Hometown: Pittsburg, PA
Major: Chemical Engineering
Favorite LC Event: Canoeing the Olentangy River with the COMPAS program faculty and City of Columbus sustainability leaders
My name is Ben Luce and I’m from Pittsburgh, PA. I am currently studying Chemical engineering with a focus on sustainable energy. My hometown, just north of Pittsburgh, is very small and coming to The Ohio State University was a big change in scenery. I had received advice from friends and family to join groups at OSU that share my interests and when I saw SUSTAINS as an option I was intrigued. The SUSTAINS Learning Community, to me, offered a small school environment in a large campus setting. It allowed me to make friends quickly and keep those friends throughout the entire year since we are all living in the same residence hall.
The “SUSTAINS experience” is a way to network with officials in sustainable fields, outreach to local businesses that focus on sustainable business models, and delve deep into some of the modern world’s issues. The leaders of the SUSTAINS Learning Community are wonderful. They are organized and well prepared and genuinely want to help you as you start off your years at OSU. As a member of SUSTAINS, I have been able to visit a biodigester, take a canoeing trip down the Olentangy river while discussing water pollution and sustainability, and do many other things that teach how to have a sustainable lifestyle. The main focus of SUSTAINS for me is to learn how to become sustainable in the future so that future generations can enjoy the same world I live in. It’s definitely about more than just reduce, reuse, and recycle.
SUSTAINS is comprised of people of all majors so an influx of ideas and thoughts are always present. It doesn’t matter what your major is as long as you are interested in discovering what being sustainable really means.
Overall, SUSTAINS has influenced my choice of career path and major with OSU. SUSTAINS has taught me what being sustainable is about and how we can educate others on how to keep our planet well. After all, without a planet, there is no us.