FITV // Quang Dinh
This homecoming, Florida Tech saw dogs on Crawford Green, celebration of the environment, and awareness brought to some of the problems impacting the planet.
The reason: the Student Organization for Sustainability Action held its first Fall Earth Day celebration.
The event was a collaboration between SOSA, the American Society of Civil Engineers, Squamish and RLSC.
Fall Earth Day was held on Wednesday, October 23, on the Crawford Green.
Ken Lindeman, the advisor for SOSA and an ocean engineering and marine sciences professor, has worked with SOSA every year to help them create an engaging week-long celebration of Earth Day in April.
“We have wanted to also do a Fall Earth Day, and there have been some efforts to do that in the past,” Lindeman said. “This year, SOSA, ASCE and other student organizations followed through with a substantive event.”
Allyson McCarron, the vice president of SOSA, discussed the initial idea of collaborating with another organization, ASCE.
“We have a diverse group of people in SOSA in terms of majors and could have done it as a group, but more organizations are getting interested in sustainability and we thought that ASCE would do a great job to help bring our vision to life,” McCarron said.
McCarron said the original idea of Fall Earth Day was born last fall.
“We wanted to increase the importance of Earth Day on campus with the idea that we shouldn’t just have one day in the spring that we celebrate it,” McCarron said.
Earth Day is celebrated every year on April 22, and both SOSA and ASCE recognize the importance of that day and the message that it presents to people.
For Fall Earth Day, a number of organizations were invited.
McCarron said these organizations included Keep Brevard Beautiful, Facilities, Alumni Affairs, and the CLEO Institute.
The Brevard Zoo has a program known as “Restore Our Shores,” which is a project that focuses on conservation, especially on the shorelines.
The project aims to protect locations such as the Indian River Lagoon and other bodies of water with shorelines.
Oysters and mangroves are examples of some organisms that the Brevard Zoo team helps protect.
The sculpture that was designed from collected trash and waste as a result of campus clean-ups attracted a lot of attention.
McCarron said, “I am very proud of what all of us accomplished and hope that it opened some of the eyes of students on campus.”