 Good morning. I'm all here. Welcome. So I think it's about time that we get started. We have a very tight program, lots of people to give you all. So if you'll indulge me, we can get started now. So my name is Alessia Meek. I'm chair of the Commission on Environmental Science Department. And I'm also the chair of this conference. Some of you would have received my email last night. Some of you maybe not. But again, I would like to convey that we are so, so delighted to have you here. So what we think will be a fun-filled and enlightening day, jam packed with all sorts of information that is not only relevant, but things that matter to you. That said, as you saw in the program, this is our 24th year. So we do have to dance. 24 years. And though we are extremely happy about the longevity of the conference, we have to acknowledge the sad voice that is now present. This year is the first year without the conferences from the Dr. John Giz. He departed this kind of life last April. So he's no longer with us. As the man behind the scenes quietly guiding, but preferring to be in the shadow by promoting his mentee. I'm sure he's up there shouting, no! It's none about me. It's about our high school students. It's about our mega students, our alum, our staff, our community. But I'm not going to listen to him on that. So sorry Dr. Giz. This morning, celebrate the profound impact of your life and service. A true pioneer who's shown for more than 50 years to help this community and earth through education dissemination. Would you please join me for a moment of silence to pay tribute Dr. Giz. So how many high school students are in the house this early? Show of hands. Nice. I have a question for you. How many of you know what a pro-host is? Anybody? That could have been my first giveaway this morning. Okay, but we have a lot more so pay attention. So it's a university's top academic board. He is the boss of all the professors here in Medgar and on any campus generally the pro-host is the boss. So he's a big deal. Our is the very nice man. And he looks all for us. So we asked him if he could come and say hi to you and welcome you to the conference and the campus. So please help me show some appreciation for him being here. You would love to say thank you and welcome Dr. Okareki. Thank you Dr. Rich for making me off. And I don't really blame the high school students. I'm 821. But you know what a pro-host means. One graduated and the other one in Austin went to school. And when I was met pro-host, I don't know if I was met pro-host. I don't know what a pro-host does. I said oh, you killed my spirit. That's okay. On behalf of the school, of the president, I want to welcome you today to this conference. This is a conference I attend yearly both as professor, as when I was here when I was in and as pro-host. A conference at our heart. A conference that speaks to who we are. So I want to thank Orit. Also want to thank the department the faculty for keeping the legacy of Dr. Rich alive. I want to most sincerely welcome you here today as I said our mission speaks to social justice. Our mission speaks to justice. That is who we are. An environmental science. Environmental conference. Editing environmental justice. Environmental health. Environmental justice. Equity, quality, every breath. All these are focused on environmental justice. So what we are here today, what we are doing today is crucial to who we are as a college. So I want to highlight the fact that people of color, we are most impacted by this. And that is why I'm sure that the department that Dr. John gives had this here today. What is our role as professors? What is our role as educators? What is our role as people of social justice? Now what do we come here to do every day? How do we make sure that there's equity? We learn about the water crisis. We learn about global crisis on environmental science. I can tell you that at this moment the environment is under attack. Environment we know globally is under attack. I come from a country, a continent, where of course we value environment. But any time I visit home, I see the resolution of the environment. So how do we respond to that? How do we add to that? I think that's why we're here today. So once again I applaud the organizers and I hope at the end of the day we will all live here to make sure that we rescue our environment that will protect our environment. Once again, welcome to Medcalf. In this case a great bliss, a friendly bliss is a home to all of us here. Thank you. So I'm sure you're all aware to put off an event like this requires a huge, huge amount of resources. One company has stepped up and provided those resources. In fact this company has provided these resources for numerous years, over ten years actually. That company is Con Edison. One of the company's leaders actually came out here today as she always does to say hi. Her name is Miss Julia Lewis. Please join me in saying thank you and I would like Miss Lewis to come to the stage. She's going to bring her welcome as well as introduce our this speaker for the day. Good morning. Good morning. Okay. Good to see you all here. I want to say it's a pleasure to be here today. Basically to kick off the 24th annual John Gibbs conference on the environmental issue. This is a wonderful time and I'm so glad that many of you have come out today. Con Edison as Alicia, Dr. Reed said is the founding organization for this conference and since that time we have hosted each one featuring the latest environmental and energy related information. This winter we've experienced the unpredictability of climate change. We've lived through varying temperature swings from 20 degrees to 50 within days, actually within hours and we've experienced the ferocity of winds and the gusts and the multiple radiant and snowy events. All these weather events that create hazardous conditions require experts who are familiar with responding and investigating the issues that they cause. At Con Edison we must be conscientious about these situations not just for the employees but the community. We're here today to make you aware of one of the many important aspects of our company and also to share with the students information on employment opportunities and to introduce jobs and careers in the environmental side. I'm pleased to introduce one of Con Edison's leading experts on environmental health and safety protocols, Wayne Murray. He is currently the manager of Environment Health and Safety in the Brooklyn Queens region of Con Edison. In this capacity he's responsible for supervising teams of EH&S employees responsible for the health and safety of workers who perform the various tasks that expose them to the high hazardous energy. He's finding ways to prevent employees from injuries and accidents in their workplace. He's taken the lead role in investigating workplace injuries, vehicle solutions as well as the rules we live by violations which are safety violations that come with significant disciplinary actions. We hope our employees stay safe. We hold them to that. Wayne is also an American board of industrial hygiene certified industrial hygienists and a certified hazardous material manager with over 25 years of safety and environmental experience. We're so lucky to have him. He's going to tell you more about his position. He has a degree in engineering chemistry and a master's degree in environmental and occupational health sciences. He has used his expertise to both develop as well as enhance procedures and programs that benefit not just employees but the community and our customers as well. It's great having him on our team and I am pleased to welcome Wayne to the program. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting us here. One thing I want to thank is the high school students because I know this is a Saturday and I know if you have anything like my son who's 16 years old you probably don't want to be here. That said, environmental health and safety what I want to do is try to make this as friendly as possible. A lot of times people say environmental health and safety they sit back in the room and listen to the speakers speak. What we want you to do is interact. If you have any questions as to when I'm going through the presentation please feel free to ask me. That said what is environmental health and safety? Can you hear me? This is the formal definition. Environmental health and safety is a discipline and specialty in studies that implements the practical aspects of environmental protection and safety and work. What does that mean? Pretty much what it means is that we're trying to protect employees from harm's weight. We're trying to protect the environment from the harm being more further. We're trying to make sure that when our employees come to work, and this is one of the things that we always stress particularly in kindness, when they come to work they go home the same way they seem to. Unfortunately we've been in situations, I've been in situations when an employee has gone to work, works, and has not gone home the same way she came in. In other words we've had employees who died on the job, we've also had employees who've been electrocuted, shocked on the job. Unfortunately some of these employees do not return to work. Sometimes they're in the hospital for days and sometimes weeks at a time. So with that said, this is one of the things that we want to stress as far as environmental health and safety. We're going to talk about the different environment, we're going to talk about health, and we're also going to talk about safety. Regarding environmental health and safety, I know some people say environmental health and science, some people say environmental health and safety are a couple things as far as training. One of the things that we do stress in kindness in training, we always tell people particularly our new employees when you come to kindness in, you could think you're going to do work in what we call the underground structures. Even going to people's homes and training. One thing we have to make sure you do is before you do a task, no matter what that task is, that you're trained to do the task. So we're not just going to put you into a situation where you're just going to go into a manhole and not be trained. That training sometimes is very substantial. That training could be anywhere from three weeks to a year at times depending on what you are going to do in the company itself. Also besides training, we also give you what we call the PPP. PPP is what we call personal protective equipment. This is what you need to actually do the jobs. When you go outside and you see that blue and white band, you will usually see what you will see as a work area setup. You will see the employees usually wearing blue uniforms or sometimes blue rubber walls. You will see bones and stanchions. You will usually see them wearing a hard hat. All of that is required as part of when they perform work. And that's not just to protect them, but it's also to protect the members of the public. So again, all of that comes into play. Also internally we have all the things that we have to deal with. Ergonomics. That's something that anyone has heard of Ergonomics? Okay, does anyone can say what Ergonomics is? Pretty much is how you perform the work dealing with your muscular, I guess what you call musculoskeletal issues. In other words, if I were to pick up a box and I went over and just bent down like this and picked up the box this way what you find could happen with your back. You know what's one of the leading causes of work injury? A workplace injury? Back. Back injury. One of the things particularly for a company is kind as in other companies you will find that first of all you have a lot of employees who actually go out for back injuries and secondly back injuries are very hard to prove. You can't tell somebody that back does not hurt. However however, but that said we actually have a training seminar. We have training courses that show how people to actually do things or if you're not going to be correct. So with that said, if I were to pick up that box then those pick up this way. These are things that we actually train our employees to do because they are actually lifting cable, other heavy equipment, treatment devices things that weigh anywhere from 50 to a couple hundred pounds. So these are things that we actually have to train our employees to do. Now in the H&S, this is our world as we see it now. Again you have flooding, you have fires, tornadoes I think was it just a couple of days ago? Was it Alabama? Was it a tornado? What 23, 24 people were killed? So what you think is going to happen there now? You lost everything. So what's going to happen? If you're fortunate to have an insurance what does that insurance person going to do? He's going to go down there if he gets down there in time he's going to look and say okay what have you lost? Well I've lost A, B and C. I've also been injured. I've lost my family member. Now people might think okay that is a natural disaster so what is health and safety have to do with? One thing we have found out just to register recently when you actually have a tornado after you're fortunate to have a tornado. Let's say you're fortunate to survive a tornado. One thing we do find is that a lot of people get injured after a tornado. One of the number one injuries that people get after a tornado is that they actually have nails driven through their feet. Because all that debris, all the housing all the things that you put together to make your home is going all over the place. So what does a person do? Well let me go find those pictures, those are the only things I have. Let me go find those albums. Let me find anything that I have that was not blown away or destroyed. So what you do, you walk through, you walk through your household you walk through this, you walk through the muck and mire. You try to find those things. As you're walking, guess what you're stepping on? You don't have steel toe shoes. Again remember we talked about PPE? You don't have steel toe shoes on? So a lot of times you actually have a scale of things. You might lift things incorrectly. Again, this is just for a person though. You try to see something. Oh there's an album there that you lifted. How do you lift it? You lift it incorrectly. So these are things that you know people say oh you know what, what does health and safety have to do with me? But God forbid you're ever in that situation. These things you have to be mindful of. In our world, food safety people not thinking about this, the government will shut down for about about a month or so. What was one of the things that people were concerned with? FDA. People were wondering well that food that I'm buying in the supermarket now is anything wrong with it because there are no inspectors to inspect it. So again, could that impact us as a whole? Yes. Are there inspectors there? Yes. Are they safety related people? Yes. But make sure that when that food is processed in that plant what do you actually have going on? Do you actually have anything that can contaminate that food? If that inspector is not there you never know. Again, you also have PB we talked about that and this is just a kind of innocent work. All of these I can tell you this, this is electrical equipment. All of that, God forbid something goes wrong with that. That person could be exposed to what is the or 27,000 volts. Okay now we're going to talk about a little bit about types of patients professionals. Now as Ms. Lewis said, I'm a certified industrial hygienist I'm a certified hazardous materials manager. What does that mean? Pretty much in this certification that helps you to get further and further along in I guess the environment health and safety. You have different types. You have certified CIHs, what we call certified industrial hygienists. You have certified safety professionals. Those are individuals that their sole purpose is, let's say you have a job going on, they want to make sure that everything is being done safely. CIHs are more around, they deal a lot more with chemistry. We deal with what they call, this was Mosulimitz. We deal with ACLs, ACGI Hs. Again these are things more on the chemistry side even some more on the environmental side. A safety professional deals with predominantly with the safety aspect. No more, they got to make sure if you want all your PPE. They got to make sure that before you put on a respirator you have to be fit-tested. Everybody says you know when you see people walking around sometimes you see people wearing these respirators and I say that be very careful. There's a difference between a dust mask and a respirator. They sell dust masks at the airport. A respirator is the ones with the cartridges. People don't realize that. So let's just say God forbid, same scenario we had in Alabama, now some people say they go down there, they want to get a respirator because they don't want to be exposed to dust. So what are they going to do? They might get up, someone might give them a respirator and say here take this so you won't be exposed to dust. So you put that respirator on. The problem is you've been scoping for 20 years. The problem is you might not have emphysema. You know what that does when you wear a respirator? If you have an emphysema just say it. You can't breathe. Actually people don't know this but when you wear a respirator it restricts your breathing. It might protect you from the things outside across air contaminants but it does restrict your breathing. So therefore before you wear a respirator you should qualify to wear a respirator. That means usually you should have a check up and the doctor should pretty much sign off and say Wayne Murray you can wear a respirator. We've had people unfortunately who have a respirator and found themselves in a hospital shortly after putting that respirator on because it does strain your body. It does strain your lungs. So again these things that we want to let people know. Certified has material that's kind of self-explanatory. These are people that say if you work in the chemical industry they want to make sure that you have knowledge about what's going back and one of the chemicals involved how you have to make sure that those chemicals don't destroy the environment or protect people who actually might work in a chemical plant. You have to know how to store it. You have to make sure what's in quantity that people can be exposed to without being harmed. Environmental scientists just a general term used by people who work in environmental field. Sometimes it could be an actual lab technician. It could be somebody that she wants to make her efforts. College has a lot of data research. Occupational safety technicians do the same thing. There's a lot of data research. And again these are just things of types of professionals that you can get at. These are professionals you find in environmental health and safety. Next please. Okay. Requirements. For the most part you know most of the CHMMs and people who are even professional engineers usually have a Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts in any of the biology, chemistry, science, engineering, geology, environmental science, environmental studies, environmental studies. We look for arts. Also you have people who have masses of science in you as well as PhDs and you also have boardings. One thing I have to stress about this. To get in the field is good to have these things but you don't necessarily have to have these things. One thing particularly for the high school students I got to stress this. Regardless of what you do finish the high school program. Get your high school degree and run. Run with it. Decide what you want to do. If you never want to go to college again that's you. If you want to go and get your PhD that's on you. Finish. Same thing I tell people when they go for their Bachelors. Finish. Bachelors. Finish. I tell you this from the PhD perspective. I've never met somebody who says 15, 20 years ago, you know what? My finishing high school was the best thing I did. I'm serious. I tell people that all the time. Same thing. I know people who go back later in life for their Bachelors and Masters. That life has a way of being like. You get turned around whatever. You can't do certain things. But all I have to stress is that 50 for the high school, finish. You take that degree, run with it and you decide what you want to do. As far as law, yes we actually have people in this field. Environmental law now has become a big field. You probably see those on commercials and I admire them. 1-800 is a fellow Yolo. And you see that people are as bestosas, 1-800 is bestosas. They are actual lawyers who go after this. They go after companies who want to improve their market. They have to go after companies. If you have to work for a company then you came down with 1-800 in your bestosas. Any of the what we call occupational disease you actually have one for them that will go after the companies. If you actually work for those companies at that time. Again, when you talk about this and CHM this is actually certifications. Again, a lot of certifications require that you have a bachelor's degree and that you work in the field five years or more. Some require that you have a bachelor's degree and you work in the field five years or more. But, most certifications require that you sit for the exam. A lot of times that exam could be 8 hours or 16 hours. As well as not only sit for the exam it requires that you have what we call continued education courses. So for the CHM every five years I have to prove that I took these series of courses. I have up to date on regulations, up to date on procedures and I have to submit that. And again, for most of these what we call professional licenses you have to do that. Same thing, you become a doctor. I know people who become lawyers do the same thing. You actually have to show that you have taken a number of professional courses. Just keep that in mind. Okay, in the field you have so many different types of jobs. I described a couple but here's a little bit more. Health and safety specialists, safety man, compliance, regulatory specialists, geology, conservationists consultant. Just to let you know that Rob, I went and I talked about this in a little while. When I came out of school I was a lab technician. I actually went to work with a lab that was actually in Mount Sinai. Did that for about a year or so. Then got a job as a consultant. Consultant is nice. You can get a job. The problem is as a consultant you go where they tell you to go. So when they told me to go to Albany and stay in the hotel for six weeks I went. When they told me to go to Jersey to do this and stay here for three weeks I went. Then I said I got out of the consultant business and went into what called the regulatory business. In other words I actually stood for the regulatory association. And then from there moved into regulatory, regulatory board event. I actually worked for the board event for a little while. Four and a half years. And then I found a way to contact it. So again it wasn't just a straight up, come out of school, go to contact it. Some people do that. Some people don't do that. I am pretty much with the right path. So again with that said, there are other things that are open up now. Geologists. People say what about geology? Geology in New York? Not necessarily in New York. But you might have heard about fracking. In other words to use things like gas and oil and such. I can tell you this. Geologists now are short after. They're short after the oil companies now. That's if you want to go that route. In different routes you can go. You can go to conservationist route. You can go to regulatory route. You can go okay I want to make as much money as I want to go. And I can tell you this. There was something going on now taking to New York when they were saying the barber in that particular town because this town has a bunch of companies coming in and doing fracking. The barber in this town, $180,000. Because people who are people who are barber fracking, they're willing to pay $500 apart because they don't have that much time. They might have a day off to actually paint. They will paint the barber of the same $200 so they can get in front of him. And they were actually saying it was an honor but I don't believe it. Barbers actually meaning $180,000. So I can't imagine whether people were involved in fracking. I'm not saying that's the norm. I just want to make sure. The next slide. And again hospitals, colleges, mega-events probably kind of goes on as you might want to consider. You've been working again a lot of these different industries. It's good always to get regulatory experience and move on and self-employment. Many people over the years they want to start their own environmental firm. So that's something that you can think about also. After you get experience on the outside come start your own firm. You can do well with that. But somebody can start their own firm. That's not the least. This is just basic salary for about five years in industry. So as you can see a manager can make $92,000. A project manager $83,000. This is the average salary that was about a couple years back. This was back in 2015-2016. So with that said, it is a field that is wide open. I tell everybody, you know just think about it. Sometimes you fall into certain things. You'll say you know what I want to be there so I want to be that. But you know what, just take a look. The H&S is a good field. I don't know anyone who is starving actually in this field as right now. So just take a look. Thank you. We would love to be able to give you a flavor just the taste. I know I promise a lot of food. But because of time, I'm going to ask that you indulge me. That we all just get a little taste so we can go a mile wide and not a mile deep. All our speakers are going to be available to answer questions after as well. So I'm going to ask that we move the program along and introduce our next speaker. I don't want to do that. I am going to pass you over to one of the coolest guys on campus, my colleague. Yes, Dr. Skeet. So you've already welcomed our Masters of Ceremony but Dr. Skeet is going to take over here. He's going to introduce our keynote for the morning and our other speaker. Thank you Dr. Skeet. Thank you Dr. Heet. Good morning. Before we get introduced the keynote speaker, let's keep items that draw to your attention. Number one, this conference is being streamlined live as we speak. Now what I want everyone to do, I want everyone to go on their phones right now. And hashtag MEC John Gibbs on Instagram, on Facebook, wherever, any other social media. Hashtag MEC John Gibbs because at the end of the day we have a pride but in the very well who gets the most light. Now for you the high school students and also the college students we haven't forgotten you. We're going to have a 45 second pitch competition at the end of today's event. 45 seconds on what course of action that you're going to take after hearing the speakers of the day. So keep in mind take copious notes both for the students and high school students because we have an opportunity for you to win prizes. So I'm not going to tell you what the prizes are, but I'm just going to keep it. So you can take your notes and please ask questions of the speakers at the end of the day. Some of you are asking about Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi is SSID colon MEC. The user ID is MEC forward slash Wi-Fi. And the password is Sunday at 999. Just in case if you were wondering if you didn't have it. So with that being said I'm now going to just briefly just say two sentences about our keynote speaker and bring her on. Now Hannah Dorothy is a policy analyst at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. She began her career back in 2007. Hannah has a bachelor's degree in environmental studies and also a master's degree in environmental management from Duke University. So with no further ado I'm going to call on Hannah Dorothy, our keynote presenter for today. Thank you so much to Muhammad and Dr. Reed for inviting me to speak to you today. I'm very excited to share with you about the New York City. Has some coffee this morning. Very good. Oh yes. Pretty intimately every day. And so what's the story of the water that comes this morning that we're already mentioned about public health, equity and environmental science. I can really think through how we touch these things every day just by existing in New York City. And we have in fact quite a privilege by living here. The water that we use comes from a system that is respected and renowned worldwide. So we'll explain a little more about what that means for us. How many of you know where New York City's water comes from? I'm sure you've probably heard about it in science classes. Okay, a handful. Well that's good. Because we'll, you're going to know by the end of this presentation. I'll also touch on that for those who are thinking about career paths, New York City's Department of Environmental Protection has a lot of really diverse opportunities to engage with this subject matter in varieties from engineering to public engagement. So think about these things while I'm talking about the many interesting subjects. And how you might be engaging in that and you can ask questions. So this morning I'm going to give a little overview of Department of Environmental Protection. Talk through our water supply system. Talk about where our water goes through our wastewater system. The risks that we're facing as a city also nationally. The actions that you're taking and then how we're going to move forward. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection is a mayoral and it is the largest water and wastewater facility in the country. We have over 6,000 employees and we have an annual budget of more than $1 billion. We're responsible for managing all aspects of water throughout the city. The drinking water, the wastewater, the storm water. And when it comes to water supply, we deliver nearly 1 billion gallons of water to 9 million New Yorkers every day. And we maintain over 7,000 miles of water remaining and protect approximately 2,000 square miles of watershed including 19 reservoirs and three controlled lakes. We treat almost 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater every day and operate and maintain 14 wastewater systems throughout New York City. 96 pumping stations so moving that wastewater throughout the city so that they can go where they need to. And then also 7,500 miles of sewers. You take the sewers and the water mains combined over 14,000 miles that is over 4 trips back and forth to California. To give you a sense of the scale we're talking about just here in New York City. We're also in charge of air noise and hazardous waste and we're saying to the air pollution control code to reduce local air emissions and enforce the New York City noise code and regulate the hazardous waste. Next slide please. Most of BP's work is operational focused on day to day delivery of clean water and the treatment of wastewater. I work in the Office of Integrated Water Management in the Bureau of Sustainability. And our work is focused on spearheading policy development, partnerships, studies and pilot programs to reduce water demand, protect our critical infrastructure and increase the cost efficiency of our water supply system and promote public awareness of our supplies. We focus on four areas, stormwater management and water quality, waste water and resource recovery, climate change and resiliency and drinking water supply and protection. And we think about these synergies and accesses between all these areas and how they can complement and contribute to building a resiliency. Urban resiliency is the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses and systems in the city to adapt to grow no matter what kind of chronic stresses they face. And so what they experience of it. Yeah you can't hear me with these ones. I dropped my attention. And so resiliency is the thread of this morning's presentation. So keep that in mind. So before thinking about New York City, let's take a step back and think about water in general. We talked about how we used it this morning. We also think about other services that water provides and may not think about like fire protection. Even in the heating and cooling of our building, water is used in facilities and ways that we may not think about your average person. But then there's other things like our water footprint, like virtual water. Can you think of what virtual water like that? So you had to guess between taking a shower or making a hamburger. Which do you think uses more water? Raise your hand if you think shower. Raise your hand if you think making a hamburger takes more water. Making a hamburger takes far more water. Orders of magnitude more water. Because think about it. Hamburger comes from a cow. That cow has to eat. That food that the cow eats has to grow. And that needs water. So in fact, it takes roughly 400 to 600 gallons to go into virtual water footprint of a hamburger. You know where it actually only happens to be about 20 to 30 gallons. So just for context, we use water day to day in our lives but then there's also the impact of water that we have to appreciate. That we also interact with day to day that we may not touch. So I should touch this. I guess I'll keep going. We have the water that comes from many different places that how we interact with water. But for as far as the water that comes out of our faucets, this is where we get our water from. It's from the Catsfield, Delaware and the pro reservoir systems. So starting in the Catsfield mountains this is again hundreds of miles away from where we are far down here. This is New York City. Here we are. And our water comes from the Catsfield Delaware reservoirs provide about 50% of New York City's water supply. And they start from the Catsfield Mountains in upstate New York. Over one square miles of watershed covered by 75% forests acting as a natural filter for water, helping protect the soil, reduce runoff and support biological diversity of the state and enhancing water quality. Because of this natural filtration, New York City is one of only five large cities across the country that does not have to filter our water mechanically because nature is doing this for us. We have that. And so after traveling thousands of miles sorry hundreds of miles down to New York City our water travels through three underground tunnels to be spread and delivered throughout the five boroughs. And so historically the proton reservoir system was developed in 1842 and then you have the Catsfield reservoir system up here developed more in the early 1900s and then the Delaware reservoir was expanded. The real challenge facing DEP in the early 1900s was water supply. How do we build enough water reservoir supply so that we can ensure clean and drinkable water to New Yorkers and for New York City into the future? So that was our one challenge facing New York City in early days. So this drinking water as I said safety is critically important. Our drinking water is disinfected with chlorine. It is also in some cases filtered but only in the proton supply. And it is delivered through tunnels over 400 feet deep beneath the city. Once it reaches the city there are a numerous, there are over a thousand water quality sampling stations throughout New York City. And in terms of the engineering of bringing New York City water here to us as residents it comes through these three tunnels I described, hundreds of feet beneath the surface. And then it is sent through gravity up to the sewer mains and that's where the 7000, sorry not sewer mains I apologize water mains. We don't get it wrong. And then it is sent out to the water distribution hub. And it's just really wonderful to note. Our water flows by gravity from the cat scale mountains all by itself. It doesn't require any pumping that means there's no energy having to be expended to bring our water to us. So that means there's very small carbon footprint and even once it's arrived in the city it's flowing by gravity up to the surface. So that also helps reduce our water utilities carbon footprint when it comes to water supply. And so these are the things that take to deliver one billion gallons of water per day to all of us residents after we've used our water. Well, again with over 9 million customers there's a lot of potential for risks. Our water that goes down the drain is carried to wastewater treatment plan through pipes where it is then pushed out to the New York City harbor. And while it's traveling out there there can be issues depending on what goes down the drain. So grease, a sewer with grease here on the left can clog the arteries if you know what I mean. It's similar to our human system, right? And then a sewer without grease it's a lot easier for wastewater to flow. Next slide please. So this has become a serious focus for DEP. How do we manage our wastewater? Now that water supply has been taken care of the next challenge facing is our wastewater problem and touch on this a bit more. But I really want to draw your attention to what we call fatbergs. Fatbergs occur when grease from things being thrown down the drain wipes and other stuff get flushed clogging our pipes and draining DEP's pockets. So over time grease and improperly flushed items so wipes, feminine products, makeup applicators, cat litter build up in the sewers causing these fatbergs. You may have actually been seeing some of these promotional items throughout the city because we're launching a campaign to really try and address this issue of people improperly disposing of waste materials that should be trashed as opposed to flushed. We spend 19 million dollars a year just trucking away and addressing these fatbergs that clog up our system. You can see this is an example of a fatberg that is really problematic. We are very connected to this wastewater system. You're asked about taking note of an action item. This would be a fantastic one to make sure that you only dispose of toilet paper in the toilet and everything else gets thrown in the trash can. Also, if you want you can also hashtag Fatberg Free New York City or tweet at NYC Water if you find this interesting. That's something that we're going to be definitely promoting. So next slide. So we've talked about what happens when things go down the toilet, down the train. What about when it rains? So as I said, New York City Department of Environmental Protection covers all aspects of the city's water and that also includes storm water. So when rain falls on an impervious surface like rooftops, parking lots, streets and sidewalks it becomes runoff and it picks up the trash, the dirt and the pollutants along the way and then eventually that storm water will make its way to, call it a catch basin or a sewer grate and there it will eventually flow out to the harbor. So next slide. Now New York City has two different kinds of sewer systems both which present unique opportunities and challenges. When built to design this sewer system here, this combined sewer system it diverts wastewater to treatment plant as well as rain water. And when New York City has a heavy rain event, as little as one inch of rain sometimes wastewater treatment plant can get to capacity because it's overwhelmed with the volume of water that it's being sent. And so it can back up and sometimes that system you can see here so you have both rain water and sewer water flowing and as designed it will be diverted to a wastewater treatment plant. But then if when it rains to such a degree that it overflows this diversion it will then flow into the river and so that's untreated water being delivered to our harbor or our problem or you know the different water, body water. We then also have a municipal separated storm water system and this is also called MS4 for sure. And here as you can see the wastewater is sent directly to a treatment plant and when it rains that is sent out into the harbor in a flow type and it sends separating those two. However while it's beneficial for wastewater treatment that separated storm water travel along the impervious services picking up pollutants trash and debris along the way sending that untreated storm water out to the harbor also lending some other unique challenges you may be hearing about plastic trash out of the water that is from water that can get picked up in the grates and also sent through the sewers. So these present unique challenges particularly water quality challenges. Next slide please. Our wastewater treatment plants we have 14 throughout the city and we can treat 1.8 billion gallons of water per day in dry weather and then when it rains we can treat up to 3.6 billion gallons of water a day but sometimes it rains more than that. Do you remember ever when you flushed the toilet, used the sink your wastewater is being sent to Coney Island in the green circle down at the bottom just for some context so you can have a sense of what you're connected to. Next slide please. And all these implications have water quality concerns are related to water quality concerns. After treatment, say for example at the Coney Island wastewater treatment plant, that water will flush to the New York City harbor This map, these two maps contrast water quality in the harbor from 1985 to 2016 and you can see a pretty dramatic difference. So water quality is getting much better. Red is significantly higher concentrations of fecal coliform bacteria than improving through yellow, green to blue. Blue is in fact swimmable. And presently only 7% of our harbor is made up of tributaries that do not meet the secondary contact requirements. You can barely see them but there's some of the canals and rivers farther inland on the right. And this really shows just what a feat of improvements is made with water quality treatment. Particularly at the wastewater treatment plant. A lot of this was in response to 1972 Clean Water Act. That was actually under the presidency of President Nixon, which is somewhat surprising you might think. However Clean Water Act really propelled water utilities to have to take action on water quality concerns. If we were to look at a map from 1909 the entire harbor would be red. It would have been a public health crisis because people were just flushing untreated water into the harbor and populations referring to such dense concentrations of people without wastewater treatment we would be basically living in a cesspool. So we should take this moment to appreciate what 9 million people are able to do being surrounded by swimmable water. And this was something just in the past 30 years you can see what a dramatic change has been made. And so this has really been the second challenge that DEP has had to take on. We had water management to find water supply for all of New Yorkers. And then when now you had all these New Yorkers you had to make sure that they were able to thrive in that environment. So it can be easy sometimes to forget that we are right next to the ocean. But it is because of the important strides that were made in water quality that we now are able to see life more than just human life in the harbor. And we're seeing life and aquatic animals that we haven't seen for over hundreds of years and marine life such as whales, seals, turtles. And that's because we've been improving infrastructure not just at the wastewater treatment plants but also gray infrastructure and green infrastructure. So these are examples of other things that DEP has been taking on to address water quality. We've been making sewer system modifications, power station expansions, expanding out new sewers in the gray infrastructure area next slide please. And then we've also been tackling green infrastructure which is using natural systems to help filter storm water and reduce that immediate flow of rain water flooding and inundating our sewer systems. So these are examples of rain gardens on city sidewalks, city streets. I also want to highlight we have our grant program for private property owners. And this is an opportunity to incentivize green infrastructure for private owners that might not otherwise have the means to do so. And for those who would like to think entrepreneurially or think about opportunities this is one that we're trying to make available for future developers and wanting to promote a more sustainable and integrated approach to water management. Because next slide please. Addressing storm water is very important when we think to the future and when we think about climate change. We heard this morning we know that there is increasing variability in our weather patterns and climate change leads to a number of problems for thinking about our system, our wastewater and water supply system. We have mean annual increase in temperature we have increases in precipitation and we're going to likely have increases of heat waves, sea level rise and projected sea levels will lead to an increase of frequency and intensity of coastal flooding. And all of that has a purpose for us as an agency. And these are on timelines to say your 2050, your 2080 and as an agency that is making infrastructure planning so permanently designing systems that are intended to stick around for minimum 50 years plus. This is right around the corner. So we have to address this next slide please. And think about those risks and opportunities for consistency in the face of these risks. So for our water supply system throughout heavy rain in terms of resiliency we're thinking through water conservation opportunities. We're thinking about how we can protect our watershed when it comes to wastewater treatment. Heat waves are a serious implication because that might cause a black out. We have a conned here they can speak to how much effort they're making to make sure that energy is being delivered on a consistent basis. Especially when it comes to the summer months and we all have our air conditioners pumping increased temperatures, increased energy. The potential for a black or for a brown out would have problems with our wastewater treatment plan. So we're looking into things like renewable energies and diversifying our energy supply so that we can ensure that we have backup. Also coastal flooding and sea level rise will have implications for as discharging wastewater out into our surface waters. So we have to be careful about our designing, our upgrades to our systems. And then when it comes to stormwater management increased rain events and then increased flooding will overwhelm our system. And so a combination of green infrastructure, grey infrastructure and again water conservation will help manage up the flow that arrives to our sewer system. We also have short term risks and that is looking at our infrastructure needs. The Delaware Aqueduct is the underground pipe that delivers our Catskill Delaware water over the Hudson River. And this is the world's longest continuing underground tunnel as a matter of fact. But it has a major leak. It leaks 15 to 35 million gallons per day. This puts into context how much water we use because we use a billion gallons of water a day. But this leak has been going on since the 90s and finally DEP is going to take matters and into their own hands we're actually fixing the leak. And so in repairing this leak the Delaware Aqueduct is going to have to be shut down. And in line with that shutdown water conservation really comes to the fore because we're going to have to be very creative in our water supply resources. So next slide please. And so we've taken on a robust demand management plan. This is a highlight of the areas that we're looking into. So we're partnering with municipal agencies. We're partnering with residential programs for multi-family buildings. We're also working with private sectors, hotels, restaurants, hospitals in our non-residential area. And then we're also optimizing DEP's water system and then also the upstate customers that we sell our water to. All around there's a lot of opportunity that we're taking on thinking about water conservation both in the near term then also the long term as an integrated approach to these resiliency needs. Next slide please. And so some of the milestones that we've taken on have been working with the Department of Education replacing over hundreds of toilets throughout the city. We've partnered with the City College of New York and replaced 780 fixtures across 10 campus buildings. We worked with the Health and Hospitals Corporation, Retrofitting Harlem Hospital. We're also working with the City Wide Administrative Services again for over 1,300 fixtures of retrofits that are planned. And the list goes on. But all these efforts are helping towards building a more resilient water sewer system and also water supply system and have capacity for these heavy rain events I described when facing drought and reducing pressure overall on our water supplies. Next slide please. So looking to the future you know we sort of did a whirlwind tour through New York City's water supply system and waste water system and it's such a benefit to be able to turn our faucet on and have clean water every day and know that that water is going to be treated and done so in such a way that can help the city and our ecology thrive. We're going to continue to face these opportunities for growth and sustainability by providing world-class sustainable water and wastewater services to future generations. We are going to be controlling our sources of pollution to improve quality of life for all New Yorkers. We also want to reduce our carbon impact and mitigate our effects on climate change and we want to really increase our public awareness of these operations and services that we provide so people can understand what an amount of effort goes into this thing that we get to use every day. We're also cultivating and diverse and highly qualified workforce and I want to highlight that this could be you. This is one of the most exciting agencies I think in the city and would love for you to consider this in your future. Also we're going to maximize our operational efficiency across the agency because as time goes on we know that regulations are going to continue to ask the most of us that takes resources but we also have that equity issue. You can't raise funds, water is a human right. So how do you balance these really critical questions? And we're going to leverage all of this for innovative approaches and to improve our performance overall. So last slide please. I'm going to just take a moment again to highlight that as a young person thinking about future opportunities we have an internship program that is year round and I encourage you to look at our summer opportunities and questions. Please feel free to reach out and ask me. There's so much to discuss both in terms of your own professional development and then also water and wastewater in the city. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Let's give another round of applause for Anna. Due to technical constraints we're going to limit our questions and answers to just three questions from the audience. Now if you want to ask a question you can just two mics, just three persons. Now everyone can speak to all of the speakers during lunchtime. So if you didn't get an opportunity now you will have an opportunity sometime during the course of the day to speak to all of our speakers. So with that being said I'm going to go to the first question. That's a wonderful question. So in Michigan simply put as I understand it they were exploring because their cost of water supply had been increasing. They wanted to look to a new source of water and so they decided to change up their water supply source. In doing that they did not evaluate what that new water chemistry would mean for how they treat their pipes. So the different pH levels and other contributing factors of water quality can be highly corrosive and they did not take the steps to treat their pipes ahead of time so that when they introduced this new water supply it was corroding their pipes and they didn't say anything and so it was actually industry that first noticed that they were having a lot of trouble with their mechanical equipment but Flint did not want to address this publicly and so it wasn't until it started really picking up and drawing a big deal of this that finally started to have to take issues into their own hands. It's very, it's layered but I know for the sake of time so that's a simplified answer. In New York City we take great strides to make sure that our water quality is adjusted to the appropriate levels of pH and other concerns before it enters the pipes. Also lead exposure can happen in the fixtures, in the plumbing fixtures that are at the level of the home. The water supply that we deliver is nearly guaranteed lead free but there is the opportunity for lead potential contamination once that water has entered onto the private property and so it is true that it's important that you speak to your property owner or if you are a property owner that you look at the fixtures in your building or lead. But if you have any questions about that you can also look on our website we've done numerous reports on lead in the drinking water and I definitely encourage you to look at that. We'll go into great detail about how we treat our water and the efforts that we go to to great lengths to make sure that does not happen. There's a brown up and how do you probably dispose of grease? Yeah that's a great question. Thank you. So disposing of grease, that's a quick one. Usually I would pour my grease into an old can or container that I'm going to throw out so you let it solidify at room temperature basically instead of just pouring it down the drain. So that would be easy one. And then a brown out I'm not actually totally showing technical definition, I'm sure someone from ConEd can explain but it means that the power yeah you mentioned it. Pretty much a brown out is one step above a blackout. What it is that means that you might lose your power but what we actually do is after you turn to commercial residents you actually lessen the amount of power they have. So sometimes you see somebody say well could you please not use that much amount of power between 9 and 1 p.m. or so. So that's what it's trying to do. It's trying to prevent a blackout. So you also have rolling blackouts or rolling brown. So again it's just a reduction of power but not to the point that you can't see it all. I love your presentation very informative. I was curious how long do I need to run my tab work and also would you tell me how to bring out what is relative to other region states countries? Yeah well I know that we are in New York states drinking water quality contest every year so I think we're in the top 20 in terms of drinking, like top drinking water. We have some of the best in the country because of our natural filtration that our watersheds provide. Globally I don't know really like in terms of a ranking but I know that you can drink the water straight from the tap. You wouldn't have to let it run. I think it does. There's also this question depending on what the pipes are like in your building that's the question you have to investigate for yourself. But you can drink the water straight from the tap as far as the water that's set for our pipes and we have some really great water. You can look at more if you want in our water quality report. Final question to one more question. Years ago many of us were drinking water in the tap water and it had fluoride in the water and it lessened the number of parody. What's happened with that? We still fluoride in the water so it's still a service that we add. Thank you very much Hannah. Let's give a round of applause for Hannah. The next speaker is on his way to the stage I just want to say it's been 24 years and it's been 24 years since we've had the Environmental Science Program and the Environmental Science Conference. It's been a long time. Mr. Norr Blackwood is a friend of Holly and I must say that he was one of the first he was the first professor that taught air and water pollution here in the Environmental Science Program. Let's make a big round of applause for Mr. Norr Blackwood. I need to tell you, I got a heinous glass. Professor Skeet. Wow! Look at people. This I want to say thank you very much to the conference organizing committee for asking me to come to talk to you all. Thank you to Matt Gerbers. Thank you to Connor Dixon. Everything matters. Very important motto. So, quick question. Everyone is sitting here. Could you tell me the age of Medgar Evers? It's right there. Could you all tell me the age of Medgar Evers? 38, 38 years. You lived for 38 years. Please remember that as I continue with my presentation. We're talking about sustainability. And my presentation, the theme is half life to sustainability. And you might want to know if I am going to give you a chemistry course. No, I'm not. I want you all to please understand that the environment is an ecosystem. We have to think about the environment as an ecosystem. Next slide. Global warming is part of the environment. It's a phenomenon that's happening everywhere and it doesn't affect just coastal dwellers. Rising sea waters doesn't just affect them. These intense hurricanes and storm doesn't just affect Florida or the Panhandle. Global warming, climate change affects everyone. My presentation today will go through a few things. We will look at population, economics education, research, but more importantly, youth. Next slide. So, before everything else, as Professor Skeeter indicated, my background is environmental engineering. I am a junior alum and I see some great people here. Dr. Jones, hello, how are you? You probably just stepped out. Number of folks, talk about sustainability. So, I'm old school, so I went back to the dictionary and I looked at the dictionary and the dictionary said to keep in existence sustainability as compared or defined by the United Nation basically states that we should leave this place the way we found it so our future generations could develop moving forward. And the last word I want you all to understand is viability. What is viability? So, instead of being old school this time, what I did is I went on to the computer and dictionary.com said ability to work successfully, ability to survive, to live successfully. I want you to remember those three terms as we move on. Next slide. So, this is where the half-life comes in. So, for all the academia and all the academics and the chemistry professors and the math professors of the audience, please understand where I'm coming from with this particular slide. Half-life basically means what is the time duration before you can get to half the amount of that property basically in essence. What we're looking here and I spoke with, I've been talking to Dr. Barthulis from Georgia Tech and he has been doing some research and his research has indicated that the half-life of black people in Atlanta which is one of the mecca okay for black people is going to be 43 years. This graph looks at the population of black people in Atlanta from 2000 and it states that that decline by the year 2043 the population of black people is going to be half. In the same time period, the population of white folks are going to increase and as you can see the graph, the purple goes down the red goes up. I am not here to create any disturbances in race or anything like that. I am saying it's an ecosystem viability. Next slide. Viability, you know, closer to places. This is New York City. New York City is going to go through the same type of half-life and he is going to be continuing to do his research in New York City but New York City has also its own half-life but that speaks towards viability and as we move forward I want you all to understand sustainability and I am going to connect all of the dots. Next slide. So let's get some background information here. Bucks about people of African descent in America outside of Africa, where do you think has the largest population of black people? Brazil has the largest population but second to Brazil is America. Next. Let's talk about income, value. The average net household wealth which is not necessarily income, it is wealth but black household is $17,000. For white household it's $171,000. Next slide please. Let's look at businesses. In the last 20 to 30 years businesses have had skyrocketed based on black-owned businesses. 2.6 million businesses throughout America. However 2.5 million does not create a job or only has one employee. So this is very interesting. Why is the year 1865 so relevant to my conversation? Anyone wants to give a guess. 1865 1865 was the end of the Civil War and the beginning of reconstruction and around that time we could assume that we had probably around 1% of black businesses. All black businesses make up 1% of GDP. For those of you who don't know what GDP means, I will give you some work. When you go home, look it up. It's important. Let's fast forward. Next slide. When we fast forward today, it is still 1%. This was indicated by the White House initiative for black historically black colleges and universities just last month for black history month. Next slide. Some possible theories of why this happened. One of them is the misalignment of black talent with STEM and connected now to STEM. They didn't have the kind of access to STEM. We all know what STEM means, science, technology, engineering and math. But what STEM results in? Good problem solving skills, critical thinkers and avatars. What it leads to better ideas, creates growth, employment, better business opportunities. Next slide. So, STEM research. I'm here from Burkina National Lab. One, and I'll get into that. Let me now jump into that. So let's go to research. Research, next slide. Starts with good questions. Good questions actually would lead to research. And your professors and your teachers would tell you that as students. Good research leads to innovation. And innovation leads to quality of life. And I want you all to understand how many of you call this in your pocket. A smart phone. It took me a long time to actually get a smart phone. My wife and my daughter hated me two years ago because I had as what they called a dumb phone. It was a flip phone. But this in my hand, 60 years ago, would have been in the entire ground floor of this building. 60 years later you walk with a very powerful item in your hand. That's quality of life. I am able to go places, put an address in boom, and I'll get a map and directions to get to that place. That's quality of life. So, research leads to quality of life. Next slide. So, I'm going to talk a little about the theory complex. The theory national lab complex. Next slide. Has 70 national labs throughout of the entire US. 17 of those labs. Five of which are multidisciplinary labs. Next slide. And the reason why I want you all to understand that is the vastness, the grandness of research. The department of energy is the largest fund in the world of the physical sciences. We have a national lab which is a multidisciplinary lab. Next slide. Oak Ridge National Lab. And I want you to see how large a scale these national labs are. Because a lot of times you hear national lab and you think it's one or two buildings. Next slide. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Pacific Northwest. These are multidisciplinary labs. Five of them. Next slide. The next one is Brookhead National Lab where I work. And it started off as an army camp. In 1947 it moved from an army camp. Next slide. To Brookhead National Lab. And these are some of the facts. We have over 300 buildings. We have 4,000 scientists, international scientists, coming to BNL to do research. We do a number of research. I manage a large number of over 400 to 500 interns and professors to do research. Next slide. This is how Brookhead National Lab looks. Next slide. The first one is the relativistic heavy iron collider which is one up there. It's the first generation. If you all don't know, in CERN there's a huge iron collider that greed did all discover the Higgs boson. Two, three is the light source. The brightest light source in the world. Next slide, please. Next slide. What I wanted you all to see is the understanding of magnitude. We have seven Nobel Prize winners that have conducted research at BNL. And that guy there, President Barack Obama was presented the lady there. She has the large Samonto patterns. And she's the one responsible for the battery that powers any battery pack you have in your heart. She's the one responsible for that. Next slide. These are the core capabilities of Brookhead National Lab. Next slide. These are some of the research facilities. Next slide. This here is looking at batteries with regard to silver. Next slide. Next slide. This here is very interesting. What the researchers at BNL did is to look at the eye of a moth to understand why it is, what's going on with that phenomenon. And they were able to understand the eye of a moth and then mimic the eye of a moth because if you were to look at your cell phones, you would see a reflection of your cell phone. What they did in understanding the eye of a moth, they were able to reconstruct the surface of glass basically and create what they called black glass, no reflection. But in doing so they also created a surface that is super hydrophobic which means it repels water. So if you were to take a drop of water onto that surface it bounces off as a tennis ball and there are lots of implication that could come out of that. Where I'm going next slide, where I'm going with all of this is we have a lot of research that's going on just in one lab and there are 17 labs. These are all of the collaborations we have at Brookhead National Lab. Next slide. So I just showed you all research that leads to quality of life because we're here in an ecosystem that is all about quality of life. This one's Sheila but those of you all who like to read the Bible and going to Psalms, you would see this word a lot of times. And basically what it means is pause and think because my next slide is going to be, I want you to understand knowledge. In the abundance of water, the full dexterity. Robert Nesta Mali Sheila, pause and think knowledge. In the abundance of water, the full dexterity. Next slide. So there's a scholarship and the folks from ConEd and the E.P. Agents of Change, they were talking about, the E.P. folks were talking about resiliency. The ConEd folks they are not doing, everything matters. Ecosystem is understanding what this means. You saw job opportunities in the environment. Many job opportunities. One of the growing, most fast growing profession is installing solar panels. Think about it, opportunity. Shift of culture, my generation, generations before us had to fight to get opportunities. We couldn't wait for the door to open and we would rush in to get opportunities to better ourselves. It seems as we have advanced, now educators and administrators have the best students for opportunities. Please, in the abundance of water, the full dexterity. Next slide. I have a concept called the closed glass door because you do everything and then you get to the door and it's closed but you can see behind the door. You can see all the good things that are happening but you can't get through. Well, we have to strategize on how it is we can get through this closed glass door. One of them, next slide, to me would be internship programs. We can get into internship programs and understand and at least break down that glass door for ourselves. Next slide. Intenture programs here at B&L, if the first graph shows you a growth, our interns, our internship program has grown. And I can assure you, most at Con Edison, at DEP and all of the other places internship programs are growing. They are opportunities but in the abundance of water, the full dexterity. In our programs we have 40, how much is it? 45% female and 38% underrepresented minorities. In research, scientific research, unheard of, I'd like anyone anywhere in the US to show me internship programs that is a combination and very integrated that has decent minorities doing world class research. Next slide. Next slide. So the program that I'm talking about is the science of the graduate laboratory internship program. I'm not going to go into it because I know Skeeter's probably about to tell me I need to get out. But where I want to go, where I want to go these jobs, if you're not in school and asking the great questions, how could you graduate if someone earlier on said stay in school. That's not just a slogan, that's real folks. Because education is very important as we move forward. I showed you, now let's put everything together, I showed you earlier on, we're still 1%. I told you STEM creates innovators. I showed you where research, good questions, lead to quality of life. So if you were to stay in school, ask the hard questions, demand your teachers and your professors to give you the kind of knowledge that is dependent on you getting out there and being you. You all stand on the shoulders of great people and here I tied back Medgar Evers, he was 38 years impacted the entire America. 38 years young guy. Today is tomorrow's yesterday. Grab today. Today you are the generation. It is not the next generation. I have stopped talking about the next generation of scientists and engineers. I have transformed it from the next generation of scientists and engineers to the next generation of intellectuals because it's not only scientists and engineers that will build a society, it's a combination of everyone. What I'm saying here today is you need to have some background in STEM so you can be a problem solver, you could be a thinker, you could be an innovator, you could create businesses and ideas so we could move our community. It's an ecosystem. It's all of us. You are the fiber of a fabric that is called us. It is not the black race or the African race or the white race or the Hispanic. It is the human race in the abundance of water. The fool is thirsty. Medgar Evers was 38 years. Today is called the present for a reason. God gave us today as a present. Use it, use it wisely because our future is dependent on today. With that I want to say thank you all very, very much. It was powerful in the abundance of water. The fool is thirsty. Now folks, don't let that just be something that you heard, not in an accident. Because I can say to you, there are opportunities that you as students need to take advantage of. But of course for students who are in my class, you would always hear me saying that you have to take ownership of your learning. You are responsible for your learning. You are ultimately responsible for the trajectory of your life. And I can say that I was, I had an opportunity to go to Procurement National Lab and do research. I had two students with me there outside of that research. We were also involved in the Urban Discussion Program, the Service Service Airflow Exchange Program, which in fact I just presented some of that research in Australia just about less than two months ago. So for students, for every student that's in the audience right now, please keep in mind that this is not just a conference or a place where you're going to come, you're going to chill, and then you're going to leave and go home today and forget everything that you've learned. This is an opportunity to provoke thought. This is an opportunity for you to begin to think about yourself. Not in the context of today, but to think of yourself in the context of two years from now, three years from now, five years from now, and what is it going to take for you to begin to create that pathway that can lead to your success? What is it going to take for you to invest in yourself to augment who you are as an individual? Because in the real world it goes way beyond the textbook. It goes way beyond the grade point average. It goes way beyond what you think may get you near. An internship of every student that's in this audience right now is a college student. Every one of you should already have applied for internships for this summer. If you're sitting in this audience as a college student and you haven't applied for an internship, then you're way behind the board. In the abundance of water, the food is thirsty. So that being said, every program is a reflection of the products that you produce. And today, I can stand proud as a member of the faculty of the School of Science to say that most of the alumni in our program, they are doing extremely well. The Environmental Science Program is one of the best kept secrets I've met here in this college. And for those of you who may not know I will let you know right now because on the stage that I'm going to call up are some of our graduates from the Environmental Science Program. I just want to recognize a few folks. I want to recognize Dr. Dianne Hines. Can you please stand? Dianne is one of the brightest environmental science programs. And Dianne wants to hold this program. So I'm just going to touch on a few of them. Then we have Miss Jibrilavik. I have Michelle and Claflambert. Andru. Strava Spinach. Joel Stroders. Royce Crystal. Crystal. Where's Kathy? Kathy and William. Danish Ray Cross. We have superstars in our graduate program. And every one of those students, who else do we have? Delroy Burden. Where's Delroy? Delroy Burden. He's speaking to any one of those students and let them tell you about the great life they have just by graduating from the Environmental Science Program here at Medgarver's College. In fact, most of them can say to you that they will gainfully employ right upon completion of their bachelor's degree. Let's agree. Let's agree. Right? And at the end of the day, our students that graduate from our program, some of them even have job offers prior to graduation. So with no further ado, I'm going to begin to call our panel members for someone called Strava Spinach. Strava is one of our alum, of course. Travis right now works with Clean. Travis works for Environmental Safety Clean Systems Incorporation. Let's give a round of applause for Travis Spinach. Next we have Crystal Abrams, who's going to come. Crystal works with New York City Department of Mental Health and Hygiene. I'm also an alum of our program. I'm going to call up Mr. Ray Cross, another alum who works with OSHA, Occupational Safety and Health Administration. I'd also call Dr. Burris that walked into the room. Professor Burris, please come to the front. Professor Burris is now retired, and he works with New York City Transit. Lisa Bloodburn from New England Alliance, Director of Advocacy and Education. Welcome. Thank you. And last but not least, Michelle Ann Platt-Lambert. Crystal and the world of Bloodburn, to the stage, to be on this panel as well. This is of water. The food is thirsty. So what I'm going to ask each of the speakers to just briefly take two to three minutes to just speak up of the companies that they are representing and just say something about themselves. Who's that with Mr. Blackburn? So you all already know that I work at Brookings National Lab, Department of Energy National Lab. I am a civil environmental engineer and started off as a project engineer and then found really my passion, which is workforce development and it's about creating access and breaking down the glass doors for our people. Good morning everyone. My name is Michelle Ann Platt-Lambert and I work for the Department of Transportation as an environmental engineer. I deal with all the environmental aspects of the two asphalt plants for the pavement of the New York City streets. I deal with pulmitin, making sure that the plant is in compliance. Again, I do with registration annual registration. All inspections of above-ground storage towns, the facilities. I also one of the main posts for the storm water pollution prevention plan. Team also the spill and control and come to measure. Anything environmental? You just come to me. I'm Lisa Fleckard and I'm the Director of Advocacy and Education with the New Town WFW in the program, New Town Creek Alliance and the New Town Creek is an industrial waterway that is the border between North Brooklyn and Western Queens. It's suffered greatly due to lack of regulation over the past century and ongoing combined sewer overflow issues that we talked about earlier today and so our organization founded in 2002 was really dedicated to revealing, restoring and revitalizing the New Town Creek for the health of the community surrounding the waterway for ecosystems there and also for industrial resilience and so today we do a lot of education work. We do a lot of navigating agency remediation issues and we work a lot with people in the community and so I'm happy to say we have two interns working with us right now that are students here at McGrathers College and it's wonderful to be a part of environmental justice world and the future of students. I was sent up until about four weeks ago I was with the NTA, specifically Music and Transits a lot of part of the NTA. I have been an adjunct with various community colleges dating back to the mid 90s. One of my favorite hangouts is McGathers. I have brought on board several students as interns to hide a number of them. My responsibilities at MTA were to typical environmental health and safety focused until the mid 1990s when many of you were not enough to remember but there was a nerve agent hit on the Tokyo subway system. At that time I was the director of environmental protection and industrial hygiene from the FCA transit and it fell upon the science nerds to figure out what do we do in case it happened here. How do we detect it? How do we predict where it's going to go if it is released? That expanded following the 2001 hits on the World Trade Center and it included a consideration of biological agents as well. So my career path deviated to counter terrorism and a lot of the work we've done in the last several years and then of course in person with the National Labs Department of Homeland Security, all kinds of letters from governments in terms of investigation units and emergency response and it was a phenomenal experience for the students that we are constantly looking for with the science background because some of them a lot of the professionals that started out in the traditional environmental health and safety are looking for me and we're going to reach. We need to replace ourselves with people that are already coming out of school and Med use is one of the best schools I have found in preparation in the environment. Good morning, my name is Ray Cross I was a graduate here at Mergar currently working with the United States Department of Labor specifically with the Equipation and Safety and Health Administration OSHA For those of you who do not know what OSHA is OSHA is the regulatory agency of health and safety for the workers in this country and it has to do with health and safety of the worker OSHA is the agency so my degree from here, from Mergar that was an important part it is an important part of my career at OSHA because here are the basics that we use in a database in the Department of Labor for health and safety for the workers in this country. Thank you Good morning, everyone. My name is Crystal Abrams I currently work for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in the pest control department I'm currently a case manager in the neighborhood rat mitigation zone or rat mitigation program. Basically what we do is the mayor made an announcement in 2017 to have a plan to resolve the rat issues in New York and I'm pretty sure if you guys go home and sometimes you see them running in the street now I personally don't like rats I don't think this is because I have an interest in rats personally but I do see the need for the environmental concern and the safety of the people so what we've been doing is we have consistent or proactive index of inspections where we use that to generate our analysis we also have neighborhood surveys we have our own extermination we have like we're also evaluating schools and how they dispose of their garbage all of the garbage staging areas so we're using all that information to generate data on how we're proactively remedy the rat problem in New York Good morning everyone my name is Travis Pinnock I work for Safety Clean System Bank a clean alverse company I am the environmental compliance manager for New York and New Jersey I manage approximately 11 branches travel a lot more company so Safety Clean is basically a boiler re-refinery company we basically refine all the use of oil in America the largest re-refinery in North America we have been throughout the largest oil refinery plant in the world three, one in Indiana, two in Canada thank you very much to all the panelists I'm going to give the audience the opportunity to participate in the Q&A in a few seconds but before I do I just have a few questions in which of course anyone can chime in at any point in time to answer the questions my first question is what are some of the challenges that you've been confronted with today as graduates and during the workforce and the reason why I'm asking these questions is because I want I want the audience particularly the students to understand what are the challenges that these individuals are faced with and what you can do to prepare yourself as you enter the workforce so anyone can start answering I've been on a few of the Q&A bars before as for curriculum, environmental science being one of them and one of the things I have found is that the students come out technically very well prepared but they cannot write. They have a serious problem taking this technical data stuff, putting it on paper so that the clients in an actual job you are investigating doing exposure assessments doing toxic valuations on products to see how much of a risk they pose but you have to take that technical babble and put it in a form that makes it usable to the client even though it's within your organization or within the city you're working for it has to be succinct to the point and backed up by some serious data they have historically had to spend more time correcting reports and in our particular field time is not on our side. You really need to get it right for the first time. So one of the things I have been beside on these advisory panels is I know I'm not going to be loved by students for this but it's one of the reasons we insist on you doing some kind of writing as a society before you graduate so that you won't be prepared once you get into the not necessarily friendly work place when it comes to time management. I would like to chime in and also believe experience it's one of the biggest helpful coming out of college going into the workforce and also I have a business mindset a lot of these companies specifically private companies especially one that I work for they care about money they care about their revenue they want to understand the business these challenges I believe as an undergrad going into the work industry try to take a few business classes and understand the language how to speak their language Just in addition to communication understanding the business we need to understand as we move forward as problem solvers we need to have a multidisciplinary approach to solving problems especially scientific problems so you need to have some computer background some coding background because scientific computing is very important as we move forward but also we no longer have physicists or chemists or biologists you need to be multidisciplinary so I would ask everyone to take different courses and really understand the questions and what is your learning do not learn from a professor on exams and his questions go beyond the professor and go beyond a textbook that is recommended I'm going to borrow from you and I'm going to say that one of the most important thing that we can have like you were saying experience, experience, experience and we mentioned here today the internships those internships come from experience when you bring that experience to the workforce to the employer appreciate that experience they want to know what exactly is it that you know from experience and write it through my field what I do I write a lot of books I go to this slide and one structure of this slide you look into a computer you also have a whole lot of writing you are going to have a lot of problems fighting attorneys, fighting other scientists or environmental experts when they review your papers when you review your reports your writing is not perfect so writing, writing, writing is so important and writing well is not just a whole lot of words with no meaning, you have to write a report that the person reading it can picture themselves in that situation I'll just say everything that my saying is 100% accurate and I'm here I present a very different post college experience in the workforce and what we experience is communication, communicating problems in your neighborhood on a block and street level all the way up to communicating with the federal government and different agencies and different corporations and how is that information being transferred are the agencies accurately representing the problems on the ground and solving the problems that the community is truly thinking are the solutions that are being posed, the real solutions that communities need to talk about, then, then allows people to think through problems and design innovative solutions that work for them, for their needs and being able to write being able to communicate, being able to translate across those incredible spectrums from your grandmother to the regional director or whatever, that needs to happen and not something that we strive to teach and to work with and so don't bypass the small community groups and nonprofits that need science, that need communicators and kind of that, we need to fill in those spectrums with everything that my family said it comes back to research, research, getting involved in research, teaches you how to write it teaches you how to think outside the box, it teaches you how to analyze data and interpret what you see also, it helps you to understand what you're reading and a lot of students that I've encountered, they read but they don't understand what they read, so if you don't understand what you read that message, you know, without being, you know, giving conflicting information so getting involved in research don't think it's only for STEM students it's very important as an undergrad and it's going to help you when you go further into the workforce I just want to reiterate, something about environmental science that I've loved all my adult life is that it's multi-disciplinary and this has been thrown out. You never know what the telephone calls points will be bringing to you any given day and it's one of the reasons that has made the interns going through the programs valuable and these are the individuals we look at first when it comes to filling things just so you get some more information on if you go to the MTA website www.mta.info go to the bottom of the page you see the word employment click on that, take the next link to Neocity Transit and it will give you information on something called the student experiential program and it will give you a list of the projects not just in environmental science related but across the Neocity Transit from engineering to sociology to clinical practice but in my experience environmental science cannot be beat for its diversity in terms of challenges. I mentioned the shift in my career path from traditional environmental protection and exposure assessments to counter-terrorism but that counter-terrorism is essentially it focuses on chemical, biological, and radar risks and how they might be a threat to the grinding public and the employees. How to detect, where to put the senses and where to pick the garbage coming out of some hyped appetites in terms of what the technology can do versus what it will do. Some of you may have heard or been involved or seen some of the dispersion studies that have been done in the university subway system what the roll-up is before we depart to do that against the public and the employees without poisoning them in the process is some of the stuff you get involved in this field in terms of its value because in the case of counter-terrorism we can't exactly advertise it that much but it's a field that I wish my own sons had gotten involved in but they don't listen to this. I would also say vision and passion. The internship that we do I was also a student that's a big internship and this internship helped you figure out what path you want to be on. We know life has its right and a lot of times you can get jobs because they need money you have to pay bills and things like that. Your quality or the performance of your work is a direct reflection of your passion for the job so a lot of times people go to work but they don't really want to be there so they give you exactly that if you're a minimum. So it's important to get involved as much as you can so you have the potential as one of them to figure out what it is you want to do so that when you go into something you can put a hundred seconds. Thank you very much. Many college students believe that by virtue of having a degree guarantee a job I want the panelists to speak to what are two deal breakers that can cause students to miss out on opportunities of employment and speak to the audience as well as some of the opportunities that exist at your institutions. One being unprepared, a writing sample so if my writing sample was not up to par I wouldn't be able to get the job. The other thing is I would also say being able to speak up for yourself so when you're in the interview or even when you're on the job being able to express where you want to go, where you're coming from and what you want to see happen be an innovative thinker, speak up, you want to be memorable wherever you go. At my specific job the concept you have opening, it's a revolving door not necessarily all bad, people are always advancing in the career I started at my job about two years ago and I got promoted to case manager in January. So for us it's all on D-CAD, you go, you apply upon graduation and you get the job and you just perform at your best and in performing and showing up and being memorable and creating relationships with people you're sure to excel. The deal break up for me for students will be not doing your homework, not researching the company that you're going to do the interview. You get there and they ask you well what does this company do and you have no idea and do your research try to always do more for me I try to do certifications that were free on the Department of Environmental Conservation, there are a lot of courses that are free and I was doing that, whatever opportunities had in the school, I did that. So when I got to my interview I was so mathematical, I was like a superstar even though my resume was three or four pages, you tailored it towards what you're asking for and be yourself, don't try to lie because if they ask you a question and you don't know just say I'm sorry I don't know what you mean could you explain it to me? I've been asked my job for two years and again I'm a superstar really I'm a superstar, they ask me everything environmental the way that you project yourself, the way when you walk into a room you demand the respect they didn't want me to leave so they gave me a $11,000 increase within my first year working there so that says a lot from my background here at MEGA but again for students do your research and try to be number one in everything that you do so when you go out there they will want you, you don't have to try to pretend to be who you're not, as soon as they see you and you open your mouth and say that first word they want to hire you because I got hired on this spot like that so I'm just telling you just do your research and try to be the best that you can be going forward the degree is not always going to get you in the door no, not always going to get you in the door believe it or not, writing you say it here a thousand times, writing when you want those things but during the interview during interviews there is a class they put you to the computer, write, explain please to me, you write it and paste it right then and there and they are going to review after they come out of that meeting or that interview so thank you I'm not going to call you, I'm not going to call you I'm going to read while you're broke here the other thing again that's going to work against you so many people, so many people, my co-workers they don't have a college degree, they don't but they have a whole lot of experience they have a whole lot of experience safety, construction and they get higher, and while you're in these classes they work with you, now there are trainings, very important trainings you are going to the degree on the other degree, you are going to those trainings they are going to show you standards, they are going to teach you and you are going to be able to experience you are going to be able to experience that construction for whatever industry you are coming from I think for Mayo, it's a combination of what all the pilots are saying specifically the degree, in most cases in the private sector world, especially in environmental industries you really don't need a finance degree experience, and how to sell yourself, do extensive research on not only just the company budget, the department that you are applying to what projects you are working on for me, I went through a four interview process and when I get to find out, I was going up against a lot of guys that have been in the industry for over 20 years they don't have a degree, but they understand the industry I had to do more research, and basically present how I could change the culture of the company what can I bring to the table, and those are the stuff that you have to define the strong points, how can you improve the company in that specific department, or you see a weakness somewhere else within the company, also talk about that because at the end of the day you are new, they don't know you they are trying to get to know you, and you have to tell them your ideas, safety sales, BGMs that were used, and I've been with the company for 26 months now I hired back in September, I was with the transit a little bit over a year, and I was not fast enough with the opportunity to go and save the plane I did engineering for a year there and I didn't love it, I wanted to go back to science, and when I was at Medford I worked on a further refinery project, I enjoyed it and proud of it, you know about the project as well, published a couple of papers I wrote a book as well, but I wanted to go back and work through refinery, use oil and use solid, a lot of people don't think about it, so yeah I would say go to safetyplane.com and apply, fly away and we could talk outside, bother me and ask multiple questions. Let's give a round of applause to everyone who had the opportunity to speak to the panelists they're going to be around like all of the speakers, so please feel free at the lunch break to meet one of them any one of them will speak to them or have any questions that you may want to ask, please feel free to approach them and ask them, so thank you very much for your time. Now before we bring up the next group, I want to say that to the students as an audience, I hope that you took notes again, writing skills to improve on your writing skills. Number two you need to understand how to communicate and of course the oral communication is one of them that you need to understand Number three, recognize that a multi-disciplinary approach to problem solving is needed because no longer can we stay with the one-dimensional approach when it comes to learning and number four, I would say get involved, get involved in professional organizations that's part of your degree program that you're focusing on, so the professional organizations get involved go to conferences, it is very important for you to go to conferences with your discipline and I can remember as an undergrad major, my undergrad major is in Mathematics and Physics and I was a member and I said every year we used to attend my colleague, I've seen colleague Walwyn because we were classmates and we attended the National Conference of Black Physics students and the network that we were able to the opportunities that we had through those networks, good is second to none and I always say to the students, your network becomes your net worth, again your network becomes your net worth, so please take advantage and again let's give a round of applause to our panelist at your school this year we've decided to do something slightly different which I mean I'm proud of, we've parted with the school of business thank you Dean Roll, thank you Dr. Crump for your leadership and we've included an entrepreneurship piece as part of the program and we're delighted to have two presenters today who's going to speak to us about the entrepreneurship and this could have happened on its own, again Dr. Crump, don't go too far I want to say thank you for your leadership and thank you for the speakers who have graced us with your presence and speak to us about the entrepreneurship because quite often a lot of times we look at textbook learning and we think it's all about textbook I want to say to you that it's not just all about you obtaining a degree and going and get a job a job is just one aspect of the process, you should be taking entrepreneurship, how am I going to add value to this body, to this field as far as becoming an entrepreneur so we're going to get a presentation from two dynamic speakers on the first speaker that we're going to have coming up here on the stage I saw her by the way Dr. Catalina Mont she's a professor from Albany CS University and then we also have Paul Sonders because we have Dr. Mont thank you very much and we look forward to your presentation Is it 12 noon yet? Thank you so much for having me and a special thank you to Dr. Crump as well as Dr. Reed great team that you have here and I am so excited to be here, I absolutely love New York and while it does say Albany State every time I tell people I'm from Albany State they ask me about Albany New York and I'm actually in Georgia and so my bio was there and I will share with you in very short order some things that I hope will stick with you when you leave and while the bio says several things about me what it doesn't say is two weeks after graduating from high school I was evicted from my home so by all intents and purposes I was actually homeless I was living in the basement of some family members and what it doesn't say is my entire life up until those two weeks when I was evicted from my home my family was on welfare and one of the things that welfare teaches you is that it teaches you how to hustle and my mom who is still with me and you'll see her face in a moment in the presentation at 91 years old was a domestic worker which simply means that she cleaned homes of wealthy Caucasian people in Michigan but my father was a Belizean brother from Central America I'm telling you the story because often times when you see someone's bio you think that they have it all together but the reality is I am simply a reflection of you in my journey is probably very similar to yours, some of you I think that the spirit of entrepreneurship helps us and provides us with the hustle that we need that we hope will create value in a marketplace and create opportunities for us to have what I like to think of as economic freedom and so again thank you for the invitation and I hope that our presentation renders you with some information moving forward and I know this is an environmental conference mixed in with entrepreneurship and so I try to do a few slides that I hope will connect the conversation one of the things I always have to tell people is I pretty much have been entrepreneurial for a long time I didn't think about it like that but I have very fond memories of being a girl scout and selling cookies and while most people say that was fundraising for me it was my entrepreneurial spirit because if you sold a ton of cookies you could get some really cool prizes and so I don't think at that stage in my life that I had any or the ideal entrepreneurship was nor that I know even how to even spell the word but I do have fond memories of selling four packs of tumblers which are cups to people in my community that takes a lot of courage to be able to do that kind of thing when you're just a young girl and then as I progressed on in my middle school I have fond memories of born and raised in Detroit, Michigan there's tons of snow and my brothers have what we call a paper route but I would kind of subcontract with them and help them to fold these papers as tight as they could because in Detroit if you threw a paper on someone's porch and it came loose then that diminished the quality of your deliverables and so my brothers would let me make or tie up the newspapers as tight as I could and they obviously thought that I did a good enough job and they would cut me off a few dollars from the work that they were doing and then when I got into high school things started kind of upping the game because at the time I could French braid and I was braiding the hair or friends of mine in the neighborhood and one of my older brothers from the youngest of seven had a job where he wanted me to iron his shirts for a dollar and a shirt and I took him on in and then finally when I got to college so yes I was evicted two weeks after high school and during that really tumultuous time for me I went up to my high school one of my counselors and she recommended that it was just time for me to leave the city altogether and I identified a little place in Atlanta it said just apply it's a place for you I think you might like it I applied I went back to her and said apply here you go here's my letter of acceptance and then she said well you have to go well let me back up because one of the things that I did while in high school and I think that I heard presenters early on the panelists talk about leveraging when I was in high school I did something called business education and I don't know that the high schools have those specializations anymore and back in the day you learn how to type and you learn how to do shorthand I loved to type I was typing about 150 words a minute when I first see and I still do today but when I got to college that became a skill set that I could use in a marketplace because most of my peers had no worthy idea on how to type they were hunting and pecking while I was typing 150 words when I first see now those are some of my early experiences and I just kind of did a thought of an election on wow how long have I been in this game of trying to find a way to create economic freedom next slide now my environmental journey ironically again trying to kind of do a brain dump in what ways have I contributed in terms of growing up on welfare and being honest about bringing to the environment and I have again fond memories of my mom making golf holes for me and my mom making these really cool leftovers from the food that we did have that came in and having me to go out and dry clothes and you'll see it in a moment in a moment about the impact that humans play on the environment I just think in your wildest dreams that in my case growing up in an environment where we didn't have very much really afforded us the chance to be as environmentally friendly as we thought we could my mom would often make outfits for me the clothes that I wore were often second hand clothes and I say plant based diet because we couldn't afford any other delicacies that people in my community did my mom had a car but most of my peers while in high school may have not me and ultimately when I got into college I started embracing this notion of second hand clothing and good wheels and it's funny because now Poshmark if you've ever heard of it is one of the biggest selling online places where there's recycle clothing and so this is my mom, this is my mom, Lorraine who is a sheared 91 and I put on the left side is that mom had no idea that she was teaching me concepts of economics in the very early stage of my life that she helped me understand that opportunity cost was being able to give up something in order to get what I wanted and that was the idea that mutual benefit being able to find ways to make us happy while making, sharing my skillset in a marketplace to make other people happy was a good thing and these are economic concepts of scarcity that my mom announced to her and had at best a fifth grade education was teaching myself and my siblings I found this slide on the internet and you can see the horizontal axis tells you kind of like the impact that humans are making on the environment and I started feeling really good about this hanging clothes on the dryer and recycling and washing clothes in cold water because that was my norm and what I thought at the time was just a pretty dismal environment but it was an environment that was actually teaching me about the importance of the environment and protecting it and then you can see the high impact things over there the highest one it says have one fewer child and I put that on my previous slide because while I did have peers in high school that were having children I didn't and to my advantage it helps to improve the savings in terms of what's emitted into the climate and so I have a few things I just have three things I'm going to leave share with you today and I put a little sticky note there with the hopes that after this presentation there's nothing you remember about my presentation you remember these three things and so the first thing is learn and the panel has talked about this notion of using your experiences to help to get you to a place where you are the best in the world by candidate because all of our experiences provide us with opportunities not only to understand concepts but to live them and I shared with you a moment ago I had no idea at the time that the lifestyle that I had growing up which I again thought was very dismal has provided me with an opportunity to live a more fuller life today in entrepreneurship we talk about this understanding of customer discovery and customer discovery is really trying to embrace what we call creative destruction and creative destruction is the economic term that came up with that said you know companies tend to want to restore their laurels in a marketplace of ideas when the reality is that destruction and disruption inspires and motivate companies to do something better and so I want you to embrace this understanding of customer discovery by being able to identify what it is that customers are looking for so when we first started teaching entrepreneurship we often times would have students undergrad with right business plans and then pitch competitions and then those that moved up the ladder would go out and get funding for their small businesses well with the new business model canvas approach it's very iterative but it says find the customer first because what you ideally want to make sure of is that you're investing time and money in a product or service that people in the marketplace actually want to purchase and then finally knowledge, knowledge while we recognize that no one person has it all we also recognize that things are changing constantly and it would be cool of us too and I heard the panelists talk about the importance of being multi-dimensional in your studies and so first sticky point I hope that you leave with is the importance of learning and one of the things that I'd love for each of you to do when you leave today or while you're sitting in your seats just to take an inventory of what you're really good at a lot of entrepreneurs do speak of passion well I'm passionate about quilting and I think I do a okay job but I'm not sure that my comparative advantage will allow me to really make the big bucks in quilting and so each of you have what it takes to be successful and have a skill set that the market is looking for and I think that just taking some self-inventory of what you're good at is a good starting point there's an organization called UScience that allows students to take kind of a series of tests not to be greeted on but the test will help students understand what their aptitude is and where that intersects with their interest because sometimes we get individuals who are interested in physics but their aptitude may be more in the space of art and so it helps students identify where this intersection is so that they're engaging in something that marries their talents. Start today start now and Babson College which is in Massachusetts has this understanding that action trumps anything and everything and so one of the things that we try to teach our students is it's great to have an idea but it's even better to get out there and the beauty in one of the things I love most about coming into New York is seeing the energy and the entrepreneurial spirit here in the city and believes what my father's from my father often said no work, no eat because we knew that it was imperative for us to find a way to support what we needed in terms of a family because again what it doesn't say in the bio is that even before the eviction there were many days where there was none of the food and certainly days when the lights were on and so Babson College coined this term called creation. Creativity plus action and then this understanding that you think about what it is that you want to engage in the marketplace, you act upon it quickly with the resources you have at hand, no need to go out and get started capital and find adventure capitalists, you repeat that because what you're doing is that you're doing a part of that customer discovery to find out what will or will not work. Second sticky point I hope I leave it with today is leveraging leverage maximizing the usage of something. The panelists stole my thunder when they were just sharing information regarding the importance of connecting with people. Your network is your network. I was laughing when I heard the presenter say that because the reality is as I think about where I am today a great deal of it has to do with the relationships that I've developed with people. My understanding of the importance of resources and sound judgment. So remember I'm a high school counselor who encouraged me to go off to college. Well if that lady wasn't in my life who knows what would have happened. And then when I get to college I had no intentions of going to graduate school. That was again not a part of my cards but because I was at an institution where everyone around me was going to graduate school well I thought I might want to do the same. And then when I entered industry and I had been in industry for a while because I was working while in college I have memories of my boss in Detroit sending the recommendation to my boss in Atlanta to say hi to this girl while she's in college and then when I graduated my undergrad degree in computer science and said oh hire this young girl because she's coming back home. Those are all people. And one of the things that I think young adults could do a better job at is maximizing their relationships with people. We have four kids and on any given time they're looking at Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and having a good social media time. But one of the things that I really wish young adults would do is a better job at building relationships because there's some great people in this universe in the universe on this planet that can help you to leverage where you are today. Because we don't have it all. We don't have all the skill sets and the wisdom and the wherewithal to be successful but there are people and I hope that I'll make up a resource for each of you that can help you to get there. The utilization of resources in the way that creates value and the greatest value in the marketplace in economics we're often taught the concept of scarcity. But we're also taught the concept of being able to utilize resources. And one of the panelists mentioned that companies are out to make money. And so while some of you may or may not search your own business, the new concept or the buzzword that's not new, but companies are also looking for students who have this entrepreneurial way of thinking so that while you're working for ExxonMobil and while you're working for ConEdison, they need to understand that you are an entrepreneur. And that you're utilizing company resources in a way that helps them to maximize their bottom line. And then sound good judgment. Again while some of the discussion earlier was about one of those traits that an undergraduate could improve upon and I heard writing, writing, writing and research, research, research it's important also that we bring this understanding of discipline thinking to the marketplace because the individuals that are successful are the individuals that are taking time to invest in building their stockpile, in building their academic and work dossier in a way that prepares them for competition. Next slide. Another thing we'd like to teach our students in the marketplace in entrepreneurship is the importance of mutual exchange and that when you're in a marketplace of ideas and you're providing services and products it's important that you think about in what way you can value while also bringing value to others. Because sometimes people think that in order to be successful someone is taking something away from one person to give to another, transfer of wealth, transfer of payments. But we like to think that successful entrepreneurs are those that understand mutual benefit. And that there's a sense of volunteerism and that force because whenever I invest and spend my money in the marketplace I like being able to do it voluntarily. I don't want to be told how to spend my dollars, what to spend my dollars on and I certainly don't want to be in a position where some ruler regulations tells me that I can. As long as there's some voluntary exchange and no harm is brought and so the last thing I'd like to share with you, this last concept that I hope will stick with you is launch. So learn, leverage and launch. Just do it. But in doing so be principled because there are lots of entrepreneurs in the marketplace where integrity, respect and toleration are not on your high agenda. And there are a lot of people that are making money unethically in the marketplace. So my charge to you however is that while those industries may have short life, the long term entrepreneurs are principled. I share the concept of hustle being able to continuously and creatively look for opportunities. One of the things that we do with our students, I teach a course called Human-Computer Action and we actually have them do community walkthroughs while they walk through the town to find out in what ways can technology approve the lives of unique audiences. And then finally freedom. Understanding the role that barriers play to your success and the importance of having the freedom to innovate. Next slide. Some statistics I wanted to share because I think oftentimes when students are thinking about entrepreneurship it's all just going to be all peachy keen. But the failure in looking at these numbers is that it really for us, those of us who are entrepreneurs, it allows us to think about ways in which to be innovative. So 20% of small businesses fail in the first year, 30% in the second year 50 in the after five years and 70% of owners will fail by their 10th anniversary. Next slide. And these are some of the reasons why. And I've highlighted concepts because, yeah, customers are important to a success of a business. Marketing. Poor products that are out there. Because the reality is in a marketplace if you go to a store and the product is not good for you or doesn't taste good or doesn't look good or whatever, what's going to happen is you're going to tell someone and so on and so on. And then that impacts the overall business. And having the right people on the right team is very important and part of that is really leveraging your resources and your people. And I think this is the last slide because I know that time is of the essence. I'm going to share with you a few opportunities of which I'm familiar with and I work with. So the third of Marshall College Fund, which I know Megan Embers is a member has recently launched three research centers by the Center for Advancing Opportunity. There's one research center in Texas Southern that focuses on criminal justice research. There's another one at Winston Salem State that focuses on economic mobility and we were fortunate at Albany State to get the Center for Educational Opportunity. And as the founding director of that center we are excited to be able to support undergraduate research in the area of educational opportunity. And that is to say of all the discussions you've heard today and the importance of STEM, one role was technology playing in the capable space so that Brown kids like us are getting those opportunities early. And so we welcome presentations I will share with Dr. Crump and Dr. Reed the URL so that some of you can apply and I can apply for some research dollars. The other opportunity is the United Negro College Fund has a scholars program where they provide students with up to $5,000 a year for education and for the four years of your tenure in college up to $20,000 and the focus is entrepreneurship, innovation and economics. Just a great program, it's grown from 40 years old students to 400 students now and we have an online community where we're working with students so we would love to see some applications there and as we speak there's a lot going on in Austin, Texas with South by Southwest, excuse me. And so I'm going to end with three points and I hope that from this conversation in brief that each of you will learn, leverage and launch that is your charge. And I also hope they think I ended with some really cool people that I hang out with. This is my crew, so the picture on the left were when they were little ones, we were exposing them to entrepreneurship quite early. And then the one on the right is them in college. Fingers crossed, two of them will graduate from Morehouse this May. But again, I am a reflection of you. There is no secret sauce, but people matter and people really matter. And I hope that umbly that you will reach out to me and that there's anything that I can do to help you along your journey so that you will one day be standing here. Please reach out to me. I'll be happy to. Again, thank you Dr. Promp and Dr. Reid for the invitation. Thank you very much. Let's give a round of applause for Dr. Moms. And while our next speaker is on his way to the podium, I want to say again, this is from what all the speakers have been speaking about this morning take advantage of opportunities leverage and learn. Remember leverage and learn in the abundance of water the food is thirsty. So Mr. Paul Sanders, the co-founder of Men's, he's been engaged in an industry that some of us are new to, but Paul has been involved with quite some time and I'm going to allow him to tell you what industry that he's been a part of, but Paul is a marketing manager and Paul is also a contractor and with no further ado, I'm going to welcome Mr. Paul Sanders to the stage. Hello, good afternoon. I see a few friendly faces. Hello. I'm Paul Sanders. What's up? How you doing? I'm Paul from Brooklyn. I'm happy to be here. I have a few interesting facts. My mother's actually here this afternoon and she was a graduate of Minneapolis College. I'm standing in the back right there. So she just told me today I found out some new information. I was, she was seven months pregnant when she graduated in 1975 so life comes to a circle. And also my dad was an entrepreneur as well and he actually used to own, not only, I guess you could say he owned the business that was actually located on the same property back in the 70s called Saint Augustine Hall before he built this facility here. So long story short, but my dad actually wanted to buy this property and he only had I guess I found out that the property, the entire block at that time was approximately $200,000 and he had $50,000 cash but I could not get the loan for the rest of the money to purchase the actual entire block. So a lot of interesting history about Brooklyn that ever is where I come from. So I'm happy to be here. I'll give you a little brief history about myself. I'm from Brooklyn, New York. I was born at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, thanks to mom and dad. So I've been, I was a resident here born in 1975 obviously, but went to high school in Brooklyn and I had a quick question. I wanted to know how many entrepreneurs do we have in the house? Raise your hand if you have any, if you're an entrepreneur. Raise your hand. Okay, there's a few. I think there's actually more entrepreneurs than you think because has anyone been paid for like washing dishes? Raise your hand. Has anyone went to the store for someone next door? Like a neighbor, they said go to the store, grab me, you know, some milk or something that gave you cash for it? All right. Has anyone washed cars before anyone? Okay. Try cleaning any of that stuff. So essentially we have more entrepreneurs in this building than we think because some of us have completed tasks and gotten compensated for it over the time. So it's just a matter of, you know, the scale of your business or the opportunity and what comes next. So I'll start with some of my first ventures. Some of my first ventures were literally selling peanut butter, Reese's Pieces and M&Ms to my friends in junior high school. So like I would go to the candy store by excess candy and I'm like, I had lunchtime, like look, you know, that chunk of milk is just chunk of milk but you know, you can compliment that with some M&Ms or like some potato chips charged an extra 10 cents or 50 cents, whatever for it. So like that was some of my first ventures and really I mean as simple as it sounds, it's really just a foundation of just what I've thought of, how can I, you know, engage in business along my natural path in life. That's kind of what took me to this point where I'm at today. So starting from like M&Ms and stuff in junior high school to in a high school, I went to a performing arts school called LaGuardia. So when I was in junior high school, I played an instrument called the Euphonium which was a very rare instrument only because my last name is Saunders and then they give out instruments in class like A, B, C, D, so like literally the last instrument left was a Euphonium and that's the only instrument that I could play because everybody took the cool instruments like saxophone and all that kind of stuff. But it was actually like, you know, the best thing that happened to me because I played something that only two other people played in my school. So I took something that came like oh it was a bus kill to have this big instrument that's like a two bus and clearly a big brass instrument that I had to take it on the train and the bus and like love it around and like hit people on their shins and like people on the bus were like mad at me because the bus was an old crowd back in the days but I didn't feel the moment of opportunity because playing that instrument allowed me to audition for a high school called Performing Arts which is Euphonium so I got into that high school because it was a limited competition and I played pretty good and then it got me into college as well because my grades were so so but I was able to audition for the band director of Hampton University and he gave me the opportunity to... gave me the opportunity to come to the university's campus and that's actually what I met Dr. Rowe just sitting here in the front row she was my professor so I was a music major throughout the first four years of college music and generics I wanted to be in a studio recording music and like Berkman Ball and Briggs and then my senior year had an internship at the studio in New York called Giant Studios where there was another studio called the Hit Factory which was like the best studio in America probably in the world so I went over to that studio to have an internship interview and the guy said look I can hire you right now at this leave school you can like learn everything I can teach you whatever you need to know and I was like wow this is cool I'm like this is my trained job and I called my mom and I said look mom I got an opportunity to leave school and start in this career field and then it took a couple of days and then she was like if this is what you want to do let's go ahead and do it go ahead and leave and get this job at the music engineer but I started to go to finish another last year college but what I found out was that that same semester they started a new program called Entrepreneurial Studies which Dr. Roll was one of the founding professors of that department at Hampton University so literally like it was a natural progression where things just happened in my life when I was kind of like kept going, kept on developing and that's kind of like the foundation that got me to where I'm at today so my business experience I started out of music like I told you and everything's come to me kind of naturally where I kind of like to use my resources with my friends or help my friends along to create business opportunities so for instance my friends in college they're all musicians they play and they practice for hours like literally like hours a day and they had no gigs no shows so I said look why don't I get you a show so you can make money off of practicing so that started my first business which was managing you know my friends perform at bars, clubs, at the university one of my first performances was for the president of Hampton University daughter who had a sweet 16 and we organized the band that played for the sweet 16 and we outpaid for it and I was like oh wow so then my goal became let me see if I can get as much tuition money back from Hampton over the next two or three or four years so I can sell school out of tuition so that was my goal personally was to do as much shows in corporate events or private events in that area so from that point of Virginia I started managing bands, started managing acts and I was curious of what was my worth in corporate America because I saw all my friends that were making great money and I'm like well I'd like to make some money as well so I went to monster.com and I started typing in like descriptions and stuff and I was like you know I'm not going to find a job for myself but I said look there's got to be something so I saw this job description and I said do you like marketing do you like entertainment, do you like night life and all of that stuff I like so I applied and I said look I put one line and said this is my dream job and I said my resume and I got a call back a couple of weeks later for an interview so I interviewed for the job and I had a great interview but I didn't get the job I was bummed up about it I was like man I didn't receive the opportunity but the thing about it was I was so interested in that job I just called them every two weeks I said hey my name is Paul I just want to come and see what business is about can I just come in and hang out or can I see what's happening on a day to day basis I called them every two weeks for like two months and then the third or fourth time I called them it was interesting you called me today because we just hired a person that took your job so literally the next day they called me in for another interview and I got hired for that position which was in marketing brand management is called experiential marketing and I really like to tell this story because it's like how life comes full circle that opportunity really was built on my experience and like managing my friends so like we did a lot of events around the Virginia area with like clubs, bars, night life owners so this particular project which was a corporate job they wanted to infiltrate lifestyle events, night clubs, things like that so I was able to bridge a corporation with their aspirations of being more involved in a young adult market so it just came full circle but in that time I met a lot of great people like in college one of the things that I know you just said before was like a network so like my friends in college like freshman year we had this dorms and like literally we were like side by side one of my best friends and name is Tim Simons which is he's a lobbyist now in a real power player in DC but literally freshman year we hit it off and I actually have a few of my friends, I mean I have friends from Hampton, from freshman year so Google that are you know know enforcement like so many so many career choices that you have no clue of from freshman year and that's like you don't know how life will evolve and that's why it's great to like network your peers and your friends because these are the same people that will help you out in the next 10 years, 20 years I've had conversations with one of my interns when I first started the company now she's the she's a patent and a patent attorney for the government so literally two years ago I needed some advice and she was able to give me quick advice that would cost me an excellent amount of money just by simple phone call and being me being a respectable person along the path of her learning and her you know being a great you know intern and you know moving through business so relationships are so important and that really built me up to where I'm at in the industry right now so I'll give you a brief description though we didn't say it earlier but I am in the cannabis industry cannabis I know it's tough words people say you know cannabis or marijuana or weed or pot things like that excuse me if you have kids in the room or CBD or hemp but that's the industry I am the reason I'm in this industry is because in regards to networks I was in Dubai hanging out with some friends and I was there for a Formula 1 race which is like a car race that happens in multiple countries and states and I'm on a boat and these guys which are very influential very wealthy was like Paul can you find me an investment in cannabis I said I don't know anything about it but I'll take a trip to Denver and just figure it out so we literally took a flight to Denver and I just said let me just find out what's happening I went to a couple of dispensaries and the first thing I noticed based on my experience was that there was a lack of brand recognition in the cannabis space like you know brands like Coca Cola and Sprite and Fiji or Aquafino or like Desani and these brands but you can't name one cannabis brand and if this is the industry that's sweeping across America at a rapid rate things to me in my background came down to like brand recognition like why do you wear a Nike's because it's reliable or why do you wear a Reebok or why certain brands have cornered or really captured a marketplace and that's really what I feel like consumer behavior is based off of brand recognition something that's stable something that you feel like you can trust and I felt like that was needed in the cannabis space so based on all of my intuition and knowledge from the past I was able to see an opportunity and then utilize my resources and network to build that business so literally the business started with seeing the opportunity understanding you know people look at the I don't know if they go with the spot analysis and stuff like that here in college but just seeing the strengths and opportunities of the industry understanding like what's my unique unique way that I can approach this that we can have the best opportunity of success so basically the same thing happened all my friends that I met along the way I said look I have an idea what do you think about this and then literally all my trusted friends gave me advice on you know try this let's do that if there's ways that things that were like obstacles we kind of eliminated it off the bat so based on what I wanted to do I didn't know anything about like growing I didn't know anything about growing I didn't know anything but what I did know is how to brand so I said look you know the most most people think there's a obstacle to getting into the industry and I was telling that there's zero obstacles literally when so what happened I said look I don't need to bro I don't need a license I don't need to understand hydro ponds I don't need to understand a lot of this scientific data all I needed to do was find people that knew how to do that well and I could organize it and finance it and bring it all together so it's really like capturing a pool of people that were successful and that I felt that we could work together to create that opportunity within this industry so the company we started was called MEZ so my partner was in the industry then we also put on two of my friends one is a healthcare professional and another one is a healthcare VC fund that helped you know raise additional capital I mean put on personal seed money and I like to say the word personal seed money because people like to see that you are the best first and things whether it's sweat equity or your own savings or whatever you can do just put something in to get it in motion so people can see that you have some type of skin in the game to make your dreams come true and that's what they believe and they believe they're not powered to you know use our own resources they saw us being innovative they saw us being creative and thoughtful and you know it was a no-brainer to invest money into our company so we've century started a company based on a product that we thought was innovative which was like the concentrates and like it's too technical but we pretty much do like concentrate products in the kind of space as well as the CBD space you probably will see like more information about CBD become more popular and what's happening in the news and things like that but literally there's some discoveries that are happening in this industry that are really groundbreaking and another reason I got into industry and this is very important is that when I did the research on what was important for me was like discovering you know there's much information about the plan about the cannabis plan but it also wanted to figure out why it became illegal and then in that research I found that it was totally legal in America until 1937 doctors prescribed it, people utilized it, dentists used it to pay management doctors used it before opiates, that's what people used for pain relief so I said well why did it become illegal and then literally some astounding information came up, it was just based off of really three things, it was essentially racism and exclusion, there's this one guy who was the head of the DEA so his name was Henry Henry Hansenner and he really hated blacks Mexicans and jazz music and that was really the only reason why the plan became illegal because it was used to curb populations in California Mexicans taking jobs and then he despised blacks primarily in New York City and in the jazz culture so that was really like more motivation for me to get involved in this industry because I felt like throughout my life I've heard and quoted in so many songs and people have been incarcerated by it and I'm like look there needs to be some attention drawn to someone who needs to create you know a brand that can take flight, that can kind of reverse this stigma attached to it and make more people aware and that's also one of the reasons why I'm here in America is because this industry is growing so fast, I mean there's so many countries that are legalizing so much infrastructure as well as dollars being placed in this industry and if there's companies, I don't know if you guys know but in Canada it's completely legal so there are companies that are raising billions of dollars that are funding research that are putting together infrastructure and ecosystem around it and I like to talk about it because it's not just about saying that you have a cannabis product but it can be like you have an accounting company, you have a transportation, you have logistics, you have security you have management, there's an entire ecosystem around this particular plant that's not really on a radar of a lot of people probably in this room or in New York or in multiple states, this entire industry that's growing so fast, I was at a conference in Vegas, they had about I want to say about 25,000 people at this conference, I might have counted maybe 100 people to look like me in this industry so if you think about the incarceration rate so you think about the advocacy that we're doing in this industry, we heard many rap songs jazz records or rock songs about the plant but it really needs to be pushed to the forefront of how can we benefit or how can we engage on the health benefits or what is the research going to say in the future about this plant and how can we engage the community to be more thinking about rewriting the wrongs as well as correcting and engaging people about this industry in the future so I mean that's what I like to talk about most in this industry, there's the opportunities that exist and really just kind of give back to a couple things you mentioned in terms of integrity and respect and being a business owner, like I was acting my uncle the other day and I was like well you know with business there's so much to think about, there's like the cutthroat way, like it seems like cheating anybody needs to become successful or what's the path of doing things ethically and what you responded was that the ethical way might take a little longer but you're able to build a more solid foundation and alliances a longer way so even though it might be a longer path but it's more fortified with people that can help and they also respect you a longer way and give you more longevity in the long term so that's some of the things I like to think about and you know how I would conduct a business and just really pushing forward the notion of being ethical in a space where it's kind of demonized in the past. I'm sure there's a couple of questions and things like that and I want to leave with one other thing is that I like to say that life is just compounded for me, it's compounded on differences in experiences. So like I still work with my friends from high school, I still work with my friends from college I still work with new friends, it's about finding these discontent thread through people that can work towards a dream and I have friends from multiple countries, multiple backgrounds and the one thing I like to also say is that when people are inviting you to things so if you can be physical, if you have the means or finances, like someone says Paul come to the Bronx I'm having an art gallery opening or whatever, trying to make it because you just never know how that can impact you or help your friend or support your friend. I mean I've been to a few art gallery shows this week where I mean someone said Paul can you come to Malta to hang out and I'm like I don't know what Malta is but figured it out, went to Malta, had a great time and that person might have introduced me to future investors or future partners. It's just sometimes showing up people invite you to come out, there's a class, there's something that you learn on the lecture if you have the time, just join and be a part and help your friends out. So definitely happy to be here, I would like to say I'm proud of the night, I'm here for you guys and let's grow together. Thank you so much. Thank you, let's give it a round of applause for Paul one more time. While I'm the Paul and the Dean of the School of Science on the podium, I just want to say two quick things. Again let's take away what we've learned from Paul. Two words I can say. Resilience and relationships again resilience and relationships, let's get that played our minds. I want to give a shout out to all of the junior high school students that's in the audience. For all the junior high school students and teachers in the audience please stand. Thank you, thank you. And for all of the high school students and the teachers in the audience please stand. This is all for some of the students that kind of shyly don't want to stand, but that's okay. We still have knowledge here. And the School of Business, the enrollments say thank you very much again for your leadership. Dr. Crump, thank you very much again for your leadership. One more thing I'll say, at lunch when we break for lunch, lunch is going to be for invited guests and faculty in room 312 in the AB1 building and everyone else is going to be in the cafeteria on the second floor in the AB1 building. So with no further ado I'm going to call out my Dean, I'm going to call out my colleague, I'm going to call out my friend Dr. Terrence Blackman to the podium to just give some close remarks. I'm Terrence Blackman as Dr. Seed has just mentioned and I'm the Dean of the School of Science, Health, and Technology here at Medbervis College and I just wanted to well I have the unenviable task of standing between you and your lunch tonight and I see Professor Wallace Ford here who I will paraphrase he always says whenever you say something go with the five B's and as for Wallace Ford it's be brief brother, be brief. And so I will be very, very brief but I would think it sort of not appropriate to have this moment to speak in this moment and not begin with a recognition of the vision of John Hughes. Today we're celebrating the 24th in this series of conferences and I think it's appropriate for us to take a moment to pause to appreciate the vision of someone who almost a quarter of a century ago recognized the importance of environmentalism in the urban space who really thought it was important for us in this context to think about the air that we're breathing to think about the water that we're drinking we now reference splint, you know, we at Medbervis have been thinking about this for a quarter of a century to think about the products we consume so it's really important and I just wanted to 25 years ago just as a note, the internet just got started to have the vision of a world and environmental science in that world and to plant it here at Medbervis College I think is something remarkable and I wanted to acknowledge the committee for the really courageous decision that they made in sort of really naming this conference and sports in honor of Dr. John Gibbs and I would love to us to make kind of a bit of a pause to the committee for doing this. I also want to acknowledge our provost, Kasino Kareke and I want to acknowledge and I think it's important to say my name because often sometimes you don't acknowledge because you're in a rush but it's good to sort of say. So I want to acknowledge our provost, I want to acknowledge our dean role and I want to acknowledge all of the chairs of the school of science who are here but especially I want to this morning sort of acknowledge Dr. Alicia B. the chair of our department of chemistry and environmental science who has been the reader of this effort and I think it's fairly important that we say that. You've witnessed sort of stellar presentations, Wayne Murray from Con Edison Julia Lewis, Hannah Dority Dr. Derek Skeet who has been your moderator I wanted to say one note around Dr. Noah Blackburn from Brookhaven you know I'm sure you really kind of enjoyed this presentation but you should also know that we have a very close relationship with Brookhaven and Noel has been really, really key in sort of driving that relationship for us and I just wanted to again acknowledge that public to hear at the podium because sometimes we forget I wanted to acknowledge the panel Lisa Bloodgood, Charles Burris Shelley and Clark, Crystal Abrams, Ray Cross Travis Pinnock who is a student of mine at some point I hope he remembers that and the folks who just Kathleen and Paul Saunders I should say for the record I lived in Colorado at the beginning of the kind of marijuana legalization and you know he's completely right, this has spawned tremendous industry in Colorado and I have to say that it is only my love for Brooklyn and for Madden Rivers cause that caused me not to stay in Colorado I'm not going to tell all of the reasons but surprisingly to say if you have an opportunity to visit Colorado you should it's a really wonderful city and every Thursday night JetBlue gets you there but the last thing I'll say is there are two things you know the panel reminded me of something a few days ago I had an opportunity to go to Washington DC to say something to make the case for institutions like Madden Rivers who are predominantly black institutions and HBCUs and I think what we saw on the panel with our students is kind of a reflection of this and it's always good to sort of have these things on the record so I want to say so that you understand not just the value of the environmental science program at Madden Rivers but also to understand the value of Madden Rivers as a college our program HBCUs contribute about 15 billion annually to our economy we should think about the contribution of Madden Rivers College as an employer in Central Brooklyn and what it contributes to the businesses in this community HBCUs produce about 42% of the black engineers so our environmental engineers are coming from our program here at Madden Rivers College HBCUs account for more than a third of all black STEM degrees or STEM degree earners are coming here from Madden Rivers College HBCUs have produced about 40% of the African American members of Congress about 40% of the engineers about 50% of the professors of predominantly white institutions 50% of the lawyers about 80% of the judges understand clearly we are Madden Rivers College and we have a very special mission and we have over-performed this mission and I want that to be really really acknowledged here at Madden Rivers College because sometimes we forget, we forget and I was reminded of that just looking at the panel and looking at Mr. Pinoff and looking at Shelley and Lampe and thinking yeah we've done a good job and we don't often say how well a job we've done and then finally you know as I was thinking about Dr. Gibbs and so this is the last thought just on lunch I was thinking if he had a thought 25 years ago of what this would look like 25 years later and it struck me that what is our thought? I hope that as we continue our deliberations today the question we will ask is what do we see 25 years out? 25 years from now what does this program look like? Does it contribute to comprehensive climate action that really kind of cuts on carbon pollution as Dr. Skeed just mentioned that enhances resilience. Does Madden Rivers lead internationally in the development of tools and services and partnerships to make the science? I mean this is also something that is really intriguing to me recently someone I like beer and recently someone sent me an entire program on the chemistry that is associated with making marijuana beer no it's not funny at all it is complete science so it tastes like beer except it's mara long and so there's a large chemistry infrastructure that is required in order to do that and so the thing is you know I see some of our chemistry faculty here Dr. Shin, Dr. Salako, Dr. Rajapaxi Dr. Denton, Dr. Patel my hope is that Dr. Pratt my hope is that Dr. Mishin, Dr. Dello I might miss someone so if I do my apologies Dr. Hope, yes Dr. Parmar Dr. Vivinda Parmar who's new to us so you know my hope is that you know we will be teaching young people about how to do chemistry in a very real way that will put them into the mix of these kinds of businesses and so not just a Mid Rivers College Department of Environmental Science Chemistry and Environmental Science which leads CUNY, which leads New York but which leads globally in the production of folks of color who can meaningfully participate in the business of science and technology as it relates to the things that are necessary in the 21st century so I hope I haven't kept you too long, enjoy your lunch this concludes the first half of today's environmental conference we do hope that you enjoy your lunch and we look forward to seeing you right here in this order at 2pm thank you very much