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September 2, 2010

Susquehanna raises awareness in films

By Erin Thompson For The Daily Item

SELINSGROVE — We’ve switched to reusable grocery bags and Energy Star light bulbs — we’re already on our way to a future of sustainability.

Now Susquehanna University is spreading awareness about the need to preserve limited resources with a film series that will run every Thursday, starting today, throughout the fall semester.

This will go along with of the university’s 2010/2011 theme “A Future of Sustainability.”

“I hope (the theme) will open people’s eyes to some of the problems that are outside our community,” said Kathy Straub, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at Susquehanna University and founder of Susquehanna’s Committee on Sustainability. With some of the topics covered in the film series “we can take action ourselves.”

In the past, Straub has hosted a lecture series relating to the university’s theme but this year she had a different goal in mind.

“I wanted to make it something that Selinsgrove community members would want to attend as well as students,” she said.

Other campus initiatives relating to sustainability include a bike-sharing and car-sharing program.

Straub she wanted this year’s theme to be sustainability because the campus recently opened a new science building, which is certified in energy and environmental design (LEED).

The series begins tonight at 7:30 p.m. in Seibert Hall’s Isaac’s Auditorium with “Food, Inc,” an Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature. The 90-minute documentary deals with the management of the nation’s food source.

“I chose this film because it deals with the entirety of our food system in the U.S.,” said Straub, “from the way we raise animals and the way they are treated to growing corn and pesticides that are used.”

The films will be followed by a panel discussion, which will be moderated by Susquehanna University faculty.

“Food, Inc” “brings up the idea that there are alternatives such as smaller scale farming or the option of buying organic,” Straub said.

Next week, the film is “The End of Suburbia” which is about reliance on fossil fuels in the U.S. A panel discussion will follow posing questions such as “how sustainable and practical is this suburban society?” said Straub.

“Our entire lifestyle depends it. Where do we go from there?”

That same evening, in connection with the campus theme, ecologist and Penn State professor of biology Chris Uhl, who wrote “Developing Ecological Consciousness: Path to a Sustainable World,” will speak at 8 p.m. in Weber Chapel Auditorium.

-- E-mail comments to ethompson@dailyitem.com

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