Letter to the Editor: New Climate Community Outreach Program

To the St. Lawrence Community: 

St. Lawrence University has partnered with the AmeriCorps Campus Compact Climate Action Corps Project to host a Climate Action Leader on campus. My name is Evelyn, and as the Climate Action Leader, I will be working with Michael Iversen — SLU Director of Sustainability and Energy Management — on various projects on campus and in the Canton community through July 31.   

AmeriCorps is the federal agency for national service and volunteerism. Campus Compact is a national non-profit organization that supports community and civic engagement in higher education. The CCAC Project’s goal is to build the capacity of campuses and their communities to create effective changes related to energy efficiency, improvements for at-risk ecosystems, and local solutions for underserved households.   

On SLU’s campus and in the Canton community, I am working on multiple projects related to CCAC’s goals:  

In collaboration with the Cornell Cooperative Extension of St. Lawrence County, I’ve been trained as an energy navigator along with two undergraduate students. Energy navigators help educate fellow community members about energy efficiency, lowering energy use and bills, renewable energy and heating systems, and more. We have a goal of reaching 50 households in the Canton community through walkthrough home visits, presentations and outreach.   

Working with Nature Up North, we are beginning a water quality monitoring project on the Grasse and Little Rivers and hope to reboot Nature Up North’s MOW, the Grasse community science project.   

With help from Carol Cady and the GIS Lab, we are working to create a map of all the bike racks on campus to inform a Bike and Pedestrian Mobility Plan.  

I will be giving various presentations throughout the Canton community about energy efficiency and climate change, and I will be helping to organize an on-campus event with student groups from all four college campuses in the area.   

I graduated from Clarkson in December of 2022 (oops, rival schools…) and am so excited to be back in the North Country. Please stay tuned for more information about the on-campus event and how student environmental organizations can participate, and feel free to reach out if you have any questions or would like to get involved in our projects! We are always looking for volunteers (volunteer recruitment is actually one of the benchmarks for the CCAC Project) — and we would love to do home energy walkthroughs with on-campus housing.   

Thank you, and I look forward to working with the St. Lawrence community during my service term!