Sustainability

Last week, several Macalester student workers in the Macalester Sustainability Office attended the Upper Midwest Association for Campus Sustainability (UMACS) Conference held at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. The theme of the conference was "Diversity, Community, and Creativity: Elements for Sustainable Transformation," inspired by the Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education's (AASHE) discussion of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The hosts hoped to link the UN's goals to the individual institutions who attended. From the Sustainability Office, Sustainability Manager Suzanne Savanick Hansen, Sustainability Project Manager Tamara Will, and student workers Lydia Sulik, Miriam Eide, and Lianna Goldstein attended.

Suzanne started UMACS as a graduate student at the University fo Minnesota. "I handed around a clipboard at the end of one of the first 'Campus Greening' conferences in the region," said Suzanne,  "Three people signed up and the four of us drafted the mission and vision of a regional organization that helps all the schools in to become more sustainable.  I am so glad that after 20 years the group is still working to make sure that no one in the region needs to reinvent the wheel on sustainability."

Lydia gave a presentation about the Upper Midwest Chapter of the Campus Farmers Network at the UMACS Conference. She helped launch the upper midwest chapter of the network two years ago and discussed the potential of knowledge-sharing and collaboration within an upper midwest chapter, and the challenges it has had in its beginning stages.  

Lydia's favorite parts of the conference were "listening to the keynote speaker Karen Diver, who spoke about the importance of indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice to the sustainability movement, and learning about other colleges' sustainability programs."

Tamara, reflecting on her experience at the UMACS Conference wrote, “There is a psychology to how people respond to the climate crisis - whether we take action or just bury our heads in the sand. Andy Sechrist from the University of South Dakota: Is Psychology Needed in Environmental Conversation and Sustainability? talked about the need to be positive. It’s easy for us to tell the horror stories, but it’s the vision of a positive future that is more likely to get people to act.”

written by Sustainability Office student worker Zella Lobo