The past two years in ENR Scholars have been years full of changes and new experiences for me. My favorite experience in ENR overall was meeting the Animal Ambassadors from the Columbus Zoo! I thought it was extremely interesting learning how they pair cheetah cubs with Labrador retrievers to help them acclimate and to combat their natural shyness. ENR scholars gave me a better view of many of the issues our parks, our climate, and the world faces as a result of human involvement. I also gained a better knowledge of the areas surrounding Columbus as well as a lot of the infrastructure that OSU is involved in.
My Spring 17 project was a continuation of my Fall 16 project- planning Spring Into Service. This project helped me learn organization and leadership skills, as well as directly connecting me to a lot of environmental themed agencies in the area. Spring Into Service was an overwhelming success- we had close to 200 volunteers come out in 30 degree weather to help us kick off Earth Month on April 1st! We wanted to focus this event on reaffirming our commitment to keeping our Earth beautiful! This was the first year we did this event, and we were very excited that it went so well! We had a surprising amount of interest from agencies as far out as almost an hour to send volunteers- so there is absolutely room to expand and improve in the years to come! Pay It Forward is hoping to make this a tradition, much like MLK day of Service and Community Commitment- so look for it next year!
My advice for incoming ENR Scholars would be to find your niche within ENR. For me, I wasn’t as engaged with some aspects, but I found that connecting my volunteering to my scholars theme was where I really shined. I was not the typical ENR student, and knew nothing about sustainability coming in- so if thats you don’t be discouraged! Try some new things, but if you find you don’t like them, look for other avenues to connect what you are interested in with ENR.