The upcoming SU Showcase addresses concerns regarding climate and sustainability
If your thoughts about sustainability lean toward the abstract, then you should head up to Syracuse University on May 2 for a dose of reality. That’s when the SU community participates in SU Showcase, during which the Schine Student Center gets transformed into a green museum for the day.
“It’s going to have lots of exhibits of student research, student designs,” says Rachel May, the coordinator of sustainability education at SU. “Students in engineering, industrial design and architecture are really involved in it. There will be a lot of things you can look at and prototypes that look inventively at some of the problems we have.”
Nearly everyone knows of Americans’ conspicuous consumption and the devastating effects on the planet that human interference has wrought. At the same time that SU has taken a pledge about going climate-neutral—how to improve energy efficiency and use fewer resources—the institution has also committed to educating students about the very real issues facing the globe.
“The commitment the university has made says that all students will graduate with some understanding of climate change and sustainability,” May says. “And at a school like Syracuse that’s really complicated because there are so many schools and colleges and people doing very different things. So my job is to figure out how to get all the students exposed to these things.”
May hopes that SU Showcase will teach the university community some vital lessons about the environment, but there’s an even greater goal. “Over the next few years I hope to build it into something that will draw in a significant portion of the student population,” she says. “It will highlight job opportunities, research, all things connected with the environment, so if the most we do is reach students for one day, at least we’ve reached them for a day.”
In addition, the projects on display during SU Showcase will not only imbue a hope for the future but will provide practical applications to everyday problems. “One student is really interested in harvesting energy from energy equipment,” May says, “while one is working on the melting permafrost and another will be displaying costumes he made from recycled materials for {a staged production of Mozart’s} The Magic Flute.”
Junior geology and geography major Rachel Valletta, along with two other students, is creating a display designed to replicate the melting permafrost and its devastating effects on both people and the planet. “We did this whole term project on permafrost,” says Valletta. “It’s kind of a bland subject and at the end of the day it’s just studying ground. Through this display we want to highlight to the public that issues that are boring to even us hold huge importance.”
Valletta and her teammates have devised a three-dimensional display of the problem. In the foreground stands what she describes as looking like a long fish tank—4 feet long by 2 feet tall—filled with layers of soil to show the gradation of the topmost layer that overlies the frozen ground. And from left to right in the display is a temporal gradient that shows the effects as time passes of the permafrost starting to melt.
“The take-home message is that global warming isn’t just something that’s going to cause sea-level rises and hit coasts,” she explains. “There are regions in the world that may be remote, but entire cultures rely upon this one type of environment. I would urge people to look beyond how global warming not just affects their lives but how it will affect the long run and across the globe.”
Another perhaps more colorful exhibit, but one that is no less important from a green perspective, is by Timothy Westbrook, a senior fiber arts and material studies major in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. He is creating the 13 costumes for The Magic Flute—being produced by OpShop, a student initiative at the Setnor School of Music at Crouse College—“from the ground up and focusing on sustainability,” he says.
For costumes, that means cutting patterns out of paper Westbrook is finding in recycling bins, fashioning the rough draft costume from old bedsheets and reusing larger pieces—used to make a prototype of a large dress, for example—to create a man’s vest, and sewing out of scrap and vintage fabrics.
“I’m trying to stay away from the production of new things from fabrics that aren’t vintage,” Westbrook says. “I like to say that 20 years qualifies as vintage. The biggest thing is I will be using a treadle sewing machine. The hypocrisy in my work has been a little challenging. I had been using so much electricity, with lights, irons, sewing machines.”
Perhaps the most dramatic example of his work concerns the costume for Papageno, the Birdman in the opera. “That’s my favorite piece,” Westbrook exclaims. “His costume is made of seven yards of organic cotton and cassette tape. He draws in birds with his flute and I thought it would be appropriate to use the tape to represent the music; it’s a subtle designer thing.”
While SU Showcase is going on May 2, May adds that SU Food Services is devising a sustainable dinner to be served at the event, using locally sourced food. “The upper echelons of the administration at the university are totally behind this project, including Food Services,” May says. “That’s one of the best things about my job.”
Another aspect of the event May enjoys is the legacy that SU Showcase tries to leave on campus. Last year students, with some SU employee help, installed a rain garden in the parking lot at the corner of Waverly and South Crouse avenues. “This year, one student is interested in creating a movable message board that will be totally solar-powered. That could be a really useful tool on campus.”
It may be called SU Showcase, but nextdoor neighbor SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry participates as well; in fact, the rain garden was an ESF initiative. “ESF is a real asset in this way,” May notes, “and as a demonstration facility you can go and see all the things they’ve got going on there. I think a number of SU students that are active in environmental issues have actually gotten involved in the ESF student organization. Right now SU doesn’t have an environmental organization of students, but there are a lot of students who are interested in this topic. What I’m hoping is that that organization will come together out of a bunch of these students.”
Until then, students on both campuses are working hard to finalize their displays for the SU Showcase. “The goal of this event is to show off the exciting work that students are already doing and to engage students that aren’t doing it yet and to let them know that these opportunities are here,” May says. “Over the long term, the goal is to make this be an engine of infusing the whole curriculum with ideas of sustainability.”
SU Showcase takes place at Schine Student Center, 303 University Ave., on Monday, May 2, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., and is free and open to the public. In addition to the project displays, visitors can check out a Recycled-Fashion Show, an urban sustainability presentation by Open Hand Theater, and partake in the locally sourced dinner and farmers market. For more information, visit www.sushowcase. syr.edu.
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Garden spot: A tangible result of last year’s inaugural SU Showcase is the rain garden, located along Waverly Avenue.
