Rooted in Change Scholarship

Imagine hiking across a scenic trail, admiring the beauty of nature and the wildlife it offers. The calming sound of birds chirping fills the air as gentle rays of sunshine peek through the leafy canopy above. You turn around and immediately notice something bright orange stuck between twigs and dirt. Enjoying the environment should be about connecting with Earth, not a neon-colored plastic wrapper. Over 118 million people hike each year in the United States, so it’s no surprise that hundreds of thousands of pieces of trash end up scattered across natural landscapes, finding their way into the homes and stomachs of birds and other animals. I saw this unfortunate reality while at the lakefront: bottle caps were wedged into seagull nests, and bits of plastic were found in the stomachs of sandpipers. These sights made it clear that taking action was urgent. To remedy this issue, I founded Eccodrone. Eccodrone was created as a way for students to gather together for trash detection on beaches. By using autonomous drone technology and machine learning, our team was able to train computer vision models to detect trash with up to 97% accuracy. Trained with over 3,000 labeled pieces of data on different types of trash, the drones use a sensor system to navigate and record detailed footage of the terrain. So far, our drones have scanned over 340 football fields of terrain, accurately identifying waste and mapping out trash hotspots. What originally started out as a group turned into an award-winning nonprofit that has fundraised over $6,000 and grown to a team of 40+ members. Being recognized for our creative approach to environmental cleanup and youth-led impact, we have used our technology, collecting data not only to clean public parks and beaches, but to help other organizations plan more efficient cleanups and develop long-lasting solutions. I believe that our story is one that can highlight the impact of student activism, inspiring youth to take initiative, and we are eager to share it with a larger audience. Not only has this organization helped me create a way for us students to protect the environment, but it has also allowed me to connect with many wonderful people in the environmental conservation field. After conducting many field studies and research cases on the environment and the implications of trash in the oceans and forests, my desire to clean up trash increased. A large increasing trend in unclean parks is related to the recent budget cuts made by Congress. Many of our national parks and environmental conservation organizations rely on financial aid from federal funding. With parks being forced to make changes to their cleanup policies, I wanted to find a way for parks to monitor their green spaces without using too many resources. Through my research, conducted with various amazing park rangers, cleanup guides, and environmental teachers, I have gotten to learn about how we are working to keep the environment clean, reversing our footprint on the world. I have learned alongside professors and field experts on the effects of trash in ecosystems around the world. So as I plan my next research, I sit under a shady tree at Lincoln Park. Squirrels run across the grass, and birds peck at the dirt near my feet. This is one of the thousands of natural wild spaces around the country that I work to protect. Whether it's by taking classes on environmental conservation and ecology at my local college or joining park cleanups on the weekends, I spend my time cleaning the world, one bottlecap at a time.

Much of our days are spent within buildings. These structures are our homes, workplaces, schools, religious monuments, and entertainment. They are a central aspect of our daily lives and are closely interwoven into our culture. Being aware of this importance is what initially sparked my love for architecture. However, as important as residential and commercial structures are to us, they are also responsible for nearly 40% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. In my environmental science class, I learned about sustainable design in architecture and I found a way to merge my two passions-environmental science and architecture-into one. Combining my belief of the important role buildings play in our culture with my passion for mitigating the climate crisis, I have now made it my goal to limit emissions produced by structures so that our culture and the buildings so central to it can continue to flourish in the future. In order to bring my commitment to life, I will need an education in the field of architecture and sustainability. This knowledge will not only qualify me as a trained architect, but will also help me garner respect in my field. With this training in the field of architecture and sustainable design, I will be able to properly manage projects and clients, be more efficient in my process of designing structures, and accurately discern the necessary steps in order to make the biggest impact on cutting emissions. I know that, with an education, I will be able to produce tangible manifestations of my hope and dedication to the issue. A quality education is the gateway to success in many industries-architecture included-but mitigating the climate crisis will require more than textbook knowledge and know-how. It will require a vast network of connections across communities and individuals who are motivated to make a difference too. With the climate warming at an unnatural pace, vectors of disease spread more easily and heat-sensitive individuals face greater threats to their health in their everyday lives. For this reason, I plan to advocate for sustainable housing and commercial spaces for communities from the perspective of the health of both the environment and the individual. More specifically, I plan to focus on advocating for frequently marginalized communities as their living and work spaces often get overlooked in terms of sustainability and, as a result, these communities face the most health consequences because of them. Through this advocacy, I hope to promote the implementation of more sustainable structures and improve the health of the communities intertwined with them. While the face-value threat is the emissions themselves, there are underlying systems at play that are the cause of building emissions being a problem in the first place. One such issue is the fact that sustainable architecture practices often slow down building times and can make it more difficult and expensive to construct infrastructure and housing. As a result, companies are less likely to choose sustainable options because they don’t fit with their current business models. Therefore, in my long-term career, I plan to develop sustainable architecture practices that are even more efficient than their unsustainable counterparts, making them a lucrative and viable option for businesses so that they are encouraged to choose sustainable options. By focusing on improving the viability of sustainable options over time, businesses will be more likely to adopt these practices and, as a result, lessen the emissions produced by structures worldwide. Especially now, it can feel like we’re drowning in redundant and successive environmental failures. Despite the dread I often feel, I find hope in remembering the greatness of people. We have traveled to the moon and back, created life-saving medicine, and found the strength to be compassionate in times of war and strife. However, even with this hope, I fear that we won’t take action fast enough for the wounds on our planet to ever make a full recovery. Developing sustainable architecture practices now can be the key to making sure this doesn’t happen. For this reason, it is my goal to study sustainable architecture for the purpose of limiting emissions from buildings around the globe so that these structures can still play a vital role in our culture long into the future.