Archive: Around Town

New Roots Charter School students will share their “green” urban planning and sustainability science projects with Dr. David Orr Friday May 7.  Orr is an environmental scientist whose seminal thinking about education laid the intellectual groundwork for the development of the school.

An internationally recognized founder of the sustainability education movement, Dr. Orr is a renowned sustainability expert and the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College.

Orr is currently leading a $300 million multi-tiered effort to bring about a downtown green arts district, the first in the nation to create an energy self-sufficient, carbon neutral downtown area while also bringing about economic renewal and much-needed job creation in the town of Oberlin.  In addition to the arts district, the Oberlin Project seeks to establish a 20,000 acre “greenbelt” focused on agriculture, forestry, biofuels, and carbon sequestration, as well as a transition for Lorain County to a carbon neutral energy system.  He will be making a presentation about this project at the Tompkins County Public Library on the evening of Thursday, May 7.

Orr will give New Roots tenth grade students feedback on their urban planning expedition projects, and talk with ninth graders about sustainability-oriented projects that illustrate systems thinking and the application of natural law.  He will be at the school from 10 a.m. to noon.

After a morning at New Roots, Orr will be the guest of honor at a luncheon hosted by the Cayuga Medical Center.  New Roots board chair Dr. Jason Hamilton and Principal Tina Nilsen-Hodges are among 35 local community leaders invited to this event to hear Orr share lessons learned thus far in implementing a community-wide downtown environmental design project, and facilitate a discussion about how we might leverage our collective energies to undertake a similar effort in our community.

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