How A Community Celebrates Earth Day
On April 22, the PVCC community celebrated Earth Day with a host of activities culminating in a butterfly release in the field behind the library. The event marked the third Earth Day celebration Mary-Evelyn Sellars has coordinated in her tenure as coordinator for student life and engagement. Part of what made this year different from previous iterations was Sellars’ desire to emphasize student involvement during the event’s production. Because, for many involved in planning the Earth Day celebration, the idea of promoting community was just as important as sustainability.
This year’s Earth Day celebration was by no means short on activities for faculty, staff, and students. Those interested could participate in yoga led by Rebecca Kendall, PVCC’s director of grants. Others played “plant bingo,” volleyball, or simply sat in the butterfly tent adorned with hanging plants, wildflowers, and Painted Lady butterflies to be released at the end.
There was an arts and crafts station set up across from the table tennis, which Lucy Sams, part of a Work-Study in student life and campus engagement, said they were especially excited about: “I just love a craft. We have these little bookmarks where you can get little pressed flowers and put them between these clear sheets, and then it makes a little bookmark.” Behind them was a table with different types of plants sprawled across the top, which Sams said were prizes for the bingo winners.
Transitioning inside, Vice President of Finance & Administrative Services Scott Jefferies was hosting a table with information related to preventing food waste and ways to improve sustainable living. As part of his message, Jefferies handed out refillable water bottles to students with the goal of reducing plastic waste. He said, “My very first day at work, three years ago, was the Earth Day celebration here. It was one of the things that I noticed that was so beautiful about this college. … It’s just part of the culture here at the college, so it’s really important to us.”
Jefferies, who is part of PVCC’s sustainability committee, also spoke about plans to improve sustainability on a campus-wide scale. He said, “We were able to pass a sustainability policy for the college where we were able to establish a kind of metric every single year in terms of trash diversion for our recycling efforts … and also emphasize some education to try and encourage people to recycle and reuse. Before that, the only policy we had was just about recycling, but sustainability is so much more than just recycling, so we wanted to try to beef it up and add more education to it. And we passed that this year for the first time.” According to Jefferies, PVCC is also pursuing new grants to bolster the campus’s recycling initiative, which will include more recycling bins.
As he and I spoke, a group of faculty and students began amassing to the right. Turns out that Associate Professor of Psychology Dr. Michael Rahilly had orchestrated an Earth Day-themed Kahoot that was about to start. “It has a lot of questions about the Earth, questions about waste, and ways to reduce waste,” Rahilly said. The Kahoot also focused on struggles to preserve the environment and the different things we can do to help.
The entire event could not have been possible without the participation of Sellars. “We had sustainable utensils, containers, even tablecloths, so we tried to be as considerate of the environment as possible, which isn’t easy because it’s expensive to order those things, and it shouldn’t be. That’s kind of the worst part of it,” she said. One of the biggest surprises she had during the event was the overwhelming support she received from those around her, more accurately, the table of plant prizes for bingo. “I didn’t even ask people to donate plants; it was just a couple of professors that said, ‘Hey, can I give away plants?’” Those flora donors include Kris Swanson, Jenny Harrison, and Irina Liskey. Swanson also donated an entire table of seedlings that she had germinated herself to be given to attendees.
Sellars then said, “I also think the bigger thing is that I’m building community with staff and faculty and people are starting to be a part of — I don’t want to call it ‘my squad,’ but I think since I’ve been here, [Swanson, Harrison, Liskey] see the friendships, and they support me because they enjoying working with me and being around me. You know, when you’re with people you like, you support them, and you lift them higher, and those are three people that I lean on all the time. So, I think it was a part of them wanting to help me out, help the students out, and do something for the environment.” The large group of faculty that was part of the event’s production further solidified in Sellars how PVCC is not just a community college in name, but a college for the community.
“It’s important to build community at a community college. I didn’t want Piedmont to be a commuter school. You know, typically, people at community colleges, they drive over, take their class, and leave. They don’t stick around. Our students are starting to stick around. They pack their cooler, eat lunch here, and stay here in between classes. That’s because we have activities for them to do, and they feel like they have a place to be,” she said. According to Sellars, the number of people who participate in college activities outside of class has only grown.
In explaining how, Sellars said, “We’re starting to see more students who are involved, and our Work-Study has increased because students are staying on campus and getting jobs. Now we even have students who were on Work-Study jobs getting employed for PVCC.” Throughout our interview, it became increasingly clear how important the idea of Community is to Sellars and the belief in the positive effect it can have on students.
Sellars had sound advice for those students who are graduating this semester to go on to a 4-year university. She said, “Join a club. I want you to find something fun and then find something relating to your field of study. That way, you’ve got something fun to do and something that’s going to level you up. Because when you get involved, you start feeling better about yourself, and you belong. If you belong to a group of people, you’re less likely to quit, so your retention and chances of finishing your degree are going to go up because of it.”
