Sustainability Experts Inform Collegiate 4th Grade Capstone Students

Collegiate School 4th Graders this morning continued working on their yearlong, grade-level Capstone experience, Envision Collegiate, which focuses on sustainability and the driving question, How might we improve the sustainability of Collegiate's campus by 2028?
Envision Collegiate immerses the entire 4th Grade student body in the inner workings of Collegiate’s campus, so that students can use design thinking methods and work collaboratively to identify opportunities for growth and change. (The 2028 in the theme represents the year the 4th Graders will graduate.) 
 
Each 4th Grader is specializing in a department on campus (buildings, grounds, food services, athletics, transportation, traffic), and is learning about the concept of sustainability through the lens of the United Nation's Sustainability Goals

At the morning’s inaugural Sustainability Summit, the students heard from local experts in each of the department areas who are pursuing their own passions related to the many areas of sustainability.  

Upper School science teacher Sandra Marr began the summit asking students, What is sustainability? and engaging them in an exercise using pieces of paper to demonstrate the concepts of use and renew. 

Students were then invited to attend one session related to their assigned department and then two sessions of their choice, featuring the following guest speakers: 

Andrew Grigsby of the Richmond Region Energy Alliance (buildings)
Bobby Prout of Clearwater Ventures (grounds)
Dominic Barrett of Shalom Farms (food services)
Carrie Rose Pace of GRTC (traffic/transportation)
Katie and Danny MacNelly ‘92 of ArchitectureFirm (buildings)
Mark Chambers and Brock Shiflett of Collegiate Athletics (athletics)

Jessica Catoggio, 4th Grade teacher and the grade-level Capstone coordinator, said that while students are becoming authorities on their own campus, hearing from local off-campus experts on sustainability helps broaden the knowledge and perspective that students acquire through the Capstone program. 

“The hope is that the knowledge students gained today will turn to inspiration as they continue to pursue their environmental interests via Envision Collegiate,” she said. 

Students will keep working on ideas and innovations that might help Collegiate in the School’s efforts to be more sustainable. They will present their projects in the spring.
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