CAUSE trip to Colorado inspires future sustainability leaders

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — For carving out a path towards a sustainable future where his children inherit a planet that’s better for it, Sean Collins knows that the solution isn’t in where we are, but where we want to go.

It’s a path that parallels his own life.

In 2018, the upscale pizza shop general manager enrolled in Penn State’s Energy and Sustainability Policy (ESP) program in the hopes of being a part of the solution and bettering the planet for his three kids. He’ll graduate in December, positioned to land a job in sustainability.

“The idea that I was going to leave my kids a planet that was less sustainable and habitable than the one I came into really was a driving force for my career change,” Collins said. “A lot of the sacrifices we’re going to have to make won’t play out in our lifetimes, but they’ll play out in theirs. That really was the North Star guiding my decision.”

Collins said he made a lot of sacrifices to get to this point and fulfilling the study away or internship requirement for his major was made even easier through CAUSE.

Enter Center for Advanced Undergraduate Studies and Experience (CAUSE), a unique center in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences that offers real-world experiences for students over three semesters while featuring a concentrated research and a travel component that this year was just $500 per student.

Collins joined 11 other students over the summer, traveling to Colorado to meet some of the current leaders using novel sustainable practices. They met experts and toured facilities in urban and rural food production, “zero waste” policies, solar photovoltaics, ride share programs, low impact housing developments, and sustainable brewing practices.

ESP student Kayla Peate was excited to see all the sustainability practices related to farming. On her western New York farm, she raises chickens, pigs and honeybees.

“I saw CAUSE as a great opportunity to learn more about sustainability programs already in place in the real world,” Peate said. “As I already have some experience with sustainability when it comes to agriculture, I wanted to broaden my knowledge of other fields as well and see if there were ways I could increase the sustainability of my own operations.”

For Peate, the trip really showcased the complexity and regionality of some of these sustainability issues. On her farm not far from Lake Erie, water is a precious yet prevalent resource. Not so, she said, on the farms in Colorado that are resorting to clever irrigation techniques to get the most out of each drop.

She’s not sure where she wants her degree to take her, so she enjoyed the wide range of topics the CAUSE trip covered. Seeing things like agrivoltaics at Jack’s Solar Garden — where solar panels complete a symbiotic relationship — was interesting. But learning of sustainability positions at places such as the Denver Zoo made her realize there were opportunities outside of the obvious.

Tsunami Sharmba, who is a senior majoring in environmental systems engineering, said she came to Penn State hoping to find a career she was passionate about. She said CAUSE ignited her interest in sustainability more than she could have imagined.

She was excited to see real-world examples of sustainability in-practice but also to work on her CAUSE final project where students are tasked with creating their own plan for a working venture. For her fall semester project, the engineering student is designing a green roof that has a drip-irrigation system that uses waste as fertilizer to grow vegetables and herbs for the local food bank.

“Hearing that these companies located in another state that is so focused on sustainability have successfully implemented practices like mine was so motivating,” Sharmba said. “The CAUSE trip turned my outline into a full-fledged proposal because I learned so much about gardening and sustainable efforts. Being able to walk around these places, see sustainability in action, and learn from the people is so meaningful. It brought our classroom lessons to life.”

Haley Sankey and Daniel Kasper, both instructors in the ESP program, delivered CAUSE 2022: Applied Sustainability in Colorado. Sankey said it’s structured to create the next generation of leaders in sustainability. In CAUSE, which is an equal mix of University Park and Penn State World Campus students, students aren’t just tasked with learning about sustainability. They’re tasked with thinking of ways to implement sustainability practices that are affordable and impactful. CAUSE is a chance for students to ground truth some of their ambitions with reality.

She said these students seem up for the challenges they’ll face.

“The students who enroll in the CAUSE program give me hope for our future,” Sankey said. “They want to do the right thing; they want to make smart decisions; they are already directly being impacted by climate change and they’re ready to take action.”