The Big Idea: Tackling Waste and Transparency Worldwide
View our interactive map to learn how alumni and the College are addressing the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals Peter Johnson ’02 is addressing the global problem of food waste and creating greater transparency and fairness in supply chains, worldwide. By Kris Dreessen From harvest to dinner table, 30 percent of all food produced globally goes to waste, the United Nations estimates, which impacts the environment, workers and food...
How to: Your Food Scraps, Renewed!
Geneseo’s sustainability experts share simple steps to compost at home. By Mat Johnson “Some things just take time — like good wine and compost,” says Dan DeZarn, Geneseo’s director of sustainability. Technically, composting is “the decomposition of organic waste,” says DeZarn, himself a backyard composter. In any active compost pile, oxygen-seeking bacteria are busy breaking down organic material. The result is a soil-like material...
Ideas So Good They Stuck
Some of Geneseo’s innovative ideas came from students who saw a need and led the way. By Kris Dreessen As a first-year student, Allison Hoppe ’13 joined the Geneseo Environmental Organization. She found friends who shared an interest and then a calling: to build a community for like-minded students to learn about sustainability and adopt a more conscious lifestyle. Dreaming, planning and effort by Hoppe and others opened Eco House in...
Epiphany: Caretakers for Future Generations
Protecting wildlands and volunteering on behalf of Geneseo highlights the true value of strengthening what each of us holds most dear. By Jessica L. Blair ’00 I live on the ancestral lands of the Lakota people, near Bdote, where the Mississippi River converges with the Minnesota River, in the city of Minneapolis. Before being forced to cede their home to European settlers in treaty after treaty, Indigenous people stewarded the lands...
Video: The Simple Life, Unplugged
At Geneseo, Nik Varrone is the support services manager for IT. At home, he and his wife, Anya, run a farm and plows the land using a method that was most popular in the 1700s. The Varrones use horse plowing and have created a lifestyle that fits their beliefs, goals and is more sustainable. “If you look at what we do from the outside, it looks simple,” says Nik Varrone, Geneseo’s support services manager in the IT...
Video: A Forest Sanctuary
Geneseo’s Director of Sustainability Dan DeZarn and Kimberly Keil-DeZarn ’06 show us around their home, which they’ve built to have many sustainability related features. It’s even built from mostly recycled and reclaimed...
Video: Geneseo’s Beekeeping Club
Geneseo Beekeeping Club’s Allison Menendez ’20 takes us on a visit to the campus hives, and shares how members explore the complex role of honeybees in the world and how they help them thrive on...
All the Buzz
The Geneseo Beekeeping Club learns about the complex role of honeybees — and encourages them to thrive on campus. By Mary-Margaret Dwyer ’20 As Beekeeping Club President Allison Menendez ’20pries the top off the beehive, bees emerge from their sticky shelter, flying in and out of the hive. A few puffs from a smoker put the honeybees into survival mode. The smoke urges bees to retreat back into the hives, so club members can...
The Green Quotient
Faculty and students from several majors created a course that focuses on sustainability. Watch the student teaching assistants explain the course and mission. Lara Mangino ’21 was part of a team of faculty and fellow students last year who developed the Geneseo Green Quotient, an innovative course that draws on multiple disciplines. Until then, she had never connected humanities with sustainability. “It was very eye-opening,” said...
Three Days in Nature Prep Students for Four Years at Geneseo
Christina Morrow ’20 shares how the award-winning, First-Year Experience Program helped her acclimate to the rigors and embrace the opportunities of college life. Before Christina Morrow ’20 started classes at Geneseo, she spent three days in Letchworth State Park with other students also new to college life. They learned about local indigenous history and the park’s flora, fauna and biodiversity. They camped, hiked, rafted in...
Scene Around the World
Where will you take your issue of the Geneseo Scene? Check out our Scene Around the World photo gallery and submit your own snapshot.