Students celebrate Earth Week with work, discussion and art

The mangrove clean-up on Earth Day, April 22, drew more than a dozen students to the Upper School where they donned gloves and got to work, pulling debris from the mangroves surrounding the campus. The event was organized by the Verde Club.

Earth Week festivities kicked off with the photo and infographic competition, which netted creative entries and three winners: Ellie Carrera-Justiz ’19 in the photography category with "Human vs. Nature" and Beatriz Ruan ’17 and Sebastian Brunet ’17, the infographic with "Struggling Staghorns."

On April 21, nearly three dozen students had jammed the Pagoda for an engaging roundtable with Jeremy Calleros Gauger, an architect and husband to RE faculty member Cecilia Calleros; Adam Gelber ’88, an environmental consultant and RE parent, and Dustin Thaler ’07, who works in the solar energy industry. 

The professionals offered career and other advice. The most powerful message came in response to a question about how high school students could make a difference. They encouraged RE students to lean on the faculty and resources at RE to help them realize their ambitions to promote change through grassroots efforts.

 

Thaler, who has a master's degree from Johns Hopkins, is a project developer at SunConnect USA who previously worked at Conergy as a project development associate. He was previously a senior associate for the Energy Future Coalition for the United Nations Foundation.

 

Gelber, a senior scientist for Atkins North America, graduated from the University of Miami with a degree in Wildlife Management. He worked in resource management at Biscayne National Park for nearly five years and developed a ground water remedial action plan for a Superfund site in North Miami.

Calleros Gauger serves as Vice President and Sustainability Project Manager at ArquitectonicaGEO. He has worked as project manager for the Perez Art Museum and Trinidad and Tobago’s National Museum of Science. He has also managed multiple projects on the waterfront creating resilient designs that address sea-level rise and increased risk from storm surge.