 Good evening everyone, my name is Dr. Tamara Warren and I am a pointee for the City of Columbia's Climate Protection Action Committee or CPAC and we welcome you to our quarterly event. So this month we're going to be talking about climate protection and environmental issues through the lens of education. So we welcome you back to school sustainability style. Tonight we're going to hear from educators as well as students as they give their perspective on climate and environmental issues as well as provide various resources that could be available to both educators, students, and the general public. So the first person that we're going to be talking to is Ms. Jane Hiller. She's a legend in the City of Columbia and around the state for the work that she does in environmental education but she's going to be sharing information about two different initiatives. First we have the environmental, I'm sorry, the Environmental Education Association of South Carolina which is EESC as well as the Green Steps Program. So Ms. Jane Hiller, please take it away. Hello everyone, thank you so much for inviting me to be part of this. So I guess the way you get to be a legend is you just hang around a long time. So I've been here quite a while. All right, so as Tamara said we're going to talk about EESC and Green Steps. So I'm going to start with EESC. Let's see if I can get my screen to show here. Okay, so EESC has been around for 44 years and we have been working with educators in order to encourage people to learn about taking better care of the environment. So we are a not-for-profit affiliate of a national organization for environmental education and also a state affiliate of the Southeastern Environmental Education Alliance. So we are, our group is representing South Carolina both in the region and nationally. Our vision is to motivate South Carolinians to interact sustainably with their environment and so we take our mission statement to work to connect, support and equip our citizens to promote environmental stewardship. So what we try to do is be boots on the ground to help that happen. Environmental or EESC is for lots of people. It's for formal and non-formal environmental educators. That means classroom teachers and people like Mary Pat and I who work outside the classroom with teachers or with students. It's also for environmental communicators. Some people don't actually do education per se but they get the word out and so we have a lot of environmental communicators in our group and it's also for any person, organization or business who is just interested in environmental education. So if you're interested in environmental education, we would welcome you at EESC. The things we provide, we have a website keep everybody up to date on what's going on in environmental education in our state. We send out quarterly e-letters. We have regional and statewide lists, lists serves that members can post things so we can all keep up on what everybody's doing. And we have mini grants that are up to a thousand dollars for projects to do that. We have two major, well we have several major activities that we do during the year. First of all, we have our annual June conference. We moved out around the state this year. It's going to be down in Aiken at the Savannah River Environmental, our ecology lab. We also do regional meetups, field studies, and community events. Here in the Midlands we have a monthly meetup and it's around Robin's so we would love to have any of you come and tell us what you're doing and you can find out what other people are doing. We all go away pretty energized just seeing how many things are going on and how hard people are working on this. We also do an annual Earth Day fundraiser to support these activities. We have two major programs that we do. The first one is called Peak Palmetto Environmental Education Certification and this is pretty new. For many, many years, South Carolina did not have a certification program so we are really excited about this. People sign up for a two-year professional development course and at the end they take a test to become a certified environmental educator. The other big program is the South Carolina Green Step School Initiative which is what I coordinate and I'm going to go into detail about that in just a minute. So if you would like to participate in EASC, you can just attend our activities. Everybody is welcome. You can join EASC as an individual, a family organization. You can ask to be part of the peak program or join Green Steps either as a classroom teacher, educator, or as a mentor who helps the schools. You can apply to be in our Speaker's Bureau and this is our big goal for this year. After 44 years, we think we're actually going to be able to afford to have a part-time paid administrator. We have always been all volunteer so we're looking for somebody who's really passionate about this and can help us out. And if you don't have time to actually do our activities, you can still support us by donating to our Earth Day fundraiser or becoming a sponsor for our June conference. So if you're interested in EASC, you can find us at eesc.org. All the information is on there or you can contact me directly at Janehilleratgmail.com. So I'm going to talk a little bit more in detail about the South Carolina Green Steps Schools Initiative. Mary Pat and I actually worked on starting this way back in 2003. Our first group of awards went out in 2004 and schools have been, school statewide, have been working on this ever since. So it's designed to help K-12 public and private schools and homeschool groups earn awards for establishing sustainability projects for students, learn, do, and teach others. So this is hands-on learning and the goal is for schools to establish programs that become part of their culture. This is not just do it once and be done. This is figure out things that we can do in our schools that make our environment a better place. Our Green Steps sponsors include EESC, South Carolina DHEC, and Sonoko Recycling, the company that I worked for for 24 years and just retired this summer. The projects that schools do fall into the categories of conserving, protecting, and restoring the environment. Under conserve, some schools work on conserving energy. They work with South Carolina Energy Office learning how to do an audit of their energy use and then take an action, something that can be done at their school to reduce their energy use. We also have a lot of schools doing simple solar projects. The teacher here is holding a pizza box solar oven and kids learn how they can use the sun to do some things so we don't have to turn on the oven. A lot of schools do waste reduction projects, reduce, reuse, and recycle. Under protect, we have protecting our air quality. Here is a picture of the anti-idling breathe better campaign that a lot of schools work on. Children are learning about the effects of idling and then teaching people that come on drive onto their school campus in cars or buses about the benefits of turning off that engine when you're not in motion. Schools also are working on a lot of water quality, different water quality projects. Here students have made their own rain barrel and they're learning to use a soaker hose to take that water over to a pollinator garden that they are growing on their school campus. A lot of schools do litter prevention projects. We put this under protecting water because where does litter end up? It ends up in our waterways. So schools keep their own campus clean and a lot of schools reach out beyond their campus who adopt the spot, adopt the waterway, adopt the highway depending on the age of the children. These are elementary students here and they are picking up at a park near their school but off of their campus. Restore projects typically are restoring soil and restoring habitat. The restoring soil projects a lot of times are composting projects. This is rate science teaching kids the soil science and they do indoor composting in their classrooms using red wiggler worms, best classroom pet. They also do outdoor composting so that they can learn how to compost in their own backyards. Some schools also do projects to prevent soil erosion under our soil projects. For habitat we have lots of projects that help habitat for people and wildlife. Schools have many different kinds of gardens. They all count. They're also tree planting, that kind of stuff. So lots and lots of habitat things but it can also be be houses and bird houses and all different kinds of projects for habitat. We have a whole list of mentors who are available to help schools in the city of Columbia. That includes City of Columbia recycling and sustainability at Sam Yeager pictured there. You're a recycling person and you all know Mary Pat, she's on board. Clemson Extension, keep the Midlands beautiful, Richland County soil and water, South Carolina Bureau of Air Quality, DNR, Energy Office, the Forestry Commission and the Wildlife Federation. So all of these people are experts in a field and they are available to help teachers plan and carry out these kind of projects. The two that are in bold type there are two that have one are best of the best mentors of various years and they are now in our Mentor Hall of Fame. Local Green Step schools, over the years we have had five schools in the city of Columbia participate, A.C. Moore, Kola City Homeschoolers, Columbia Montessori School, Columbia Islamic School and St. Joseph Elementary. Over in Richland County we have a longer list, Condor Elementary, Dent Middle School, Dutch Fork Elementary, H.E. Corley Harmony, Lake Carolina Elementary, St. Don Newman and Windsor Elementary. As you can imagine the last couple of years with COVID have been a challenge and it has been a challenge not only in the classroom but to do these extra kind of projects as well. So the schools that have an asterisk after their name are the ones that have managed with all that's going on to keep their environmental projects going. The others are kind of on hold right now until things settle down a bit which we totally understand. They asked me to highlight one school so you could see a little bit more in detail what that one school is doing and the obvious school to highlight was Dutch Fork Elementary Academy of Environmental Sciences. Some of their students do live in the city of Columbia some of them live in Richland County depending on how the boundaries work there. But this school has been just a model for this program. They are in our upper echelon group of Green Step Schools. We call them our Certified Green Step Schools and they have won every single one of our top awards as Conserve, Protect, Restore and School of the Year various years. Because of the great work that they have done they were nominated to be for a national award which they earned the South Carolina I'm sorry the National Green Ribbon Award. Just to show you the kinds of projects they do under reduce reuse and recycle for reduce they have something called a share table where unopened food does not go in the trash it gets put back in on a table or in a cooler and gets used since it didn't get used the first time. They also collect organics for commercial compost and the pilot that they have been running for several years is now growing and going to be used in multiple schools in school district five. For reuse they have upcycled projects they do every year a shoe collection for people without shoes that's run by Keep the Middle and It's Beautiful. They have an excellent recycling program collecting cardboard, paper, plastic bottles, metal cans and they also collect plastic bags and film as part of a Trek's challenge and those get turned back into plastic lumber. They also do conserve projects they've learned to do audits at their school and taken actions to reduce energy use. They also have done several easy solar projects like the pizza box ovens. Here in the picture you can see solar garden warmers these are huts that they make out of PVC pipe and stacked soda bottles they're very light and the kids can pick them up and put them over raised beds when frost is predicted to protect the tender plants underneath. Under protect projects they do things like protecting air quality they do the B2 anti-idling campaign every year with South Carolina DHEC they do classroom plants to help with indoor air quality but they're also doing other things to help with indoor air quality get good ventilation and things in their school. For protecting water quality they have rain barrels you can see one pictured here. They also do a program with DNR called Trout in the Classroom where the children actually learn to take care of little fingerling trout and raise them to over the year so that they are big enough to release into our local rivers and they prevent litter there on their campus. They restore their soil with different composting projects and they restore habitat with many garden projects, birds and bee houses and a nature trail. So you can see they've got a lot going on those are not things that they do and then they stop these are things they do and continue all at the same time so it's really remarkable to see what some of these schools are doing. If you would like to become a Green Step School or a mentor for a Green Step School it's easy it's fun and it's rewarding. All you have to do is contact me Jane Hiller at gmail.com. Thank you. Well thank you so much Jane that was great information and we hope that all of you out there will be interested in not only EEASC but if you have your own children that are elementary school age or will be able to participate or their school can participate in the Green Steps program then possibly sharing that information with those schools or educators and so again thank you Jane and we will provide links for these resources towards the end of the webinar. So Jane provided information about what is actually taking place within our institutions and so now we're going to hear from students that are actually doing the work. There's a lot that is taking place outside of EEASC and Green Steps and some of that work is actually being done by our state organizations and so in particular we have the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control which you commonly know as DHEC they have a program which is called the Take Action as C which is a teacher's training and what it does is that they have a new program called the Student Ambassadors for Sustainability. This is being led by Ms. Amanda Edwards as well as Angie Perry and they're preparing our next generation of educators as well as those individuals that are going to be out in the world doing climate protection as well as helping to save the environment and so they're preparing and helping them now. So what we're going to do is take a look at a video of this Student Ambassador program and you get to see exactly what the students are doing and so get ready and let's take a look at the actions that are taking place on the ground. Hi everyone I'm Angie Perry and this is Amanda Edwards. It's such a great opportunity for high school students to work with college students and learning and developing skills and all the things you see listed there project management, public speaking, communication, leadership and of course tying all of those in with a sustainability project and so we have a registration had lots of students interested then we paired them up to you know a college student and it was really neat because the college students could be worked with their own schedule you know they had different classes. What was really neat is something like at Spartanburg High School as you can see here they started a school garden in raised beds out behind their school and they met as a class during their class time so that was very neat and so the couple of college students and actually one of the college students Emmy that you're going to hear from today she actually worked with the Spartanburg High School too but we had as you can see some of the different projects we had here an environmental newsletter, composting started at their school and remember and we aren't going to talk about this at the end about grants so some of these schools applied for a grant as with the school and received that to start the composting so that was really neat to see that also happening then we had them today we're going to hear about the art contest and I wanted to link thunder from that because we also had the two high school students on here to talk about that as well as you can see we had a garden tower to donate all the produce that was that came from that garden tower and then just different environmental jail man high school their environmental club did a big environmental awareness week so they did constantly things just to bring up there they're already doing lots of great programs there but they wanted to get all of their students involved in it so as you can see lots of great projects very excited about moving forward with this program and continuing that partnership with University of South Carolina but right now I want to introduce to you Emmy who was awesome to work with she was a student mentor for the two high school students that you will hear from who were from jail man and I just cannot say enough great things about Emmy but I'm going to let her talk about the sustainable Carolina program and then her involvement in our program with the ambassadors. Hi everyone so as Angie said my name is Emmy and I am going into my senior year at the University of South Carolina I'm studying environmental studies and psychology and I joined sustainable Carolina as a sophomore so I've been a part of it for a good few years now and I really really enjoyed the experience I love being able to work with the office of sustainability and really promote sustainability across our campus at USC and have now being a part of our K through 12 team really been able to expand this across the whole Columbia community and even further than that so I do serve as a peer leader so as Grace explained with my position as a peer leader I do have a certain amount of requirements to meet so I'm not I'm not just a volunteer but with that I do complete a certain amount of hours so I get back to the community with these volunteer hours and I do meet with a coach one-on-one which has been super beneficial to me she's been giving me a lot of great experience it is a grad student who helps me get into the field I want to get into environmental career after I graduate from college and so she's been a great help and resource for that I do do also attend professional development meetings so that's roughly about once a month and those have been really beneficial as well to getting me prepared and getting that experience that I really look forward to another requirement is to graduate with leadership distinction which is going to be something that I'm working on this upcoming fall semester and it is a great experience as well to get you prepared and show all that you have achieved throughout your time in college I have specifically been working with the K-12 team since my junior year so I started that in the fall of my junior year and have done it for the past two semesters and we'll do that again in this upcoming fall and I have worked with Take Action SC and the Student Ambassador Program for Sustainability this past semester and as well as before we started everything off really right at the beginning of November in I guess that would be 2019 yeah and then so as Angie was mentioning I was a part of two different projects so I was the university student helping out with two projects the one that I did with the Spartan Brook High School I had another university student student helping me because that was a whole class that we were working with but specifically I did also work with Maya and Maywin who you guys will meet very shortly on their project but my role essentially was to help these high school students and make sure that they had everything set and were prepared for whatever their project was that they were working on so one way we specifically did this was by establishing a project management plan and we set this up with the high school students back around in November when we were starting the trial run or not trial run excuse me starting the program right away and so this PMP plan so that project management plan kind of has a few essential aspects and the first one is to establish goals so with that it's to go into detail about what specifically you are wanting to achieve and so with the group that's going to present help just a little bit they wanted to do that big sustainable art contest and so that was a big goal and we had to establish all those little goals in between and so that's where you get into the brainstorm the steps that are needed in order to achieve that goal and that was really started off at the beginning we started brainstorming what they wanted to get done how they were going to do this and really what needed to get achieved first and so this is where you produce a task with deadlines this list so that way you can go back and see really what you would like to get done at what time for the girls that are going to present we wanted to do their art contest on earth day so April 22nd I think if believe it was this past year was the date that we were having to have everything finished by so we set kind of these deadlines prior to that to figure out okay how many months would we need before this how many weeks whatever it was in between and then we did arrange this chronologically so that it was in a step by step format so that you could kind of check it off as you went along and then of course plans change things adapt as you go into it so we did continuously review and update this plan and we had a note sheet so that we could see where things were changing and how things were updating as we went in this position again being in the university student for these high schoolers it was really important to help make sure that the students were organized throughout this whole process and have the material and information that they required so a few ways that I did this in my role was that we did set up monthly meetings so we'd plan these monthly meetings and while we were on the zoom call I would always be taking notes to make sure that the girls whatever they were saying or with the high schools partner high school whatever the teacher was saying and the students were working on we had those notes down so we were prepared to reflect on it afterwards and then send out reminder email so after every single meeting that we had I would send an email just kind of taking the notes that we talked about in the meeting shrinking them in a little bit so that it was the big most important parts that we discussed so making sure everyone was on the same page and then sending that reminder email about any upcoming tasks that we had so if there was something that needed to get done based off of that deadline as well as a reminder for any upcoming meeting that we had scheduled because again it was usually about once a month and then finally I was just really there to be available if they had any questions throughout the entire process with the group that is going to present it was really from November until April was when we were working or end of April so throughout that entire time there's anything that they needed I gave them my contact information and the girls were able to reach out with any anything that they had going on that really is my role and what I was doing as the university student for Take Action SC and the student ambassador program I really am excited to hear from Maya and Maywin so they're going to go ahead and present right now on what they did with their specific task or their job within the Take Action SC student program. Thank you everyone. So the next two guests I want to introduce is Maya and Maywin and they have been great to work with as well they made a perfect team with Emmy they're going to talk to you about how they were inspired to do their sustainable art contest everything that they did and be prepared to be impressed just as you probably were with the Emmy. Hey guys I'm Maya and I'm Maywin and we're going to be seniors at JL Man High School this year so our project began we were inspired to promote sustainability in our own community and this all starts with reusing reducing and recycling so I thought it would be fun to have a virtual art contest where you can only use reused recycled and old materials that would otherwise be thrown away this not only encourages sustainability but also inspires creativity the first thing we had to do for our contest was set some guidelines these included using at least three different recycled or reused materials to create an original art piece and this is without using any kind of new materials we also set three different age groups for our submissions which were ages zero to four five to eight and nine to twelve and since our contest was completely virtual we had to design a website and for this we used google sites which was extremely user-friendly and we inserted google forms for our registration submission and voting and in order to promote the contest we had to design a flyer as well and for this we used Canva which was just as simple and we even included a QR code for the website on the flyer next slide thank you to promote our contest we had to print off flyers and we took them to neighborhoods and local businesses and we even contacted a local school that focuses on environmental sciences and we also had the flyer virtually and we promoted that on social media another way that really helped us promote it was the been thinking April newsletter and Jane Hiller helped us get a page in that newsletter which helped us get kids from all over the state and it went to teachers from all over the state so that really helped to find judges and prizes we went to local businesses and leaders and teachers especially art teachers they helped us for the art portion of it um some of the prizes we acquired were target gift guards gift baskets like newspaper pencils and those were all very generously donated next slide then after our judges scored the submissions we had a zoom award show on earth day and we recognized all the winners and then we also recognized some other special pieces that really stood out to us it was amazing to see all the art pieces and the best part was knowing that we got to inspire the kids being sustainable we are planning on continuing this project again this year and some of the changes we'll do are expanding the age groups and probably taking out the youngest age group because we didn't really have any submissions and we'll also use some more marketing skills and communication skills that we learned along the way now we're going to take a two minute break so one of the things I wanted to finalize right before we take that two minute break thank you all to you all three you guys were great and I hope everyone learned more about the program again that registration for the program will be on the takeactionsc.org website and it will open soon and we will probably have that registration until about September 15th so we want to get that in encourage your students your high school students to get that in so we can pair them with a University of South Carolina mentor one of the things I forgot to mention and I wanted to say it is University of South Carolina was so great to one of the hopes of the programs was to bring all the student ambassadors on to the University of South Carolina campus which we were even with everything that was going on University of South Carolina really worked hard to make that happen and we invited ambassadors all of them of course but the ones that could come came and they were able to do a tour and actually Emmy believe it or not she does tours as well she was able to leave them in the South Carolina tour and of the campus and then we were actually able to do Grace gave them a tour among others on her staff gave a tour of their sustainability programs their gardens composting recycling everything that they did they do at South Carolina so we appreciate University of South Carolina really working hard to make that happen and that would be something you know moving forward we'd like to offer those ambassador students every year not to mention that they all received a t-shirt that Chris showed you earlier the green one with the shirt that was made out of the plastic bottle recycled bottles with the cool message on the back and they also received like a reusable straw kit so that kind of kicked off the program and then final last but not least I want to thank Larry Cook because he's the director of the University of South Carolina sustainable Carolina program and without him having the foresight and us working together to make all this happen it wouldn't have happened so thanks Larry and we look forward to another great year of the sustainable ambassador program well we would definitely like to thank Amanda Angie and all of the student ambassadors for sharing their experiences and letting you know that these are things that either you as an educator or your students can do in the classrooms and so great jobs ladies and we know that there is more great work that is taking place at other schools so you were able to see what is taking place in various institutions within the state of South Carolina but now we're going to have a student round table that's really going to speak to the perspectives that current college students have so we're going to have a group of four students from the United States from the University of South Carolina actually two current students as well as two alumni and they're going to share about their ideas and perspectives as it relates to the environmental issues that they see both locally as well as globally and then kind of the conversation around climate protection and so get ready to hear some honest and constructive dialogue between current students and graduates of the University of South Carolina so before we get started I do want you all to be able to introduce yourselves so I'm really going to go from the way you are visually on my screen which may or may not be the same for you so I am going to start off with Cameron so Cameron if you can give your name as well as what your field was and what you're doing now. Yeah so good afternoon everyone my name is Cameron Henderson I'm an alum in marine science program I've studied chemical oceanography at USC and graduated in 2019 I worked at DHEC for a little bit as a project manager and then got my master's from the University of Edinburgh where I'm based now here in Scotland and I am beginning next week as a consultant at Development Energy which is kind of under the large umbrella of the Environmental Resource Management Group. All right well thank you Cameron and so next we have Jasmine Lara. Hello my name is Jasmine Lara Guerrero I am a sophomore I am currently studying political science of a minor in Latin American studies. All right thank you Jasmine and next we have Luz Reyes. Hi my name is Luz Reyes I'm a freshman at USC and I'm majoring in international studies. All right thank you Luz and last but not least we have Alexa Dean. Alexa you're on you. Hi everyone my name is Alexa Dean I graduated from USC in the marine science program in 2018 and I'm currently serving as an undergraduate academic advisor for students here in the School of the Earth Ocean and Environment. All right well thank you Alexa so we're going to jump right into it and because one of the main connections that we have is all of us are either teaching or have been educated or currently being educated at the University of South Carolina one of the things I would like to know is how has climate change and protection been taught within your studies or in your classes and so whether it's been an actual course that was focused on it or even if you've had professors or instructors having that conversation how has that that language been talked about in your classes and I'll open it up to anyone who would like to start us off. I can start off right now I have Dr. Warren currently for environment to science so like of course you'll talk about climate change. I'm also taking an anthropology class called A Lot of American Cultures right now we're reading a book called There Is No More Haiti by anthropologist Greg Beckett and it really talks about the whole entire forest and the climate in Haiti right now because there's a whole entire idea of forestation since everyone Haiti they chop down all their trees they get charcoal so from that perspective from us reading so far like the first two chapters of the book it really shows firsthand like how the environment basically kind of started the downfall of Haiti since like there is no more environment started all these other problems and I just find it really interesting because we talk about like the chopping down the trees and how it's currently getting hotter down in Haiti and how like the people down there don't have as much money so they don't have that much available resources to help combat against climate change. Very awesome. I can go next so I also have Dr. Warren of course it's just really great talking about climate change and that's the only class that I really had that had discussed about climate change which I wish I could like take more classes to learn about it but that's only like this is my first time taking environment sciences kind of you know interesting. Okay that's cool. I think that the marine science program here at USC does a really great job of threading climate change throughout all of the core classes that we took and then Cameron and I had the opportunity to take a marine science elective course with Dr. Z and obviously the whole class is about climate change but an activity that really stuck out to me was she had us take a super sciency concept and we could only use the most common 100 English words to describe the concept so really making the information digestible to others and focusing on that like climate change communication piece and how to actually talk to others about the concept was really cool. Yep I definitely agree with that that was a very good class and actually got me into why I wanted to do the next my master's degree in the first place. She introduced me to carbon capture and storage which is what I went and did my masters in. I think from a marine science standpoint at USC it was very much learning to quantify climate change what are the impacts where how much and certainly at maybe the next degree and what was introduced to me and Dr. Z's class was about programs policies and more of a macro scale rather than just purely quantifiable science what's kind of more holistic approach to all climate change and what are the steps being taken from a local regional scale to more macro scale or combating it. Okay and so all of these are very interesting view points and I kind of take it back to what Lou's kind of brought to the light is that this has probably been one of her environmental science class is probably the first time that she's maybe had this conversation as opposed to like Cameron and Alexis being in a marine science major that really is a part of the discussion and so I am curious when you think about your peers as millennials in Gen Z how do you think the overall conversation about climate change or protection is having is taking place especially if you have those individuals who may not necessarily have courses that are environmentally related or they may not be in the environmental fields and so do you see this being or this conversation being had in the news in the media amongst yourselves are you having these conversations like where is this language really taking place. To go off your question Dr. Warren I grew up in North mortal beach my whole entire life so I always grew up by a coastal city so I always grew up surrounded by people that were like environmentally progressive even like our whole entire town everyone went to school if we were always talking about climate change and like how we have to keep like the environment going because we see the effect firsthand with our oceans and more hurricanes every single year we see it firsthand living out like a coastal city and then coming from mortal beach to Columbia I see it's very different with my peers because everyone comes from different cities so like especially here in Columbia I have friends that lived here all their life they really don't know too much about like the environment as it is because they said they weren't as educated like I was when it came to environment or they really didn't care about climate change because some to put in perspective some people just didn't have the education to like learn about it like I did or like some of them are just really selfish I have come across people in my class I'm like well it doesn't bother me like it's not going to happen to me right now so I won't care about it so it's just different to see the different perspectives all across campus um yeah I think the same my peers I don't think they understand like the importance of climate change and I think it's because they're like so lost in the technology world that they they think technology is going to fix it all but it really won't so like they don't really dip into climate change like my friends they know what they have climate change but they don't really know like what are the facts or how can we fix this so yeah I think there definitely is a there can be a lot of pessimism around especially Gen Z millennials around climate change and I think that might be a fact of media consumption might be a fact of it's it's majority of what they hear and to be honest there might be a failing on the part of science communication of understanding all the victories that's happening what are the steps being taken what are different pathways from the IPCC which have been outlined and where steps different countries are committing to as far as their climate targets um I think you see something like a hurricane um a natural disaster is hitting and okay as the climate change in order that's us we're in the bins but I think there's a lot to be optimistic about and I think a bit more of the communication of the good side of climate change um research and mitigation I think would go a long way and I think it's so interesting too because a lot of millennials when we were in school we were kind of taught both sides so like we're going to give you both sides of the argument these are the climate deniers and these are the people for climate change and I believe that's still pretty much taught in a lot of schools today as well and so a lot of people kind of have that duality that they're thinking of but I would definitely agree with Cam that there's definitely a doom and gloom aspect to it and that people can get really trapped in spiraling thoughts about okay well we have all these issues going on you know we're dealing with race we're dealing with climate change you know all these crazy things that get perpetuated on social media um and so it is easy to get bogged in that pessimism but um I agree that there's a lot of things to be hopeful about okay and so thinking about um ways in which we message climate change or protection or any type of environmental issues what do you think would be a more effective way that it will draw the attention of both millennials and Gen Z or just society as a whole so to Alexa's point I think sometimes there can be a burnout about certain type of issues that were consistently bombarded with not that they're not important but sometimes if the language isn't a certain way it can be tuned out or you know it just isn't going to resonate and so thinking about your peers what would you think would be an effective way to get the message out so not only are they educated about it but they're also concerned and potentially want to do something about it I think not underestimating people's um thirst for knowledge and their ability to digest large amounts of information um I think potentially as scientists there are times where you may underestimate the general public's appetite for science and their ability to give them certain publications or reports from a IPCC that we felt we have to change them but at least in my experience discussing people that are maybe outside the field uh not only do I introduce it to them the next time I speak to them they may have read two three more things that I hadn't even introduced them and I think as information becomes more and more readily available it's the best not to underestimate people's appetite to read it themselves. Okay any other thoughts? I guess to to show my peers I have had this conversation from room 8c4 because I'm always very eco-friendly and here they are not which is very hard to work with sometimes so like I have had conversations with them about like climate change and recycling stuff like that I think like the easiest way is like to show the like like YouTube videos like I show them like or pictures around the world of like the effects of climate change and even like my like experience firsthand because I always bring up like I always live by the beach and like every single year I've lived in the same area the hurricanes have gotten worser and worser the flooding has been historical in certain parts of ory county as we've seen in like a town near me called conway they're like like had historical flooding due to these hurricanes and it destroyed neighborhood so like I see the effects firsthand and I show them pictures of videos I took and they really took in considerations like wow it's really affecting her so maybe I should like look more into it. Okay yeah Prasman I feel like you hit the nail on the head that you have to meet people where they're at and so you know talking about super abstract place like Antarctica is melting might not resonate with someone who's living in Louisiana and dealing with their day-to-day issues you know talking about sea level rise it's really going to impact them you know kind of matching up impacts with people when you're having conversations I also love the idea of using visuals I think sometimes social media can be like that's a huge pro of it kind of getting digestible information like Pam said in a little graphic or you know in a tweet and there's definitely cons to that too but I like to use that when I'm communicating with people on social media. Okay any others? Yes I think that like they all say try like you know advocate them but also I think like there's already so many issues that kind of takes out their attention to climate change for example we can talk about climate change people would probably talk about one or two days and then forget about it so I feel like try to be like committed to you know actually like climate change you guys understand? Okay and definitely that I'm sorry Dr. Warren. The good thing about climate change is it is all around us so the the opportunities through these conversations are endless and the holistic nature in which climate change affects almost all aspects of life means how you can approach these conversations changes um just last year I was um diving in Florida and had an opportunity to explain what coral bleaching was unfortunately to some of um some of my dive partners and again just back to their their interests they were asking questions like left right and center I couldn't even answer all of them they were and and these people didn't have background and um science let alone chemical ethnography but the interest and the appetite and the ability to recognize what the key questions are and how to get that information I think was really resonated with me and it's great that what you're all is saying is that or to some extent you're doing the part of educating your peers whether it's talking to them about the personal effects to yourselves or things that you're seeing that's happening around you or elsewhere and so I am curious as you are making your way out into the world so some of you are actually within your fields other others of you are actually working your way through your majors um but how do you think you will continue educating individuals around you especially if you're not necessarily within an environmentally related field so some of you are in marine science others aren't but you can still have that conversation with your family members with your peers and others and so how do you think it'll be possible for you to extend this education out into the world where we at least I always been very vocal about what I think about the environment I always have been even as a kid we're like watching Disney Channel to like like the only reason why I got so recycling this is Disney Channel because like they were pushing out all these recycling efforts same thing throughout the school like from like elementary school all the way to high school they really pushed recycling and composting and everything for us so that really stuck with me and like me doing political science like I'm really pushing to see if I can do some type of local or state level type politics and like get my foot in the door somewhere and be like an official because I like to help implement some more environmental like plans and like like rulings here in soccer and like that's something I really want to do like that's like one of my major goals right now I'm only a sophomore so we'll see what happens okay um as an international studies major I want to advocate and promote like social justice or and climate change is one of them that I want to do and I feel like taking the initiative like recycling and you know taking care of like the earth people will follow and you know help out hopefully okay I think for me climate education has been such a huge passion of mine and my job I don't necessarily get to interact with it on a day-to-day basis but I really kind of morph the goal more into um I'm helping develop the world's change makers in the marine science and environmental program and setting them up for success to go out and work in carbon capture or go out and work in policy and making sure that they have the education to go and do that and they get to take cool electives like Dr. Z's class or Dr. Warren's class um so I kind of help get to drive the ship in that way which is really fun well personally it's I've used conversations kind of like working out a muscle so it's better to have a lot of individual smaller conversations like you work out four or five times a week less than having one massive six hour workout and then you're just completely gassed for the whole uh months as it would be for me now post pandemic in the middle of pandemic um so I think having these conversations continuously and meeting them as they come up is very important and didn't have to be a big three hour seminar but if an opportunity to discuss it happens and it's a five minute conversation that's a really successful five minute conversation and if that five minute conversation happens four five six times a week different times I think that's much more impactful and resonates with people more as maybe those own out a bit um it's longer kind of seminars okay and so thinking about that the impact of communications I'll leave you with this last question if you were able to do a PSA that goes out globally so not just to the University of South Carolina or the city of Columbia but you're able to reach as many people as possible as your last or parting words what would you share about climate change climate protection or in the environment in general so I open it up to whomever wants to go ahead and end this off Dr. Warren that's a loaded question I know but you're some intelligent individual so I'm looking forward to the answers you're going to provide the simplest things are so profound so let's see I'll go I know this summer a lot of people complain of being a really really hot summer the point of perspective like this may be your hottest summer yet and it's going to be your coldest summer for the rest of your life so like you really have to put this perspective like climate change is something that's not going to go away it's going to happen every single year there's going to be more hotter and hotter and hotter summers so we have to take care of our planet because we don't have a backup option we only have this one planet we don't have anywhere else to go so we got to take care of our planets to like ensure that like we have like a planet for our future generations so we can still progress as like humans okay yeah um well um I have a question you guys like water right yes and I mean um we need a kid like that water save like water pollution is becoming a problem and we all love water it's something we need for life to survive it for future generations and so if we don't like say um if we don't speak out about climate change then we someday might not have water you know good point I think for me this is something I'm quite passionate about is getting people to understand that climate change is for everybody and mitigating climate change is for everybody it's not just the scientists that do it it's if you're in finance carbon finance is a super fast and exciting growing industry climate change needs business developers it needs people to speak with people and its communications policymakers accountants and because it's so massive and it's so interdisciplinary that even if you don't view yourself oh I don't have the skills to help yes you do everybody can help with something and it's all important and it's going to need everybody and Alexa we'll let you take us out great um obviously Kim and I know each other because he stole some of what I was gonna say but I was gonna say yeah just like having everyone on our team um getting as many people as possible because we I you know I think a lot of time we focus on individual action so I'm gonna go recycle this in my house and we get really bogged down into all those small individual things that we're doing and we really need to recognize that it's the system that's broken and we're just kind of the cog um in this system and it's really forcing these companies and corporations in the world to change and putting pressure on them and um I'm really excited to see what will happen well those are all great PSAs and I know that they would definitely make a difference if we were magically able to put it out in the atmosphere but nonetheless the things that you are learning as well as the work that you're doing is definitely going to have a great impact as far as educating others and just being on the right path to hopefully implementing more changes as it relates to climate change so I will say for Cameron, Jasmine, Luz and Alexa thank you so much for this student current student as well as alumni round table um we thank you for your perspectives we thank you for everything that you're doing right now as well as what you're going to be doing in the future and we do look to you to be the future leaders taking charge when it comes to climate protection so as Cameron has said this is very interdisciplinary so you don't necessarily have to be an environmental scientist or be within the environmental field you can be within any major and have a significant impact and so we look forward to seeing you in some type of capacity leading the charge so thank you very much well I must say I thoroughly enjoyed facilitating that student a round table and I really enjoyed hearing um their messages and so hopefully we're all encouraged and knowing that the next generation of students as well as graduates are really thinking about the environmental issues and ways in which they can make an impact into the world um as we're starting to wrap up there has been a lot of great information that has been shared as well as resources that are going to be available but before we end out I do want to share a little bit more about CPAC and so if there is anyone in the city of Columbia or the Midlands area that will like to get involved and be a part of this great initiative that we're doing that you can know more about the organization as well as how to get in contact with us and so I'm going to share a little quickly about the mission of CPAC as well as what we're doing and how you can get in contact with us and so the mission really is to develop and advocate for effective strategies to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions you heard a little bit especially during the student round table about some of the problems that we're seeing but we want to put some effective solutions into place so how can we adapt to climate change in a sustainable way or implement initiatives that will allow us to be effective and do the things that we do need to do within the city but does not have a major impact on the environment we also want to conserve excuse me as many natural resources as possible and also do this protection at the city level while also fostering to improve the quality of life for the citizens of the city of Columbia so we're really led to be solutions driven finding ways to be an effective city while being sustainable now the purpose of the committee is to really recommend and oversee the development and implementation of mission-based programs and projects that we can bring forth to our leaders give them a better understanding of why these solutions are going to be important and help to make decisions on how it's going to be implemented out into the city now if you are interested in being a part of CPAC or being appointed we are at the stage where we're taking applications for both voting as well as non-voting positions and so you can contact us at the columbiasc.gov backslash departments or DEPTS backslash boards and commissions and you can get more information now if you're worried or concerned about the time commitment it's a few meetings that we would do a month so we have 15 members there are seven that are voting and there are eight that are nine non-voting and we do meet twice a month and so we typically go for about an hour you would be appointed by city council so depending on which area you're in you could be nominated by one of the council members now if you also choose not to be a member we do have an advisory council and so this is made up of individuals maybe at a state or local level or even within organizations in the city in which you can bring a different perspective or information about the things that we're discussing and talking about so again if you're interested because we're at the point where we're trying to bring on new members to bring fresh ideas and solutions for what we're trying to address then please get in contact with us and as a very last or a parting sharing of information we just want to recap some of the things that we've discussed today and so as an educator or even as a parent or another citizen that's concerned or wanting to get involved on the educational side we do have the Environmental Education Association of South Carolina or EEASC that you can get in contact with there's also the green school the green step schools program where you can learn more about what is taking place or if you're interested in having the program implemented in your school then you can reach out we just discussed how you can be involved in the climate protection action campaign or actually the committee that is facilitating a lot of work and if you also want to get signed up for speaking sustainability EEASC newsletter which provides information on what's taking place Colombia or the Midlands area you can also get in contact with us that way so a lot of great information and resources that have been provided I want to say thank you for all of the participants that were a part of this webinar both live as well as virtually I want to thank all of you for being a part of this back to school sustainability style webinar and we look forward to you meeting us again in a few months when we do our final one for the year sharing information on how you could be informed about things that we're doing in the city of Colombia as it relates to climate protection have a great evening and we'll see you at the next webinar