Hello from Northampton, where the campus is at its most beautiful, just in time for commencement and reunions. The end of a year is marked with celebration and with goodbyes. This year, we congratulate a great cohort of Smithies who have been involved with us in a variety of ways over the past several years on their graduation.To Eugenia Rogers, Molly Neu, Sasha Mead, Lucy Hartley, Mags McLaughlin, Ari Cross, Kiran Das-Goel, Sophia Holmes, Mehreen Mirza, Skyler Williams, Erica Li, Dimitra Prassa, and many more– congratulations on a job well done!
We are also celebrating Andrew Berke, who is returning to the faculty after a very productive and fun 3 years at CEEDS. Andrew has been a valued leader, working to promote the “EEDS” (environment, ecological design and sustainability) through research, scholarship, and teaching, with a clear expansion to include all four divisions across the College. Andrew has directed the environmental concentration to serve the interests and passion of students across the College, collaborated across campus constituents, and increased faculty and student scholarship at the intersection of the arts and the environment. During his time at CEEDS, seven faculty members and over 15 student researchers have been supported through the CEEDS faculty fellowship program. In addition, over 30 courses received support through the Curricular Enhancement Grant program. We are grateful for his commitment to CEEDS.
It is a remarkably challenging moment in history, but it is a time to redouble our dedication to promote education, research and community engagement to build a just and sustainable world. Read on for a showcase of inspirational stories about some of our recent work to promote conservation efforts, create accessible, engaging maps and videos, support faculty and student research, and engage the community to turn out the lights and tune into nature.
Beth Hooker
Senior Director, CEEDS and Sustainability
Designing the Future
Congratulations to CEEDS' Faculty Fellow, Alix Gerber, who was recently named the new Assistant Director of the Smith Design Thinking Initiative. Over the last year with the support of a CEEDS Faculty Fellowship, Alix and her student collaborators have led important community stakeholders in “creat[ing] an illustrated map of the Connecticut River Valley one hundred years after the fall of capitalism” as a community exercise in speculative design.
Smith's first geothermal district is now online, providing heating and cooling for the buildings north of Elm Street. The Quad district is due to go live late this summer, and work is underway on the more complicated Central Campus District. For an excellent overview of the project, with new updates, check out this video, produced by CEEDS interns, Hildana Shiferaw (‘25), Molly Neu (‘25) and Corinna Davis (‘23). Building on earlier work by Corinna and featuring student drone cinematography, this video showcases how the community is interacting with the geothermal project, from art to engineering to landscape restoration.
Eight students coordinated Smith's annual move-out collection, bringing textiles, dorm accoutrements, mini-fridges, craft supplies and more from donation stations in residential houses to the SmithCycle headquarters. After a summer of strategic sorting and planning by CEEDS interns Eugenia Rogers, Lexi Marshall and Katelyn Pham, the reusable materials will be available to incoming students in late August. Thank you Eugenia, Katelyn, Ixchel, Nadira, Hadiya, Leigh, Maggie and JD for making the move-out magic happen!
Becca Malloy, Assistant Director of Sustainability, highlighted this important work as part of a collaborative presentation on Building a Circular Economy at the Northeast Campus Sustainability Consortium's (NECSC) annual conference, with colleagues from Amherst, UMass Amherst and Harvard University.
Smith’s EcoReps hosted their 4th annual LightsOut! event on the Quad this year, with Professor of Astronomy James Lowenthal and student experts on hand to educate the community about the effects of light pollution and how dark skies boost community health. It was a wonderful event where the community came together to reflect on how light shapes our environment, our well-being, and our experience of the night sky.
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