WE ARE SCHOLARS
EcoRise Youth Innovations Awards Funding to SAS Bio Students In the spring, Upper School biology students audited seven sustainability facets at school: transportation, energy, public spaces, waste, food, air, and water. After data collection and analysis, they jumped into solutions design; all students submitted proposals to EcoRise Youth Innovations for grant funding, and six groups were awarded grants. In fact, Joey Hersh and Clifford Dunn’s video proposal was selected by EcoRise to serve as a ‘best practices’ example of a video proposal. The student projects that were not funded were revised and pitched to the St. Andrew’s Sustainability Council for funding. All projects were presented in the spring Biology Symposium, which was streamed live via the St. Andrew’s Facebook page. SAS
Liam Santa Cruz ’19
“The good thing about this project is that it has real-world implications, it’s a really interesting way to setup a course, and I think it works well for a lot of students.” —JOEY HERSH ’20
TOPIC: Energy PROPOSAL: Casting Away Vampire Energy
Initially, our interest in saving energy was piqued when we read about vampire energy. Vampire energy, or standby power, is the energy that is being used by appliances when they are off, but still plugged in. We proposed to invest in smart power strips...I’m excited to prove their impact in reducing the amount of energy we use at SAS. When it comes to finding solutions to today’s problems, I’ve realized that a good solution doesn’t have to be expensive or flashy; it can be something small that will make an impact on a local level. Everyone has to start somewhere. I believe the Biology students are learning just that through this grant process. Everyone’s final project was nothing like the original idea they had thought up. An idea, especially one having to do with making our campus more sustainable as a living, breathing entity, goes through a process which changes into a solution that can be realistically implemented.
6 • St. Andrew’s Episcopal School • www.sasaustin.org