Earth Week Update

Starting April 21 to April 26, Bellevue College will be celebrating the 15th annual Earth Week sponsored by The Office of Sustainability, Environmental Advisory Committee and the Sustainability and Science Association. This year’s theme is called “Create Eco-topia.” BC’s campus will be filled with information sessions, prizes, videos and music.
Some of the events will include lectures such as the $15 per hour wage by David Rolf, a Transportation Fair with Electric Vehicles, Farmers Markets, vendor fair, oil leak testing and faculty social, ivy removal and native planting, clean energy roadshow, game shows with prizes and movies. The goal of these events is to reach thousands of students during Earth Week.
The Sustainability Curriculum Committee has asked the faculty to take a pledge to teach Earth Week in their classrooms. This can be anything from a class discussion on local food, a case study, eco- topia inspired art or offering students extra credit for attending a lecture.
Deric Gruen, director of the Office of Sustainability says that more than 40 faculty members will be lecturing or teaching about earth week.
“We ask that the Bellevue College community take this week to educate themselves about the state of our earth and our role it keeping healthy as a planet, they can do this by attending a lecture, participating an event on campus or integrating sustainability into the course-work,” said Gruen.
Gruen says Earth Week is a fun event for Bellevue College and the larger community to come out to learn and do something to create our own Eco-topia.
English instructor Elizabeth Harazim has taken this pledge. “We will take four hours of class time to attend various talks and presentations,” says Harazim, who is also the sustainability representative for the Arts and Humanities Department and teaches several sustainability- focused writing classes.
Patrick Green, program manager at the Office of Sustainability says that we need to think critically about the ways in which we consume resources and to practice simple methods for improving our environment. Highlighting the importance that Earth Week is “celebration of our place on Earth and the ways we can steward it, both for today and future generations.”
For the whole Earth Week schedule, information on the Electric Vehicle Fair and Farmer’s Market and information about possible extra credit classroom lectures, head over to http:// www.bellevuecollege.