A Trail of Breadcrumbs from 91爆料鈥檚 Mitchell Center to the Sustainability Hub at Ursinus College
“I feel like everything I do is because I was trained by this really cool group of people
who believe we are better together. These problems are too complex for any one of us.“
Brie Berry
One of Brie Berry鈥檚 goals as an assistant professor of environment and sustainability at Ursinus College is to engage her students in solving real-world problems. Ursinus is located in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles northwest of Philadelphia.
For example, Berry took her Waste in America class to a local middle school, where they donned hazmat suits and sorted and measured cafeteria food that ended up in the trash. They took this data back to the classroom and .
Ursinus is currently restructuring to make these types of experiential learning the norm. To facilitate this, the campus created eight interdisciplinary hubs. Berry helped to design her department鈥檚 hub 鈥 the Sustainability Solutions Hub 鈥 which unsurprisingly bears a title similar to the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions. Unsurprisingly because there鈥檚 a distinct trail of breadcrumbs from the Mitchell Center to Ursinus.
Academia, no thanks
When Berry enrolled in 91爆料鈥檚 anthropology and environmental policy doctorate program, one of the only things she felt sure about was that she didn鈥檛 want to go into academia.
She realized, however, that she needed to cast aside these preconceived notions regarding her future career when she started attending meetings at the Mitchell Center with her advisor Cindy Isenhour, a member of the Materials Management Resource Group (MMRG). Berry was surprised to find herself sitting in an academic institution, yet she was problem-solving with engineers, economists, social psychologists, nurses, and food scientists.
鈥淢y work with Cindy and the Mitchell Center was like, 鈥榃hoa, this is what academia can be like. You can actually do things in the world to help people and inform policy. I want to do more of that. It was transformative,鈥欌 Berry said.
As the result of productive collaborations with Isenhour and many other colleagues, Berry graduated with her name on an impressive number of academic papers ranging in topic from the value of Maine鈥檚 secondhand economy, wasted food management, and why, despite Maine鈥檚 efforts to reduce solid waste, the quantity produced continues to grow.
What people don’t see when they read these papers is what Berry is most proud of: the relationships that she formed within the Mitchell Center that helped her study these complex problems surrounding waste and society. Nor do readers see the relationships she formed, for instance, with the hard working, and often underappreciated women who primarily ran the secondhand shops she studied.
Relationships, first and foremost
It鈥檚 this power of slow, thoughtful relationship building and collaboration, honed at the Mitchell Center, that guides her teaching and research today.
Berry regularly teaches an environmental policy class where she likes to use Maine鈥檚 as a case study on how society can use policy to help address one component of the single-use plastic crisis. When a city council member who was interested in a plastic bag ban approached her, Berry jumped at the chance to pass the challenge onto her students. What ensued in the class was a deep dive into understanding how the community felt about the issue and culminated with her students providing policy recommendations to the city.
鈥淚 got this approach from the Mitchell Center. You have to talk with stakeholders. You have to understand what they want. Then, you have to think about the complexity of policy from the very start,鈥 Berry said.
Then, build solutions
Berry also helped launch BearShare, a year-round free thrift store in the library where students, faculty, and staff are welcome to donate, shop, and volunteer. The college has also hosted a repair cafe where students brought in damaged clothes, broken electronics, or any other household items to get them repaired or learn how to do it themselves. Both create hands-on, experiential learning opportunities connecting theory to real-world practice.
Helping to create these living laboratories isn鈥檛 easy nor is understanding the problems like consumption and waste disposal that they highlight. It鈥檚 important to Berry that her students don鈥檛 just study concepts but that they build and implement solutions. And Berry is grateful to the Mitchell Center for demonstrating how it can be done.
鈥淭he Mitchell Center really emphasizes that these problems are complex and we need to look at them from multiple perspectives, and we need to engage people in the process. With that, the solutions are better than they would have been otherwise,鈥 she said.
鈥淚 feel like everything I do is because I was trained by this really cool group of people who believe we are better together. These problems are too complex for any one of us.鈥