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Previous Award and Scholarship Winners
The purpose of the Scholarship is to recognize and encourage students who have a particular interest in waste reduction and recycling. The Scholarship is presented each year by the Missouri Waste Control Coalition
Peter Raven Environmental
Leadership Award Winners
The purpose of the Award is to
recognize outstanding leadership on environmental concerns
within the university community by an undergraduate student
or a recognized MU student organization; to encourage
greater awareness of environmental sensitivity on campus; to
acknowledge the creative ways in which student leaders have
enhanced MU environmental concerns and practices; and to
recognize and highlight constructive examples of
environmental leadership for others to follow.
2009 Raven Environmental Leadership Award - Patrick Margherio
The 2009 recipient of the Peter Raven Environmental Leadership Award is the President of Sustain Mizzou. During his term MU made significant advances in Sustainability. Patrick worked with the Missouri Student Association to pass a $1 per student per semester sustainability fee that will support a staff of graduate and undergraduate students whose job it will be to carry out sustainability education projects aimed at students. Due in part to Patrick's careful advance planning of the proposal and his tireless efforts to promote it, the fee passed with 80% student support. His second major project (with Ben Datema) was submitting a proposal to the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) to include MU as one of only 12 schools that would recieve a campus-wide sustainability assessment from the prestigious environmental organization. While on campus the RMI team noted that Sustain Mizzou was one of the most sophisticated and diplomatic student organizations they had seen in their study of campus sustainability efforts. Patrick's third major contribution to sustainability reached beyond MU when a Sustain Mizzou commitee (chaired by T. J. Graven) took on the challenge of organizing the 1st Annual Show Me Sustainability Conference which brought over 30 students from nine different Missouri colleges and universities to share their experiences with sustainability at their home schools. Planning for the 2nd Annual Conference has already begun with the formation of the Missouri Student Environmental Coalition.
2008 Raven Environmental Leadership Award - Melissa Cheatwood
The 2008 recipient of the Peter Raven Environmental Leadership Award is a senior in the Environmental Science Program at the University of Missouri and serves as President of the MU Environmental Science Club and of the Tigers for Tigers student club. An example of her organizational efforts was the adoption and cleanup of Flat Branch Creek by the MU Environmental Science Club. For this ongoing activity by the club, she interacted with local and state officials and involved middle school students from the Smithton Middle School Green Team. The middle schoolers and MU students worked together to clean up the stream. She also arranged for MU Environmental Science Club members to be involved in the Wilderness First Responders course and obtained student government funds to cover the costs of the participants for the course. Working with Tigers for Tigers, she helped with outreach and education about the plight of Bengal tigers to MU students and also to local schools. She has also helped coordinate fundraisers for Tigers for Tigers with student organizations on campus. Academically, her principal interest is in water quality and she worked for several years with Dr. Jack Jones in his water quality research program, while maintaining a high grade point average in the Environmental Science Program.
2007 Raven
Environmental Leadership Award Winners
Ben Datema
The MU Environmental Affairs
Committee began publishing an annual Environmental Impacts
report three years ago as part of its charge to make
recommendations to the Provost about campus environmental
sustainability. In 2006, Ben took on the responsibility of
writing the report with the committee co-chair, Peter
Ashbrook, the head of Environmental Health and Safety.
Ben organized a group of students
to interview various campus facilities departments and
gather and update information on their operations. He
compiled and edited the written reports for publication this
past summer (they are available at
http://committees.missouri.edu/document. php?docid=69).
Because of his commitment and responsibility, he has in
effect become a third co-chair of the Environmental Affairs
Committee, representing student interests in what was
primarily a faculty and staff committee.
This year, Ben, along with other
sustain mizzou students, began working with the Missouri
Student's Association on the issue of sustainability. This
past month the MSA Senate passed a resolution calling on the
campus to develop a sustainability plan. If you have any
history with MU, you can see this as a watershed moment in
student awareness of and involvement in environmental
issues.
Lauren Ryan
Beginning last September, Lauren
started meeting with a local collaborative of utilities, a
senior organization (AARP) and our local community action
affiliate (CMCA). By the middle of November she had
marshaled together, with the help of the members of the
collaborative, enough materials to create 100 weatherization
kits, and a list of nearly 40 volunteer students from the
Four Winds Learning Community to install them.
For two Saturdays in October her
team of students walked several neighborhoods of the First
and Third Ward talking to residents and distributing flyers
for an upcoming energy fair. A few weeks later at the
energy fair, she and her volunteers signed up residents for
installation assistance. Over the course of three weekends
she and her student teams visited a total of 45 homes and
installed water heater blankets, window caulking, door
insulation stripping, outlet insulation covers, and other
materials. I was touched by how much time she spent
visiting with the residents first, to establish a human
connection and a conversational rapport, rather than get
right to work. Lauren personally met with additional
community members at the Family Resources Center on Wilkes
to distribute the remaining kits and to talk about energy
efficiency with them.
2006 Raven
Environmental Leadership Award Winner - Adam
Saunders
The University of Missouri has its
own environmental heroes, recognized each year with the
Raven Award. This year's winner is Adam Saunders, an
undergraduate in forestry and statistics whose long term
goal is to create forests along big river floodplains that
serve the needs of nature as well as of people. He just
finished his term as president of Sustain Mizzou - a year
that saw the organization double the amount of funds raised
in its local food for local people campaign, increase its
standing in the nationwide Recyclemania competition - going
from near last to mid-pack, receive recognition as a 501c3
organization from the IRS, and win the Department of Student
Life's Most Outstanding Large Student Organization Award .
However his most notable accomplishment was organizing
student volunteers -pretty much at the last minute - to
collect and recycle containers from all of MU's home
football games. Over 6 Saturdays in fall, dozens of MU
students put in hundreds of hours with the MU Solid Waste
coordinator and city staff to recycle 12 tons of cans and
bottles, diving into trash cans to recover half emptied
containers and scrounging flattened empties from around
tailgate parties. Adam Saunders called for volunteers,
organized work schedules, sent reminders, trained volunteers
and developed leadership potential in every student who was
involved.
2005 Raven
Environmental Leadership Award Winner - Sustain
Mizzou
Over the past two years Sustain
Mizzou has gathered over 2,300 signatures supporting hiring
a solid waste/recycling coordinator (the position was filled
in December 2004), sponsored a letter writing "Burn Rubber"
campaign to encourage the legislature to reinstate a waste
tire fee to fund tire clean up and recycling efforts,
collected used batteries and printer cartridges on a weekly
basis, started a quarterly magazine - FootPrint - to provide
information on living sustainably to MU students, raised
over $2000 in a "Local Food for Local People" campaign,
produced and sold notebooks from sheets of paper used on
only one side, and has worked with the Campus Recycling
Committee and the Environmental Affairs Committee on
RecycleMania.
2004 Raven
Environmental Leadership Award Winner - Jared
Cole
Jared has also played a key role in
shaping the mission and direction of the Student Sierra
Club. Building on projects and programs instituted over the
last few years, he has shifted the focus to more local
issues, especially recycling, while helping to support other
student's efforts. These include lobbying the state
legislature on environmental bills coming up this session,
planning field trips to local parks and wild areas, assuming
responsibility for the group's adopted clean up spot, and
continuing the battery and printer cartridge collection
program set up last year.
This past fall he organized a
petition drive that gathered over 2,300 signatured (10% of
the student body) asking the University to hire a recycling
coordinator to increase recyling efforts on campus. In this
project he worked closely with campus staff and faculty on
the effort so that the delivery of the petitions coincided
with the submission of a solid waste study showing the
financial feasiblity of the position and a one time grant
providing start up funds. He has demonstrated an unusual
ability to coordinate a major project and a willingness to
do whatever it takes to get the project done.
2003 Raven Environmental
Leadership Award Winner - Mizzou Tigers for Tigers Student
Group
This is the first year a student
group has won the Raven Award. The mission of the group is
to assist Mizzou Tigers for Tigers in raising public
awareness about the status of wild tigers, educating others
about tiger conservation and issues surrounding wild tigers,
and assisting with raising funds for wild tiger conservation
efforts. The officers are: President Nicki Carter,VP Sarah
LaFrenz, Secretary Jennifer Wolf, Treasurer Courtney Kerns
and Communications Coordinator David Range. The faculty
advisor is Matthew Gompper and the program coordinator is
Fran Pope.
Over the past two years the group
has given presentations to student and alumni groups and
staffed educational booths at the St. Louis Science Center
Mizzou Magic Day. They have sold raffle tickets and t-shirts
at different events including MU games and the Downtown
Twilight Festival to raise funds for the Save the Tiger Fund
(with the Smithsonian). They have contributed substantially
to the $8,000 raised by Tigers for Tigers that will go
directly to wild tiger conservation efforts in Asia. Their
most recent effort is developing a fourth grade curriculum
on wild tigers, and effort organized by Meredith
Rogers.
2002 Raven Environmental
Leadership Award Winner - Shelley Pasternak
This year's winner is Shelley
Pasternak, a student in the School of Natural Resources.
Shelley has put together teams of students to help with last
fall's first annual Missouri River Clean-Up, has
incorporated recycling into the SNR food booth at MU games
and into their annual I70 clean-up, organized the annual
field day which gives students an opportunity for a hands-on
experience in natural resource fields, and has organized a
job fair for natural resource and other students.
2001 Raven Environmental
Leadership Award Winner - Jamie Lee Salvo
Jamie Salvo has been the assistant
editor of the MU Environmental Network News for the last two
years, collecting information on the activities of local
groups, preparing the regular features ( bio-regional quiz
and job of the month), formatting the newsletter, and
putting it on line every month. She also organized
environmental displays in Ellis Library during April for the
last two years. She has served on the steering committee for
the Missouri Environmental Education Association's annual
conference, where she coordinated the involvement of college
students. As a member of the MU Wildlife Society she
developed a Mammal Education Outreach Program. Last but not
least, Jamie is working with the Student Sierra Club and the
Missouri Students' Association to hold the first annual Drop
and Run at MU.
2000 Raven Environmental
Leadership Award Winners - Jordan Pusateri & Shannon
Staloch
Jordan Pusateri is a major in
Fisheries and Wildlife who has been active in a variety of
projects on the MU campus since her freshman year. She has
helped coordinate the annual Prairie Forks Field Day event,
bringing together faculty, graduate student and
undergraduate student participants in a day-long
introduction to the research projects undertaken by Natural
Resources faculty and students at the Prairie Forks
facility. when the Natural Resources faculty and staff moved
into their new building, Jordan contacted Civic Recycling
and the faculty to ensure that recycling would be an
integral part of the new building's management. She
volunteers at the Missouri Rescue Center, where ill and
disabled wildlife are rescued and rehabilitated for return
to the wild, and she serves as a campus spokesperson for
this organization, recruiting volunteers and publicizing its
activities. Most recently, she has become the leader of the
Tigers for Tigers "Tiger Team", a group of student
ambassadors that helps educate the public about endangered
species issues. Her high level of commitment and activity,
together with her knowledge of critical wildlife issues
means she will be sorely missed by the School of Natural
Resources and the Tigers for Tigers program when she
graduates.
Shannon Staloch's focus over the
past year and a half has been the development of a food
waste collection system for a private business. The "Main
Squeeze" restaurant collects their food waste in 55 gallon
barrels in their back alley, where Civic Recycling collects
them once a week. When the waste is placed in the barrel, it
is inoculated with a microbial agent to speed up the rate of
decomposition and to reduce odor. Currently Shannon is
working on developing a network of local farmers willing to
use the food waste, once it has been composted, as an
organic fertilizer for their food crops. Shannon had to
coordinate the involvement of a number of different parties,
the restaurant, health inspectors, Civic Recycling, compost
experts, experts in EM Bokashi, the microbial agent, and a
number of other participants. If this project succeeds, it
will provide a model for handling of food waste by
restaurants of almost any size. This could lead to a
considerable reduction in the amount of solid waste going to
the landfill and the reuse of a valuable resource (food
waste).
1999 Raven Environmental
Leadership Award Winner - Megan Kean
Megan Kean is the coordinator for
Campus Peaceworks and in that capacity, has spearheaded the
MU campus "No Sweat" campaign. This is part of a national
campaign to encourage universities not to license signature
sportswear to companies that use sweat shop labor. While
this may not seem to be directly related to environmental
issues, the use of children in this kind of labor means they
don't go to school. For girls in particular, this lack of
access to education may leave them poorly prepared for any
occupation but parenthood, so indirectly sweatshops may
contribute to population growth. Megan was also instrumental
in surveying students about their knowledge of and attitudes
towards recycling. This information has been important in
identifying where the Campus Recycling committee should
direct its efforts to increase campus recycling.
1998 Raven Environmental
Leadership Award Winner - Aaron Johnson
MU Junior Aaron Johnson had
maintained a recycling program in his high school, and when
he got to MU, he initiated recycling on his floor - making
sure that the recyclables collected by students on the floor
actually got recycled. Over that first year he worked
tirelessly to increase student participation in recycling
and improve the efficiency of the operation. Since he was
doing this on his own without any compensation, he was the
obvious candidate for a new Recycling Coordinator position
in Residential Life. He worked as the first director of the
residence hall recycling program for over a year, recruiting
, training ,and supervising other students, working with
campus facilities to improve the operation, and trying new
ways to increase student participation. At the same time, he
has managed the course load for a double major in Civil
Engineering and Geology. He recently retired from directing
the recycling program, and is getting involved in other
environmental activities so that he can learn about other
kinds of environmental problems.
1997 Raven Environmental
Leadership Award Winner - Bryce Oates
The 1997 recipient of the Peter H.
Raven MU Environmental Leadership Award was selected for his
wide ranging approach to addressing environmental concerns
and for his role in strengthening the Student Sierra Club on
the MU Campus. In addition to expanding the club's
membership to 20 active participants, Bryce involved the
club in a number of environmental service activities. These
included: assisting an Oakland Middle School teacher with an
organic gardening project for middle school students, a
stream clean up and prairie restoration projects at Rock
Bridge Memorial State Park, assisting the MU Energy
Management Program with its annual "Energy Extravaganza",
and creating displays for an Ellis Library case for Earth
Day. In addition to these activities, Bryce serves on the
executive committee of the Osage Group Sierra Club, has
organized a glade restoration project at Ha Ha Tonka State
Park, created a web page on sustainable agriculture for one
of his classes, and is working with MU faculty members on 1)
developing a Kansas City Food Circle that reaches into rural
areas, and 2) writing a chapter on environmental changes in
rural communities 50-100 miles from urban areas. His future
plans include a Campus Ecology Conference at MU in
September, and developing a letter writing campaign for
state and national environmental legislation.
Missouri Waste Control Coalition Scholarship Recipients
2009 Missouri Waste Control Coalition Scholarship Recipient - William C. (Billy) Froeschner
Billy is a non-traditional student, both an Iraq War veteran and a first generation college student. He is also passionate about waste reduction and recycling. In his application, he said his quest would be over when landfills and incinerators cease to exist. He hopes to build a system that breaks worn out things into their component parts so they can be recycled again. In the short term, he wants to become Columbia's pre-eminent junk mover, an experience which he expects will force him to interact with all aspects of the recycle - reuse industry. His letter of support from Gary Ryan of Ryan Enterprise noted that "he is, without question, the most hands on, 'get in there and get dirty' recycling student on the MU campus" and that you couldn't pay someone to do what Billy does, "with him, it comes natural".
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