Martha's Vineyard Native Leading Sustainability Student Initiatives at Wheelock College

Dedicated to improving the lives of children and families, Ryan Antolick, a junior at Wheelock College majoring in Environmental Studies with a Sustainability minor, is sharing his passion for sustainability thought out the College.

Before transferring to Wheelock College, Antolick took a year off from college and worked with the AmeriCorps National Civilian Corps. While in the program, he gained many life experiences and focused on environmental projects. The project that really spurred his interest in environmentalism was working with the Catalina Island Conservancy. Catalina Island is a unique place because the majority of the island is privately owned, but has been leased to the conservancy in an effort to restore it to its natural beauty. Over 80% of the island is uninhabited and left as a wildlife reservation. While on the island, Antolick and his team worked on invasive species removal and trail restoration with the goal of helping to preserve and restore the island to its original state.

Driven by his desire to help restore the natural environments on our planet for future generations, Antolick enrolled in Wheelock College because of the College’s Environmental Studies major. The Major in Environmental Studies provides students with the foundation required to study environmental issues through an interdisciplinary lens. The Minor in Sustainability is offered though the Colleges of the Fenway, a consortium of six colleges in the Fenway neighborhood. The minor seeks to educate students about the interdisciplinary aspects of science/technology, economics/public policy and social justice that affect the ability of society to manage natural resources (such as clean air, water, energy) in a way in which those resources meet society’s present and future needs.

Antolick’s interests led him to the Wheelock Students for Environmental Action club (Whee-SEA), thanks to a push from Ellen Faszewski, co-chair and Professor of Math and Science. He is currently the President of the Club, and through outreach and education, he encourages the Wheelock community to think about how their daily actions affect the environment. All Wheelock students are welcome to attend Whee-SEA meetings and to join the club. “Recycling, composting, disposing of your waste properly, turning off the lights when you leave a room, converting to energy-efficient electronics, using a reusable water bottle or coffee mug, locally sourcing food, biking or walking to school, or even using public transportation are all methods that a person can make in their everyday lives to be a more sustainable person,” said Antolick. “Taking just one of these steps helps to make a better and safer future.” He and 30 other Wheelock students are sharing their myActions on Campus—a national network to engage students and deliver real-world impact of green, caring, and healthy actions across friends, clubs, classes and organizations. Antolick also serves as the myActions intern for Wheelock College’s campus. Wheelock was recently honored by myActions with a silver Student Actions Awards for the 2014 Fall Semester for student sustainability.

Other projects that Antolick and Whee-SEA are organizing include establishing a rooftop bee colony, where students can learn to care for and gather the fruits of their labor, and creating an on-campus greenhouse. Also, he has been very active in organizing and promoting Recyclemania, a competition to encourage recycling through College and University communities throughout the United States and Canada. During the eight-week competition, schools compete against each other in food, solid waste, and single stream or specified recyclables categories to see who is able to recycle the most.

Additionally, Antolick is a winner of a Sustainability Mini Grant from the Colleges of the Fenway Center for Sustainability and the Environment—a collaboration of faculty, staff and students from the six member colleges working together to enhance understanding of the complex issues of sustainability as they relate to natural resources and the environment. With his grant for AquaFarms, he hopes to bring a more hands-on learning opportunity to students at Wheelock College on the processes of biogeochemical cycles within an ecosystem. AquaFarms offer the ability to create a closed micro-ecosystem that can be studied to gain an understanding of how chemicals and nutrients cycle through the environment. They also demonstrate the effect on organisms, plants, and animals living within them. “Educating teachers on the importance of sustainability and the nutrient cycles will allow them to bring this information into a classroom to help to create a perpetual cycle of improved education and, hopefully, lead to a more sustainable world in the future,” said Antolick.