Field Work in Sustainability
Don Seville ’92 uses systems thinking to improve farming and food.
Read StoryA Letter from the Interim President
Sustainability and how we manage and adapt to climate change and its excesses—extensive droughts, catastrophic floods, raging wildfires, unclean drinking water, failing energy infrastructures, and rising sea levels—are almost certainly the biggest issues that we face today. Sustainability is inextricably meshed with every aspect of our being—from where we can live, to what can be grown for food, and to whether the air is safe to breathe.
How we sustain a vibrant and healthy society is an essential question and a complex set of problems. In true WPI form, our community is all in on the search for local and global solutions.
Unimpressed with my early career success, my mother asked, ‘But what are you doing to help people?’ Turns out that’s a defining question here at WPI, as well.
As doers who dare to dream big and who cast a wide net for partners and possibilities, members of the WPI community understand that the best ideas come from people working together. Or, in the case of Don Seville ’92, working and living together. Director of the Sustainable Food Lab in a co-housing community in Vermont, Seville credits his WPI project experiences with impressing upon him the need to ground problem-solving in the context of people. The person and professional he would become was borne of a question from his mentor: “How do you want to live?” (Read more about Don’s journey.)
I understand, having been similarly challenged to evaluate where my life was headed. Unimpressed with my early career success, my mother asked, “But what are you doing to help people?” Turns out that’s a defining question here at WPI, as well. Through research, projects, and education, we’re answering it by exploring opportunities to positively impact our climate, our food, our water, our energy, and how we can adapt to—and continue to thrive in—this challenging world of ours.
This focus on sustainability is rooted both in a desire to do the right thing and in recognizing that putting our knowledge into action, we create value and add to our distinctiveness. Across the pages of this magazine, and realized beyond them, are inspirational stories of solving problems and creating opportunities that matter to people—from a student project on renewable energy in the Rockies to technology that’s providing more dignified sanitation in Ethiopia; from the potential of self-healing concrete to the promise of creating an even more efficient energy source for the growing electric car industry; from a new master’s degree in climate change adaptation to specialized career fairs focused on environmental engineering, law, and entrepreneurship.
While the talent and passion inside WPI are extraordinary, we need to be intentional in welcoming others into our work. I invite you to ask what this might mean for you. Your time, talent, or treasure could be just the tipping point a WPI research initiative or project needs to change the world. I look forward to hearing from you. Drop me a line at president@wpi.edu.
Cheers,
Wole
