#SenecaProud

Pat Perdue  00:00

Hi, I'm Pat Perdue, and I'd like to welcome you to Season Three of the Seneca Proud podcast. This is a co-production between my company Ycastr and Seneca College in Toronto. These days because of the global pandemic, yep, that's still a thing. So much of Seneca is remote; from working to teaching to studying. But hey, Seneca College has always been more than a place or a bunch of buildings. Seneca College is an idea. It's a vision for a better future. And it's a challenge to do what it takes to transform that vision into reality. And that is exactly what Season Three is all about. Seneca College is transforming, there are really exciting changes in the works. And this season, we get to take a close look at some of those changes, as well as the people who are helping make those changes happen.  

So, if you haven't already, subscribe, and download and join me as we discover the changes and meet the people who are transforming vision into reality because the next episode of Seneca Proud starts now.

Thank you for joining us today. I'm Pat Perdue. And this is a great day because we get to spend about 30 or 40 minutes hanging out, which for me is pretty good. I'm really glad you decided to join me. And I'm especially glad you're here because our topic today is the environment and sustainability. Do you ever wonder about your own sustainable habits? You know what I mean? Like, you know, how much do you throw out versus how much do you reuse and recycle? And what about the stuff we buy? Like clothes, for example? Do we think about how soon the clothes that we buy might wear out and have to be replaced. I know this is something I'm aware of. And I also know that I could probably do better. Like, I know that I'm using a lot more plastic bottles and paper towels than I probably did a year ago, which I'd like to change. I also know that because I'm not going to coffee shops like I used to, I'm not generating all that waste from single use coffee cups and packaging from food I ended up buying and that's what today's show is about. Specifically, it's about Seneca’s approach to environmental sustainability. This is a big deal at Seneca, especially with the large project we talked about, which factors sustainability into every aspect of the vision for Seneca’s future. 

Which brings us to our guest today, Professor Andrew Wickham is the Green Citizen project manager in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering Technology (FASET), where he develops and grows the Green Citizen program. The Green Citizen program is tasked with embedding the environmental imperative into every program at Seneca College. In addition to his duties with the Green Citizen project, Andrew is professor in the Project Management environmental program. And he actually graduated from that program here at Seneca in 2013. And he is also a member of Seneca College's Sustainability Committee as part of the Au Large project. Our conversation today ranges from what sustainability actually means to the importance of sustainability as Seneca College develops the Au Large project and finally, to what we as individuals can do to live more sustainable lives. 

We begin our conversation with Andrew giving an overview of the Green Citizen project. And it's important role within Seneca College overall. And now, here's my conversation with Professor Andrew Wickham.

 

Andrew Wickham  03:44

Green Citizen is a program that was designed originally back in 2009, I believe, by Bill Humber. And the whole premise behind it was to introduce what we call the environmental imperative into each program at Seneca. So every student that would come into Seneca would have an understanding of what it means to be a part of their environment, how that affects their personal life, how it affects their academic, and then therefore their professional career going forward, and relating back to them. That was the intent and still fully the intent of the actual program here at Seneca.

 

Pat Perdue  04:35

Cool, cool. What does that mean in terms of communicating with faculty and communicating with students in order to achieve that goal?

 

Andrew Wickham  04:43

It means a lot in terms of, you know, from different things from different sides, obviously. We were born out of FASET and, we work really closely with a lot of the professors and our dean and get a lot of support from the area. And we were housed there initially. And I've worked with all the programs there. And we've had to work a lot with faculty with the programs that we want to be working with, looking intently at the outcomes of the program, and also to make sure that when we talk to the students, that it's lining up with things that they have already heard or mentioned. Again, their place within the context of what the environmental imperative for the Green Citizen is trying to get across, so that it hits home in more ways than one, and that we're doing our job. Then also that our faculty are happy with the projects that we put out.

 

Pat Perdue  05:50

And is the message or the content of what you're talking about, does it come as a surprise to students? How environmentally aware do you find the students are and how receptive are they to your message? 

 

Andrew Wickham  06:05

Yeah, it's very interesting. Depending on the course, because we have some courses that are extremely environmentally based, they come in already with a decent understanding of what that means. And for those students, we just want to give an interesting outside perspective, like, you know, someone working in the field and what that can mean for them. But then for other non as direct programs or courses, for instance, fire protection, right away, you might not think, oh, environmentalism fire, like I'm trying to figure that out. And then when you contextualize it within climate change the world getting warmer, catastrophic events, and first responders and how that will actually affect their life and career moving forward. And they always going to go, “Oh, I am a part of this”. And you can see that change in their understanding right away. I find the students are, very receptive. Our biggest thing is our Green Citizens that we have each year, which includes guest speakers and workshop leaders. And every year, we get such great feedback, based upon what students have actually heard what they've learned. Again, hearing, hopefully, impactful speakers and contextualize it in a way that they've maybe never heard before, to get them excited. Sometimes it's just a wakeup call. It can be anything to different people, but I've heard people going, you know, I'm a vegetarian now, or I want to be involved in, the program or other programs. And you know, it's not necessarily one goal or the other, but to see that there are outcomes like that, it's very encouraging for me to keep on going and expanding the project as well.

 

Pat Perdue  07:54

That's super exciting. Can you tell us a little bit about the Green Citizens symposium? It sounds really, really fascinating.

 

Andrew Wickham  08:01

Yeah, so that's our major project every year. And it usually takes place during Reading Week, because it's the only time that we can get out of the way of all the professors. Unfortunately, we drag the students in for one session, but we hope it's a fun session to be a part of. And sometimes it takes convincing with, at least in the past, with food for the students in the morning and afternoon session. I guess going back a little bit, there used to be just one session, one speaker, one day. I was a student in 2012. And I was a student at the Green Citizen. And hearing a speaker, it was fantastic. I loved it. That has now since expanded to three days, morning and afternoon, and six sessions in total. And each session has a keynote speaker, someone we hope that we find inspiring someone. We hope, again, it's targeted towards a specific class or program to try and get them thinking about, again, these huge topics that are out there, and drilling down into how that actually impacts them, specifically, and how they fit in there. Then we break them out into workshops. We usually have a workshop leader internally from HELIX at Seneca College, and many partners that we've worked with, but it's all been really wonderful. And again, now we've heard all these ideas, we've heard all these issues and problems, but how can they be a part of solving that problem? It's key to for me to figure out also what opportunities lie within this problem, right? A lot of times you see these problems and they're so daunting. And what can we do? What are the struggles we have to get over? And I'm like, well, yeah, there are struggles, but at the same time, we want to make sure the students see the opportunity for themselves. To find a career by making people's and the planet's life better and situate like that. So that's the ultimate goal of the conference for each individual student. So that's my favorite thing to do every year, you know, we're involved in a lot of different aspects of the college as well. But that's our main presentation at each October.

 

Pat Perdue  10:23

Is it open to all students? Or can anybody go? Or do students who want to get involved have to be part of a particular program? How can we all get involved?

 

Andrew Wickham  10:32

Yeah, exactly. We work with faculty to try to include this in part of the curriculum and embed it. That way, we get a lot of general participation, because it is allotted for marks. But that being said, it is open for all Seneca students. In fact, it's open for technically anyone. We do promote it on Twitter each year, and we hope that eventually people just know, that every year there is the Green Citizen. And we hope people who are curious will come on board, check out our speakers, check out what workshops we're doing, and maybe be involved in one of them and register. It's all free. It's all open source, we stream it all, everything is recorded on our YouTube channel for people that you can go back and look at our history. We've only been doing that for three years now. But we still have quite a catalogue that we're developing, but it is open for everybody. And we want to encourage that. And whether that be from Seneca, other schools or if you're just interested in popping by and listening to one of these people, I think it's great. The workshops themselves, we try to focus in on specific Seneca students for their classroom, because we mark them, we grade them as they're handled as outcomes. But for the speaker keynote, it's for sure open for absolutely everybody.

 

Pat Perdue  11:51

It sounds really neat. And it sounds like it helps attendees with the question, how can I take the career that I'm interested in, or the profession that I'm headed into and add a green sustainable element to it? As opposed to oftentimes industry can be diametrically opposed to environmental sustainability, right? Because obviously, it doesn't have a zero-carbon footprint and stuff like that. Is that an appropriate definition of what I might get out of attending the symposium? 

 

Andrew Wickham  12:24

Yeah, that's the hope. That's, the goal. Situate it so that people come out of there understanding what it means for your career going forward. And that's why we first and foremost, want to target our student body, making sure that they're part of that, making sure that they get a good experience. And, if anyone else is interested, they can come on board too.

 

Pat Perdue  12:42

I'll be sure to leave some links in the show notes so anybody listening who wants to get more involved can hit up the appropriate links, or maybe reach out to you directly? Andrew, is that something that you'd be welcome to?

 

Andrew Wickham  12:53

Yeah, of course, they can send me an email and, and then for those interested in general, I think our YouTube channel is probably our best place. Right now, we're kind of in the middle of redeveloping unit structure on the Green Citizen website itself. So that is in progress, but in terms of what we have and the breadth of topics our YouTube channel, has some fantastic speakers and topics. There's more than enough to keep you focused in on any subject that you might find interesting.

 

Pat Perdue  13:22

That is super cool. Well, thank you for that. And I'd also like to talk a little bit about the Au Large project at Seneca. It is a project involving massive change in so many areas. And one of those areas has been environmental sustainability. And I'm wondering if you could share with us your role in participating with Seneca’s sustainability initiatives? How has that impacted you?

 

Andrew Wickham  13:48

Au Large, is s coming in at a critical time here. Climate action is more relevant than ever, everybody kind of sees that. But beyond just environmental sustainability, we're just looking at sustainability as a large concept. And we're looking at movements, like Black Lives Matter and social equity, and Indigenous people and we're trying to get as many voices heard as possible, because it's been going on forever, but we're starting to really adequately see the holes in our systems. And Seneca is now making a stand and saying, we’ve always been doing this but now let's put a bigger lens on that. Let's focus in, target in and build up capacity, build up support and ultimately embed these larger topics into our culture. So that when people think of Seneca, they think of being equitable and inclusionary, you know, sustainable on all fronts. So, my role may be more focused currently on environmental sustainability, but the focus is of the largest notion of sustainability. It is so complex and so, so huge, and we try to tackle all facets of it as best we can, and again, getting as many voices in there as possible.

 

Pat Perdue  15:19

And we hear the word sustainability all the time, right, especially recently, share with us what sustainability really means, from your perspective.

 

Andrew Wickham  15:30

It's a brutal question. I mean, I teach courses dedicated to this, and maybe I don't even know the answer. Every year it changes, ultimately, because again, it goes so much farther beyond just one facet of it. You know, environmental is one aspect, and maybe that's what people first maybe think of. But I think it really comes down to just caring about our people, and caring about the planet. Ultimately, that's where it comes down, caring about that, and caring about the longevity, and the health of all that encompasses that within and that's almost everything, that's a huge umbrella. And one way at least I like to focus in with people is looking at the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. There are 17 of them, and all 17 of them are linked together in 1,000 different ways as well. But it starts to cue people in a little bit more, you know, on education and equity and climate change and partnerships and how business has come into play with poverty and hunger. You know, all these things are huge topics on their own, but how they all intermingle in this, and this umbrella term we call sustainability, which is why it's so challenging. You know, if we want to tackle sustainability at Seneca, you're literally trying to tackle everything.

 

Pat Perdue  16:54

And it sounds like a large project, the tackling of everything. It feels like that's not an inappropriate way to describe it. And the whole sustainability aspect of it, has COVID, or the pandemic impacted our pace toward sustainability or our level of urgency around addressing sustainability concerns?

 

Andrew Wickham  17:20

It's an interesting question. And looking at the data, it can be all over the place which is always a dangerous thing to make a blanket statement on anything. And you may, for instance, look at something like what we're doing right now we're teleconferencing on Zoom, instead of being in person where we drove our cars in, you know, today, Seneca is a very much a commuter school, where a lot of people come in, and are not situated right beside a subway. So again, we work with all these transportation networks that causes emission. So, in that sense, maybe we're doing better on sustainability. People are more than ever concerned with cleanliness. And, the rise in things like single use plastics is probably way up, with masks and touching things and making sure we use gloves once and throw them away. You know, there's this kind of up and down nature of it. 

But what I do think COVID has shown, for better or worse, is how collectively, people react to worldwide issues. You can kind of lay a little bit of a framework for maybe how we should be tackling climate change, or what our systems are lacking within COVID themselves. And, how do we more adequately apply that better for climate change? Some of these other issues that we're facing, are going to come down the pipeline for the rest of our lives and the problem is that COVID hit and hit big, where climate change is slow. You know, we've heard about climate change before I was born, you know, it's been around, it's not a new topic. And yet, we're only now starting to see a real uprising in it. Some people say we're too late. I think to some degree we are, which is why I really want to promote things like resiliency within Seneca. Climate change is coming. How do we make our people more resilient to the effects that are happening and then really focus on mitigation as well, while we still have an opportunity to make an impact later down the road? It's a tough question. I constantly am interested to see how COVID plays into the future, how to construct or restructure our thoughts on how we conduct business and how we can kind of take as much of the good that we can from COVID and learn from our mistakes from this as well as try and make better for the future.

 

Pat Perdue  19:46

And you mentioned some of the things that we can do. Do you find yourself identifying or in your conversations with either students or faculty or people in general? I'll preface this with I wonder this about myself. I'm here really asking for me, truth be told, I like to think of myself as living a fairly sustainable lifestyle. But I'm sure there are ways that I think I am and I'm just not, it's maybe a blind spot that I have or something that I'm not thinking about. What are some ways that people you find might be thinking they're living sustainably, but if they made this one small change, they would suddenly be having a much bigger impact?

 

Andrew Wickham  20:25

Yeah. It's always an interesting question at the Green Citizen. And again, we want to have people walk away with some sort of notion of how to make an impact. Depending on who you talk to, the conversation changes dramatically, you know, somebody living alone in downtown Toronto, and a rental apartment, versus someone, in a basement apartment with five other people; it's very different based on our living situations. It's also important to know that we all affect the environment, no matter what we do, it's just what is going to happen. It's a pick your poison sort of thing, right. And with that, we're trying to make the best judgment calls we can with the knowledge we currently have, of what is affecting the environment, and how we fall within there, and where we can spot ourselves. So, if we all look at our current lives, whether that's things like clothing, for instance, you know, something fairly simple saying, okay, is there a way for me to repair my clothing instead of getting new ones, or intentionally buying clothing that I know will last longer or be more suitable to my activity and won't wear and tear, kind of a thing is so personal, that it is very difficult. But a lot of times, again, I like to focus in maybe on a few things. I might look at how you're eating; whether that means you're eating for instance, a lot of beef, which I found myself doing, for my whole life, that's just how I grew up. Looking at that, and starting to understand the effects that we're having on that, and saying, for a New Year's resolution, I'm not going to eat beef for a year.  I'm not full vegetarian, maybe I will be at one point, I don't know.  I keep on going to that direction, but it was an easy change to make in my life for like a yearlong goal. And now yeah, every so often, I may have some but it really put a lens on changing my daily habits, to try to get me to think a little bit differently, try to find sources of protein that were, you know, cheap and effective. Lentils, for instance, are some of the best things to have in terms of both our footprint on the world and gives us good protein, good health. And we don't have to have beef, along with that. Empowering yourselves with the knowledge based on what you see as maybe the most problematic effects; transportation, how you eat, what you buy, and why you buy what you buy. So, if that's electronics, or types of furniture, it goes on, on, on, trying to make sure that things last as long as possible, and that you're not overreaching, just for the sake of buying the new thing as much as possible.

 

Pat Perdue  23:26

Or the thing on special. I'm thinking of fast fashion, for example, which might be super, super inexpensive at the point of purchase, but it might only last me a few months, and then suddenly I find myself throwing it out and maybe replacing it with something equally cheap, but also equally unlikely to last for very long.

 

Andrew Wickham  23:46

Exactly. And actually, our fashion department is fantastic for their environmental issues at Seneca. They're unbelievable. And I really commend them for all the work they're doing. But you know, this topic has to go to all facets of our life. Just look around your situation, look at your day-to-day habits, find something that you can make a small change but hopefully impactful one. Like for me not eating beef, I could still go out anywhere I want to and eat almost whatever I want. And yet, probably my carbon footprint and effect on life and land was fairly significant. Even if you don't feel it personally, it just does make a larger difference and healthier too.

 

Pat Perdue  24:30

Imagine if 100,000 people made that choice today. Think of the impact that would have. 

 

Andrew Wickham   24:39

Exactly! It's not to say never eat steak again. You know, the thing is that people eat what they want to. People do what they want to but try to find within there and try to make yourself better within that. So, if you do enjoy a steak, just try to have one less than you already do and make it a treat. Maybe spend more money on the steak, when you do actually have it to appreciate it even more, and then make those choices somewhere else. We're not here to tell people exactly how to live their lives, we're just trying to inform people as best they can to live as sustainably within it as possible.

 

Pat Perdue  25:18

Love it, love it. 

You've just come off a three-day sprint so I appreciate your joining our podcast today because I know that you may be a little bit exhausted from having had an intellectual workout over the last three days. Can you share with us a little bit about what that was about?

 

Andrew Wickham  25:34

Yeah, so it was a three-day sustainability plan sprint. I guess it started in December, when we hired a contract team, Intelligent Futures, to help Seneca develop a sustainability plan. And the reason why we have to hire contractors, is because Seneca is so huge. There are so many facets. I just said you could analyze your whole life and figure out how best to be sustainable. Doing that for an entire organization that has 1,000s and 1,000s of employees and students is astronomically difficult, and how we intend to use our resources as effectively as possible to make the biggest impact. Again, finding those key areas. So, it's the same thing as you do with a personal one that you do with the organization. But the organization takes a lot of patience, and a lot of passion. The sprint really is the culmination of conversations with tons of staff, with many students, upper management, to all get their input, and all collectively start to quantify what these big things are that we can start to do. And then the sprint is looking at those mechanisms and trying to find how we enact change on it, and make the biggest impact and meaningful change to Seneca. Again, you can make change to Seneca but if it's not meaningful, at the end of the day, if your greenhouse gases go up, you haven't made meaningful change. Yes, you've lowered it but we're still emitting tonnes and tonnes of gases kind of thing. 

This isn't going to happen overnight, either. This sustainability plan is very much a five-year plan for now, with the hope of lofty big goals. The plan included people, again, from all divisions at Seneca. And it was fascinating, again, hearing people in operations, from the procurement team.  I'm on the academic side, and hearing people from different sides of academics and hearing what they're doing, and how potentially we could put that into all courses or treat it into all courses as best we can, it was fascinating to hear. And it was really good to hear it and try to put it into the plan or start putting into the plan. We're not far from releasing it, I believe it's supposed to be due at the end of April, maybe later, you know, things get delayed a little bit. It was a fantastic three-day sprint. And then we were pretty happy with the outcome. And we'll see where it ends up going. I feel like I've been doing my thing at Seneca for a few years now and it seems that we were saying even at the sprint, you know, it's a bad metaphor or whatever, but we were now starting to put our foot on the pedal and starting to really drive this into our culture at Seneca in a meaningful way. So yeah, it was fantastic experience.

 

Pat Perdue  28:49

Awesome, awesome. And a little bit of an ironic metaphor.

 

Andrew Wickham  28:57

Electric vehicle or maybe we should talk about pedals on a bicycle. Who knows.

 

Pat Perdue  29:02

But that is great. It might be too early to say but are there any key outcomes? Or was there one potentially key outcome that you're in a position to share?

 

Andrew Wickham  29:13

Because the plan hasn't been approved by anyone or anything, I probably have not. Today was the day that it was given to upper management to have to take a look at. We need to support them to make sure that what we want to do is enacted but at the same time they can let us know,” Hey, these are our goals as well.” And then we can work with them to try to figure out how best to work within that context as well. We're all just trying to have a good back and forth here on what is the best way forward for Seneca. It's a very back and forth exchange of thoughts and ideas and we'll probably do so for the next two months. Hopefully the biggest outcome is that we want to have a centralized place for people to come to at Seneca, that ultimately oversees a lot of these events, they can empower students, empower employees, get the message out there, they don't have to go seeking and finding different people and different pockets and different silos. That's ultimately the outcome that we want.  I can only share that side and vision. How we specifically get there, I don't know what that looks like, but regardless, I'm extremely excited to see based on our conversations for the last three days,

 

Pat Perdue  30:34

That's amazing. And what I really love about that, and about our conversation is oftentimes everything that we hear about sustainability and the environment is negative these days. You know, like, we've missed the boat, climate change is going to happen, and it's going to be devastating. And already, we've seen the impact of climate change. And this overall has been a super positive conversation about what proactively Seneca is doing to help create sustainability, and also about how we can help as individuals create sustainability. And that, to me, seems pretty encouraging.

 

Andrew Wickham  31:15

And it's an ongoing conversation, it never stops. And when new information comes out, and something that can affect us, and that can enact change or if we ever see a solution that has unintended bad outcomes, then we need to switch or go on plan. But the point is to keep on moving to collectively have as many voices as possible. It is very key that we have as many voices as possible because if you get the one point of view too much it only serves the specific people. And yeah, it's very encouraging to see this and be a part of this at Seneca, for sure. I couldn't be more excited to see where this goes.

 

Pat Perdue  32:03

That's great. Well, I can't think of a better spot to end our conversation. That sounds super heartening that this is a dialog that appears to be ongoing, and there's some real energy behind making a difference. Andrew, thank you so much for joining the Seneca Proud podcast today. It's been great chatting with you.

 

Andrew Wickham  32:21

Yeah. Fantastic. I really enjoyed myself. Thank you very much.  

 

Pat Perdue  32:27

And that was my conversation with Professor Andrew Wickham. And you probably already know my takeaway from this conversation is how positive it was. So often, the news we hear about the environment isn't good news. It's often about how we as a society aren't doing enough to combat climate change. Well, here's an example of an institution that is putting its full attention on doing what we can to keep sustainability front and center regardless of what other initiatives are taking place. It's part of the reason why it's easy to feel proud of being part of the Seneca College community. So, until next time, I'm Pat Perdue. Stay proud Seneca!

 

NOTES

Find out more about Green Citizen 

https://www.youtube.com/user/GreenCitizenSeneca