Center for Sustainability and Resilience at WCC

Photo Legend: Work-study students Karlos, KJ, and Wanda.

Photo Credit: Emily Thompson

October 18, 2024

By Emily Thompson, Ph.D., Karlos Madrigal, KJ Fawn, and Wanda Bush

The trees are starting to show flames of brilliant oranges, reds and yellows.  Corn mazes and apple orchards are advertising they’re ready for fall festivities and pumpkin spice fills the air at the coffee shop.  It must be autumn and with that comes a new set of classes and work-study students!

The crop this year are a diverse group of individuals who are assisting the Center for Sustainability and Resilience (CSR) at Washtenaw Community College in achieving our mission.  The mission is to cultivate an engaged, diverse community aiming to achieve sustainability and climate action goals through informed decision-making in the areas of curriculum, college culture, and campus operations. Bill Ghrist and I are leading the Center and my door is always open for your comments and suggestions. It’s time now to let our students introduce themselves in the paragraphs below.

Karlos

Hello, my name is Karlos Madrigal and I am a first-year student here at WCC. I am excited to work with everyone in CSR. I want to learn as much as possible about sustainability both on and off campus. I aim to transfer somewhere after my time at WCC to major in Environmental Engineering. My favorite sustainable feature here on campus is the water refill stations. I love how convenient they are and how they allow me to save money and reduce waste. I think whoever came up with the idea and design is a genius. 

KJ 

Howdy, my name is KJ and I’m a work-study intern at CSR. I’m majoring in Biology with the hope of one day becoming a curator at the University of Michigan’s Museum of Zoology. I cherish all aspects of nature and try to bring as much of it inside as I possibly can, so my house is a delightful mix of museum and jungle. On the WCC campus, I enjoy the nature trail and am looking forward to getting some seeds from their library this coming spring. While I’m here, I’m excited to see how I will be able to help improve the sustainability at WCC and I can’t wait to watch it all unfold! 

Wanda

I’m Wanda and I’m in the fifth semester of my Environmental Science program as a Reconnect student. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to work with CSR this semester and contribute efforts to our lovely campus. My passion lies in conservation and preservation- this includes the development of my own permaculture garden. That being said, I personally enjoy WCC’s Seed Library, Nature Trail, and Food Forest. During this work study experience I hope to encourage others to find ways they can decrease the size of their carbon footprint, as well as help them recognize the importance of the Great Lakes region as a resource for generations to come.

Now that you’ve heard from our students, you might wonder what you can do to help in our efforts?  We ask that students, staff, faculty, and the community work with us on sustainability and resilience projects. Together we can help foster a clean and equitably-shared environment, a healthy human population, and healthy local ecosystems. 

To start, please visit our website to look at what we’ve accomplished so far and activities and projects that we’re running right now: https://www.wccnet.edu/engage/sustainable/

With warm regards,

Emily Thompson, Ph.D. CSR Faculty Lead