Marine Debris Education

For my community based learning and research I spent my time with the Campus Sustainability Educators. My experience went well and I was able to learn a lot on my own time. The program we followed took several weeks and was split into different sections by tasks. The first few weeks we worked on finding a topic of interest and then expanded upon the topic by finding a few pages of research to widen our knowledge on an issue. Examples of topics could come from a series of sustainability issues such as waste, transportation, water, energy, or even social issues such as food. For my topic I stayed focused on waste and pollution specifically in the ocean.  The weeks after that were spent creating ways to educate our campus on the issue. I made infographics to post throughout campus in places where students like to spend time such as the library, the food centers, and most areas near vending machines.

I enjoyed doing the work because I was able to choose the topic and it was actually a topic of interest. If there was a second chance for me to go back and do things differently, there isn’t much I would have changed except for how I managed my time by being more proactive. I got to learn a lot about a topic that most people won’t think of as an issue but contribute to it daily. Did you know the average U.S. citizen throws away 185 lbs. of plastic each year? Findings like this are important for us to identify real issues to be able to solve systemic problems. It was an interesting topic and I still believe we all need to familiarize more often with the issues of sustainability we create.