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The 10th annual Eat Local Challenge hosted by Hamilton food service provider Bon Appetit on Sept. 23 featured a complete array of fresh, delicious foods that came from within a 150-mile radius of Clinton. Hamilton community members feasted on lunch outside McEwen under bright sunny skies.

On Sunday, Sept. 21, more than 45 Hamilton students, alumni, faculty and staff boarded buses, cars, trains, and subways to arrive at the corner of 71st and Central Park West in New York City to participate in the People’s Climate March. Along with approximately 400,000 fellow marchers, students waited eagerly -- with signs, whistles, costumes and posters -- so that they could demand action before the United Nations Climate Summit, which took place on Sept. 23.

Roughly every five or six years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes a report that indicates the current impact of climate change and consequent policy recommendations. The most recent report, the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, contains three separate reports based on the IPCC’s working groups. Ming Chun Tang ’16, under the guidance of Professor of Government Peter Cannavo, is researching online news media’s coverage of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report for his Levitt Fellowship this summer.

The corn from Ohio, the blueberries from Maine, and the strawberries from California that all ended up at your summer barbeque traveled quite a distance before arriving on your plate. “Farm to Fork,” a term used by the college’s food service provider, Bon Appétit, entails buying locally grown products when possible in order to reduce carbon emissions caused by transporting food long distances, as well as to stimulate the local economy. Nicole LaBarge ’15 is working on a Levitt Project, “Analyzing the Sustainability of Bon Appétit at Hamilton College Using Life Cycle Assessment.”

Shannon O’Brien ’15, the recipient of an Emerson Grant, is spending her summer researching food justice organizations under the guidance of Associate Professor of Africana Studies Angel David Nieves. In her project titled “Examining the Community-Building Efforts of Food Justice Organizations in Philadelphia,” O’Brien hopes to determine how and to what extent food justice organizations actually contribute to the sense of community in Philadelphia.

Between all the statistics, graphs and technical language, some find it difficult to conceptualize the real local impacts of climate change. On April 13, Jody Roberts, director of the Institute for Research at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, spoke to the Hamilton community about art’s ability to help people visualize the pressing consequences of environmental shifts. His lecture, titled “Sensing Change: How Art and Science Work to Communicate Climate Change,” was the final event in the Levitt Center’s Sustainability Lecture Series.

Ten Hamilton students designed outfits to compete in the second annual Trashion Show, organized by the Recycling Task Force, on March 2.  They pieced together garbage and recyclable items for their models to sport on the runway in front of the judges, four members of the Task Force.

Associate Professor of Biology Mike McCormick moderated a panel discussion on “Changing Earth and Eco Systems in the Antarctic Peninsula” at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) national meeting held February 14-16, in Chicago.

Landscape planner and author Randall Arendt will present a lecture, “Rural Conservation Subdivision Design to Help Protect Working and Cultural Landscapes” on Wednesday, Nov. 13, at 4:30 p.m., in the Taylor Science Center Kennedy Auditorium. The lecture, sponsored by the Environmental Studies program, is free and open to the public.

Joyce M. Barry, visiting assistant professor of women’s studies, gave an invited lecture at the Center for Women’s Studies at Colgate University on Nov. 5. Barry’s talk, “Gender and Climate Change: Lessons from the Movement to End Mountaintop Removal,” was based on research from her 2012 book, Standing Our Ground: Women, Environmental Justice and the Fight to End Mountaintop Removal, as well as information she is currently gathering on the connections between gender and climate change.