Sustainability Semester Canceled This Spring Due to Lack of Interest

By KATIE WILSON
STAFF WRITER

This past December, the Sustainability Semester, which has run every spring semester since its creation in 2013, was cancelled due to a lack of interested participants. Despite its recent hiccup, the off-campus program will hopefully be reinstated in the spring of 2017.

The Sustainability Semester is an interactive, off-campus study program centered on [much as its name suggests] fostering a sustainable way of life. The program is based a mere five miles off-campus, but allows students to experience an entirely different lifestyle than most students are acquainted with on campus. While living in a renovated farmhouse, students take classes dealing specifically with leading a sustainable life, ranging from focusing on the incorporation of local, fresh food into their diets to looking at the environmental impacts of unsustainable practices. Students are also able to travel to and from campus of their own accord and thus able to maintain relationships with friends while simultaneously living in their own entirely separate “world.”

In addition, the program allows students to alter and transform their preconceived notions regarding waste and sustainable lifestyles via small, student-created challenges throughout the semester. For example, participants pose questions related to human impact such as the effect of using lights consistently as well as what it would be like to live without lights. Then, in response to the question, they may challenge themselves to not use lights for an extended period of time. In this manner, students are able to explore multiple avenues of sustainable living.

While the program has the ability to accommodate ten students, it has averaged six to nine participants each semester since its start in 2013. Although the off-campus program originally had enough applicants to proceed seamlessly, after students were accepted and took the program under serious consideration, many either decided against pursuing it that particular semester or decided to instead participate in a separate off-campus program.

Director of the Sustainability Semester Cathy Shrady states that all the students who have participated in the program thus far have found it to be incredibly rewarding and have raved about it since leaving. In this sense, the biggest roadblock to garnering interest has less to do with the actual program and more to do with the small levels of word of mouth regarding it. As there have only been three semesters worth of participants to brag about its many amazing facets (including a brief trip to Boston in which students focus on urban sustainability,) the program remains largely undiscovered by the St. Lawrence student body.

Although the program has been a hit with all those who have pursued it, Shrady and other members of the administration are using this time to attempt to address any possible issues within the program in order to strengthen it. One of the major deterring factors in gaining more participants in the program has to do with its close proximity to campus, leaving students fearful of ‘using up’ their one student abroad opportunity on the program. However, Shrady strongly emphasizes the fact that students here at St. Lawrence often have both the opportunity and ability to study abroad more than once in their college career– something more students should certainly take advantage of.

While the cancellation of the program this Spring may seem negative to some, it offers a perfect opportunity for administrators and faculty to strengthen and revamp the Sustainability Semester in a way that will ultimately attract more students.

In fact, this brief sabbatical may even be a blessing in disguise.