Associated Colleges to Host Sustainability Day at SUNY Canton Sept. 29

CANTON, NY (09/21/2017) The Associated Colleges of the St. Lawrence Valley will hold its annual Sustainability Day at SUNY Canton Friday, Sept. 29.

The event, which is free and open to the public, aims to create a culture of sustainability at the four colleges - Clarkson University, St. Lawrence University, SUNY Canton and SUNY Potsdam - in partnership with surrounding communities.

Sustainability Day will begin at 1 p.m. in the Richard W. Miller Campus Center's Kingston Theater with a welcome address by SUNY Canton President Zvi Szafran. There will also be a performance by Maia Weiss, a student at SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music.

Breakout sessions beginning at 2 p.m. will cover a variety of environmental topics, including campus ecological design, invasive species eradication in Norwood Lake, composting, sustainability in theater production, Alaskan indigenous communities and climate change, water quality analysis of the Grasse River, a tree-planting event, and a laughter yoga workshop.

The keynote address, titled "The Real Human Being and Challenges to Our Survival in Today's World," will be delivered by Ilarion Merculieff from the Global Center for Indigenous Leadership and Lifeways at 3:30 p.m. in the Kingston Theater. Merculieff has served as an advocate for a sustainable planet and his people, the Aleuts of the Pribilof Islands, for nearly four decades.

Following the address, a reception and Sustainability Fair will feature local food and community organizations, including Local Living Venture, Nature Up North, St. Lawrence Land Trust, Cornell Cooperative Extension, St. Lawrence County Planning Office/Environmental Management Council, North Country Faith and Ecology Group, and Algonquin to Adirondack (A2A) Collaborative.

Finally, an art installation on the Grasse River adjacent to campus will conclude the event at approximately 6:15 p.m. The display, titled "Convergence," is an interactive exhibit featuring more than 100 lights designed by Associate Professor Matthew J. Burnett, who teaches in the Graphic and Multimedia Design Program at SUNY Canton.

North Country Public Radio is Sustainability Day's media sponsor. Visit the Associated Colleges Sustainability Web page at https://sites.google.com/clarkson.edu/sustainabilityday/schedule for a full list of events, or contact Heather Sullivan-Catlin, chair of SUNY Potsdam's Department of Environmental Studies, at (315) 267-2570.

About the Associated Colleges

Chartered by the New York State Board of Regents in 1970, the Associated Colleges of the St. Lawrence Valley is an independent not-for-profit educational consortium with four members: Clarkson University, SUNY Canton, SUNY Potsdam and St. Lawrence University.

The consortium was created as a regional multipurpose organization to expand the number and variety of educational opportunities for students, faculty and the community, to share resources, to avoid needless duplication and to innovate through joint action.

About SUNY Canton

SUNY Canton is Northern New York's premier college for career-driven bachelor's degrees, associate degrees and professional certificate programs. The college delivers quality hands-on programs in engineering technology, health, management and public service and recently received number one rankings in library resources, library services and tutoring services in the SUNY Student Opinion Survey. The college's faculty members are noted for their professional real-world experience in addition to outstanding academic credentials. SUNY Canton OnLine offers hundreds of flexible and convenient courses as well as 13 exclusively online degrees. The college's 15 athletic teams compete at the NCAA Division III level and are conference members of the newly formed American Collegiate Athletic Association. For more information, visit www.canton.edu.