Category Archives: Events

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About Us

  By Garrett Bland • April 30, 2022 , ,

Hello, our team name is Nittany Rocks and our names are Sid, Garrett, Shawn and Devon. Sid served as the team leader while Garrett was responsible for all the communications between the group and the organization at Rock Hollow Woods. Our research component was based on Climate Change.

Service Project:

For our service component of the EACAP project, we were tasked to help the organization at Rock Hollow Woods for 2 days. On the first day, our team toke apart a bridge which was made out of wood logs and was aging due to the weather conditions. We were given tools such as screwdrivers, wrenches and etc. to un-bolt the screws on the bridge. After cutting logs of woods with equipment provided by the organization, we started to settle 2 logs as the base of the bridge and then settle the other logs. On the second day of our visit at Rock Hollow Woods, we cut down some trees that were on the verge of falling around the trail in the forest. We were able to use the opportunity to experience something to favor the environment.

Service Video

Research Project:

Our research component of the EACAP project, we presented to our class about Climate Change. Informing the audience about general information we later discussed the causes, solutions and some possible sustainable development goals about Climate Change. Global Warming has been the biggest contribution to Climate Change. Forcing a lot of species that live in cold temperatures, many glaciers and ice caps have melted which has dislocated the population in order to look for food, shelter and water. Our sources provided concrete information and were reliable.

Poster Session:

We had the opportunity to present our service and research project to our fellow classmates and members of PSU Berks. We were able to interact with others as we had the opportunity of explaining our service and research project to them. Also, we were able to go around and look at other groups’ service and research projects.

Brochure:

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Reimagined Rubbish – A Group’s Journey to Transforming Trash Into Conceptual Art

  By saa6198 • April 20, 2022 , , ,

EACAP team, Reimagined Rubbish, consists of Michelle, Pao, Sam, and Nigel.

left to right: Sam, Nigel, Michelle, and Pao

Sam and Michelle are freshmen at Berks. Sam is majoring in Global Studies and Michelle is majoring in Business Management. Pao and Nigel are the sophomores of our group. Pao is majoring in International Business and Nigel in Writing and Digital Media.

Service

We worked with Dr. Chambers to create an art piece made entirely out of trash for the art exhibit, Breaking Barriers Building Bridges to be displayed in the Freyberger Gallery. Our team decided to create a piece that tied back to the pandemic, utilizing trash that held relevance in terms of quarantine trends. For example: covid test kits, disposable masks, banana bread box recipes, to DoorDash orders.

The Weight of Waste

Our group chose to construct a globe made entirely out of trash we collected either individually or during our trash collection days on campus and at Gring’s Mill. The base of the piece is made from the hubcap of a tire found at Gring’s Mill park. From there, the globe is supported by two opposing end caps made of Starbucks cups. Inside of each are references to pandemic-related issues. Some of the things that are featured are: disposable masks, mask and test certification papers, Covid test instructions, latex gloves, toilet paper rolls, and DoorDash order tickets. The core of the globe consists of trash we collected such as wrappers, plastic, bottle caps, and pen caps. It was then wrapped in layers of plastic and paper to create the crumpled looking effect of the globe itself. Blue and green trash scatters around the globe to give it familiarity. Then, the earth was encased in a clear plastic lining. More trash can be spotted stuffed into the gloves on the piece that symbolize the need for all of us to reach out and take both individual and collective action to better the health of our planet. In the background is a broken clock our team found and used to emphasize that time is of the essence. We set the clock to 4:22 as a nod to Earth Day.

Below are our “honorable mentions” that we found and although were cool, just were not able to make it into the final piece.

Research

Our inspiration for this piece came from a global event that has truly left its mark on all of us. We often heard about the environmental benefits the pandemic brought as people travelled and worked less. Carbon emissions plummeted, water quality improved, and ecological systems were restored due to declines in tourist traffic. That said, our group wanted to approach the topic in terms of the harmful environmental impacts the pandemic brought, and what better way to address medical and quarantine-related waste than through a project that uses that trash to create an art installation!

 

We broke down research responsibilities down to 3 specific categories with 4 group members. Those topics were general waste (quarantine related waste), medical, and mask related waste. 

We first delved into broad research detailing the overall causes and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on people and the environment. To highlight more specific aspects of life impacted by the pandemic, our group researched its impact on medical waste usage and disposal methods, emphasizing sustainable development goals created by environmental organizations like the WHO to be met by several sources as well. 

EACAP_service_video

 

click the image to see our team's service video!

 

Reflection

All in all, our group realized through our trash collection days how often we simply overlook the litter around us. It doesn’t take a lot of time to simply put trash where it belongs, but if we can take a second to pick up litter, it truly makes the difference. We learned the importance of doing our part. The project itself taught us how to collaborate as a team and incorporate different visions together. Our initial idea entailed stuffing a transparent trash bag with all the trash we collected. This plan did not go accordingly, as we lost the spherical look and it also wasn’t balancing. We adjusted accordingly and downsized. The next challenge we faced was balancing the globe with the added weight of the curved metal piece. We used the glove to help support the piece, and added the other to show that the hands are reaching out, urging us all to action.

Our group efforts taught us all valuable lessons. We learned to work with each other’s strengths, and also helped one another in areas of weakness. We also all became more aware of our waste-related impact on the planet. It was eye opening to see how much waste resulted in quarantine. It made us reconsider disposable masks and the consequences of things like overconsumption and instant gratification.

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Finishing Up Our EACAP Project

  By Faith Readinger • April 25, 2020 , , ,

Hi everyone! Throughout this quarantine, my group, the EcoWarriors have been hard at work researching solid waste issues and littering. We completed our presentation and discussed some of the most important causes, problems, and solutions regarding littering. In our presentation, we also explained some of the legal consequences that can result if you are caught littering, as well as a recent new story about a study done on Pennsylvania roadways about the most common types of litter. If anyone is interested in looking at, or listening to our project, it is listed under the “EACAP Presentations” module on Canvas and named “Faith, Jacob, Matt.” Like many of the other teams, we are working to turn our research into essay format. We are looking forward to getting all of our research together and submitting our final EACAP component!! Stay safe everyone!

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Eco Warriors Updates & Trail Sign

  By Faith Readinger • February 21, 2020 , , ,

After meeting with our organization and completing our action plan, we began the first part of our service aspect this week. Jacob created our EACAP Poster which was requested by Mr. Folwell. He plans to post this sign along the section of the trail that we are cleaning up in March. This will help to notify people using the trail that Penn State students (specifically our Eco Warriors team) are taking care of that section. We also began to pick a few dates in March that we are available to clean up the trail. Once Mr. Folwell approves a date and a rain date, we can begin to plan for the action portion of our project. We are really looking forward to getting started!

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Summary Post of The Fly Team

  By npr5167 • December 10, 2019 , , ,

So, as we come down to the end of the semester, our team has learned a lot from our EACAP project as well as our research project.  For our research project, our team did deforestation since we felt that it would go really well/connect with our EACAP project, which was planting trees for the Citizens Climate.  For deforestation, our team found that deforestation has been a very big concern for the environment and has been in the news for a good amount of time, especially what has happened at the Amazon Rainforest.  The 2 biggest facts that our group found about deforestation was that forests cover a big part of our planet and those trees provide food, water, and air for everyone, including animals, where almost 80% of animals live in forests.  Another fact was that some 13.2 million people across the world have a job in the forest sector and another 41 million have a job that is related to the sector.  Seeing these 2 facts, it made us think that if these trees keep getting cut down for different uses to where they aren’t replanted, everyone, including animals, will be affected and have loss of habitats and many other things too.  So, our biggest thing that we got out of this that we would hope everyone does is that if you cut a tree down, plant another tree as well as go paperless to help preserve a tree from getting cut down.

For our EACAP project, our team worked with the Citizens Climate Lobby Reading Berks-Chapter to help plant trees for different homeowners in Reading.  We planted two different trees, one was the Amelanchier ‘Autumn Brilliance Serviceberry’ and the other one was the Cercis ‘Eastern Redbud’.  Going into it, we kind of had an idea of what it would be like and planting a tree did not seem too bad, but after we planted all the trees, we saw that there is a lot more to planting a tree than the simple steps of digging a hole and planting that tree.  Trees are very important, especially native trees, to the environment because they help with climate change, help with wildlife, etc. After the project was over, this was a great experience and it allowed us to really understand why planting trees are so important and why they shouldn’t be cut down.  Our thoughts on this whole project and what we gained from it are that this is a great experience for anyone that really loves the environment or anyone really that wants to get out and do something for it that really makes you contribute to helping the environment.  The environment has been a big concern in the news and doing something for it to help it is what everyone should be doing now and this project really shows that and contributes to doing that.  What our message would be to other individuals is to be active in helping out the environment because many animals depend on the environment and keeping it safe is what everyone should be doing.  Just by doing something little for the environment will make you a contributor to helping keep the environment safe so that is what our message would be.  Once again, this has been a great experience for us and hope that more people start doing more for the environment to keep it safe.

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Green Gang’s summary post

  By ezc5420 • December 3, 2019 , , , ,

The Green Gang worked with Glenside School and made “attendance stars” for the students. There were 70 stars in all and we basically had to hot glue them to sticks for the students to receive. We also had to make powerpoint slides for our professor. These slides will be displayed around school on tv screens and printed out as flyers. We each had to research the links provided by the professor and create slides based on the information we read. For our research portion of this project, we had marine debris. We broke up the research into parts and shared a google doc with each other to work on it. We found out so much about marine debris. The most interesting things from out research were that there is this huge garbage patch in the Great Pacific that could fit the state of Texas inside of it, twice. Also, we found out that it is actually very hard to clean up marine debris because it is not just the big pieces of trash we can see with our eyes, but mostly microplastics that are invisible to the naked eye. We even found a movie on Netflix about marine debris. Overall, we had a great time with this project and learned so much! We would recommend everyone watches the movie “A Plastic Ocean” on Netflix because it is so interesting. This project was a great thing for us to do and we hope everyone enjoys our presentation!

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Lanternflyer Fighters Service in Pictures

  By wxg5105 • November 30, 2019 , , ,

Our last team meeting for our lantern fly community service took place on Thursday October 31st. We noticed that the amount of lantern flies on the trees had significantly decreased from the amounts recorded in our first meeting. We spent our last meeting taking down the tape from the trees around campus and counting the remaining flies. During this we took a few pictures which we have posted a couple of here:

 

Couple of fun facts we discovered:

  • Females are larger than males and are identified by a red backside
  • The Lantern Fly eggs are laid in late fall and can survive severe winter weather
  • The Lantern Fly is native to Southeast Asia

Overall this project has been a unique and informative experience. We all learned a lot about Lantern Flies and how to control their population. Our collaborative effort as a team has been great this semester. We were very driven and focused with our project